ABSTRACT
This article uses queer theory from Judith Butler to unsettle, or what I like to refer to as ‘queer(y)’, the dominant conception of agency within the binary framework of coercion or escape, determinism versus free will. The opening quote is from Butler, written in response to a special issue dedicated to exploring her work that was published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education back in 2006. In her response to the special issue, Butler (2006) talks about the perils of agency being looked for through a prism of
THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF QUEER THEORY IN EDUCATION RESEARCH
escape – a search for moments where social norms are fled. This, she argues, creates a binary framework of social existence being framed as either submission to the norms or a fleeing of the norms (p. 532). She suggests that there are other ways to work with norms – such as parodying them and recrafting them. Importantly, Butler (2006) poses the question:
I launch this paper from these questions. Butler’s formulation of ‘agency’ is articulated through her concept of performative
resignification and has been at the centre of much debate, especially within feminist circles. For many years, human agency has been framed around an individual’s ‘capacity to conceive and execute his/her own actions and projects’ (Barvosa-Carter, 2001, p. 125). Albeit to varying degrees, there has been a strong sense within the literature of agency being conceived as stemming from an aspect of the self that is prediscursive (Taylor, 1989). In contrast, Butler rejects the self as being prediscursive and instead situates agency within the processes that constitute the self. Possibility for ‘doing’ otherwise is opened up in the moment of becoming a subject. It is this aspect of Butler’s work that has caused much controversy and criticism. Butler’s version of agency, through the concept of performative resignification, has disrupted the field of agency theorising because it creates a third way of thinking about agency. In Butler’s model, altering the citational chain that constitutes the subject is possible within the structures that constrain it. ‘Agency’ is not, therefore, seen through a prism of escape but more an alteration and recrafting of the rules that enables a viable form of social existence. ‘Agency’ is consequently located within the altered repetition of the signifiers that
constitute the subject. In other words, when performatives are (re)cited there is a moment created for them to be modified and altered. This is not deliberate – ‘agency is the assumption of a purpose unintended by power’ (Butler, 1997b, p. 15). Action is motivated by a desire to exist. An individual’s psyche is subsequently seen as being conditioned to follow the norms that promise recognisability as a subject. Adhering to the norms is what creates the potential for them to be modified. While I agree with Butler about the potential for norms and/or rules of intelligibility to be altered in the moment they are being adhered to, I also feel there is a lack of detail about how the citational chain is altered.
