ABSTRACT
At the apex of sexuality studies lies an inextricable link to performance invigorated by the vital energy of Judith Butler’s intellectual labor. In 1988, Butler published “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” an article highlighting the intricate contours of both sexuality and gender, and performance and performativity. The production of sexuality and gender, then, is based on iteration, citation, a continuous performance, and as such, the more one does gender, the more one becomes something. The basic construction of gender-as-performance is a channel to Butler’s larger constructions of gender and performativity. This construction is built from and into the discursive practices of history, the state, and power relations across hierarchical terrain. In reading through the relationship between the original and the copy, and the ideological function of reproduction, the chapter explains the impact of performance studies scholarship within the performativity of gender and sexuality.
