Subversion

This chapter focuses on the politics of heteronormativity, but it shifts from

the analysis of specific manifestations of and particular engagements with

heteronormativity to a political theory of the concept. This shift demands

genealogical work on the concept of heteronormativity – as it can be

reconstructed out of Butler’s notion of the ‘heterosexual matrix’ – and it

requires a critical retrieval of the theory of subversion. ‘Subversion’ appears

repeatedly in Butler’s earlier writings, and it plays a central role in her

articulation of politics. Put another way, Butler invokes the language of subversion in her early works at precisely those moments when the stakes of

her reading turn political. Her implicit, and frequently misunderstood,

‘theory of subversion’ takes sharper shape, we will argue, when read with

and through the concept of heteronormativity. To explicate a politics of

subversion at work in Butler’s writing requires a concomitant redescription

of subversion’s critical target: namely, the power of heterosexuality when it

operates as a norm. Following the lead of queer theory, we name this power

heteronormativity, and in this chapter we seek to distinguish it rigorously from homophobia. While Butler draws the concept of subversion out of the

writings of others, and while she neither coins nor even makes use of the

term heteronormativity, we argue nevertheless that the subversions of het-

eronormativity both effected and advocated in Butler’s work constitute

precisely that which should not – indeed, cannot – be ignored by political

theory.