‘An Incalculable Effect’ : Subversions of Heteronormativity
| Published date | 01 October 2007 |
| Author | Samuel A. Chambers |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00654.x |
| Date | 01 October 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
‘An Incalculable Effect’: Subversions of
Heteronormativity
Samuel A. Chambers
Swansea University
The writings of Judith Butler are now canonised in the fields of feminist and queer theory, yet her
contribution to politics and her role in the field of political theory remain uncertain. I argue, perhaps
uncontroversially,that Butler’s is a politics of subversion; I also contend, perhaps more contentiously,that
Butler’s understanding of subversion only takes clear shape in light of her implicit theory of heteronor-
mativity. Butler’s work calls for the subversion of heteronormativity; in so doing her writings both
illuminate the general problem of normativity for politics and offer a robust response to that problem.
Butler resists the tendency to treat norms as merely agreed-upon standards, and she rebuts those easy
dismissals of theorists who would take seriously the power of norms thought in terms of normativity and
normalisation. Butler’s contribution to political theory emerges in the form of her painstaking unfolding
of subversion.This unfolding produces an account of the politics of norms that is needed desperately by
both political theory and politics.Thus, I conclude that political theory cannot afford to ignore either the
theory of heteronormativity or the politics of its subversion.
Since the publication of Gender Trouble (1990), Judith Butler’s work has been at
the centre of debates in feminist theory,and her writings and arguments are now
canonised in the burgeoning field of queer theory.Butler’s relation to the field of
politics, and to political theory, remains more vexed. Mention Butler’s name or
reference her work in the company of most scholars of politics and no recogni-
tion at all will register on their faces.Yet, assert in the presence of certain others
that Butler has not been taken seriously enough by political theorists, that one can
locate no rich body of secondary literature on Butler written by political
theorists, and those faces turn red in anger at the apparent insult to Butler.Butler’s
relation to political theory remains both ticklish and contentious, then, because
one cannot safely claim Butler as a political theorist in her own right, nor can one
disclaim her status as a political theorist (e.g. in an effort to propose a corrective
account).This essay thereby avoids entering a debate over the general standing of
Butler’s writings in political theory. It also eschews any attempt to provide a
‘general overview’ of Butler’s work since her politico-theoretic interventions all
operate in specific, situated contexts. Instead, I aim here to retrieve and to
construct, respectively, two crucial political concepts from Butler’s writings:
subversion and heteronormativity.
‘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
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00654.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2007 VOL 55, 656–679
© 2007The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2007 Political StudiesAssociation
her reading turn political. Butler’s implicit,and frequently misunderstood,‘theor y
of subversion’ takes sharper shape, I 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. This
power can be termed ‘heteronormativity’, a concept derived from queer theory
and which must be distinguished 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, I will argue
nevertheless that the subversions of heteronormativity both effected and called for
in Butler’s work are precisely those which should not – indeed, cannot – be
ignored by political theory.
Subversive Acts, Subversive Readings
Subversion is not a secret resource in Butler’s oeuvre, hiding away t o be discovered
in some little-noticed or never-published text. On the contrar y, Butler places
subversion in the subtitle of her most famous book; it seems clear that Butler’s
politics is, in one way or another, a ‘subversive politics’;and I am not the fir st to
highlight the term in reading her work. In the existing literature, one notes three
distinct (though entangled) responses to the question of subversion in Butler’s
corpus.
First, some authors will take Butler’s politics of subversion as a given frame for
their investigation, and then move on to focus on particular, specific questions
concerning Butler’s theory of politics. Thus one hears the language of subver-
sion but sees little investigation of it. Alison Stone’s recent work provides an
excellent example of this approach to subversion: Stone structures her entire
reading of Butler’s work around the term subversion, but her questions are not
what is subversion or what does subversion target. Rather, she asks about the
possibility of ‘subversive agency’ and about the desirability of subverting ‘gender
norms’ (Stone, 2005, p. 5). Moreover, subversion frames Stone’s discussion to
such an extent that it allows her to discuss the famous contentious conversation
between Butler, Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser in terms of these questions
about subversive agency and the subversion of gender norms, despite the fact
that in those particular texts neither Butler, nor Benhabib nor Fraser use the
word subversion much at all (Benhabib, 1995a; 1995b; Butler, 1995a; 1995b;
Fraser, 1995). I read Stone in this manner not to offer a criticism of her work;
indeed, it is precisely the focus on questions of agency and the normative ground
for politics that makes Stone’s essay on Butler particularly relevant and helpful
for placing Butler in the context of political theory. My point is merely that
while Stone certainly sees the significance of ‘subversion’ to Butler’s (political)
work, her task is not to explore the concept of subversion critically. Stone
remains much more concerned with theories of performativity and resignifica-
tion (on ‘subversive resignification’ see also Disch, 1999; compare Mills, 2000).
SUBVERSIONS OF HETERONORMATIVITY 657
© 2007The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2007 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2007, 55(3)
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