Sexual identity and performativity

Abstract

This text intends to approach the question of sexual identity as it has been defined in queer theory, and particularly in Judith Butler's work. The notion of performativity, closely related to a conception of the social as an open field of power relations where all identity is a contingent and precarious stabilization, leads to a politicization of identity that implies a second step further from its denaturalization. Identity is the place from which we can articulate a resistance politics, and its open and incomplete character is what allows its resignification.