Butler, Bodies That Matter

One might be temp­ted to say that iden­ti­ty cate­go­ries are insuf­fi­cient because eve­ry sub­ject posi­tion is the site of conver­ging rela­tions of power that are not uni­vo­cal. But such a for­mu­la­tion unde­res­ti­mates the radi­cal chal­lenge to the sub­ject that such conver­ging rela­tions imply. For there is no self-iden­ti­cal sub­ject who houses or bears these rela­tions, no site at which such rela­tions converge. This conver­ging and inter­ar­ti­cu­la­tion is the contem­po­ra­ry fate of the sub­ject. In other words, the sub­ject as a self-iden­ti­cal enti­ty is no more.

It is in this sense that the tem­po­ra­ry tota­li­za­tion per­for­med by iden­ti­ty cate­go­ries is a neces­sa­ry error. And if iden­ti­ty is a neces­sa­ry error, then the asser­tion of “queer” will be neces­sa­ry as a term of affi­lia­tion, but it will not ful­ly des­cribe those it pur­ports to represent. As a result, it will be neces­sa­ry to affirm the contin­gen­cy of the term : to let it be van­qui­shed by those who are exclu­ded by the term but who jus­ti­fia­bly expect repre­sen­ta­tion by it, to let it take on mea­nings that can­not now be anti­ci­pa­ted by a youn­ger gene­ra­tion whose poli­ti­cal voca­bu­la­ry may well car­ry a very dif­ferent set of invest­ments.