ABSTRACT

This article engages with Judith Butler’s concepts of gender performativity and materiality as they develop from Bodies That Matter (1993) to The Force of Nonviolence (2020). The article shows how Butler has moved toward a materialism that is less dependent on language and thus open for animals and other nonhuman creatures to become intelligible as liveable lives. At the same time, however, Butler has not expanded the concept of gender performativity into a correspondingly more-than-human direction, which raises the issue of how to understand gender performativity when nonhumans act as living matters alongside humans. To develop such a full-fledged concept of gender performativity, the article turns to new materialism, in particular the work of Jane Bennett. Combining Butler’s concept of gender performativity with Bennett’s work on vibrant matter, the article proposes a new concept of ‘more-than-human gender performativity,’ defined as an assembled enactment of multiple forces that in the very entanglement of human and nonhuman modes of life articulates a multiplicity of gender identities. The article concludes by illustrating the relevance of such a concept by using the recent work of the Danish artist Rasmus Myrup as its point of reference.

摘要

本文探讨了朱迪思·巴特勒 (Judith Butler) 从重要的身体(1993) 到非暴力力量 (The Force of Nonviolence)发展过程中的性别表演性和物质性概念（2020）。这篇文章展示了巴特勒如何走向一种不太依赖语言的唯物主义，从而使动物和其他非人类生物变得可以理解为宜居的生命。但与此同时，巴特勒并没有将性别表演性的概念扩展到相应的超越人类的方向，这就提出了当非人类作为生命体与人类一起行动时，如何理解性别表演性的问题。为了发展这样一个成熟的性别表演概念，文章转向了新唯物主义，尤其是简·贝内特 (Jane Bennett) 的作品。结合巴特勒的性别表演性概念和贝内特关于充满活力的物质的工作，文章提出了一个新概念“超越人类的性别表演性，. 文章最后以丹麦艺术家 Rasmus Myrup 的近期作品作为参考点来说明这一概念的相关性。