Performatividade de gênero em O primeiro homem mau, de Miranda July

Abstract

Gender technologies are, according to Lauretis (1994), cultural and discursive constructions and they are not a priori in relation to the subject. Though, they cannot also be considered as fixed categories and given by culture. It is precisely within the discursive and cultural character of the gender technologies that such technologies are never considered ready, but always in construction within culture. Gender technologies have direct relation to the sexual representation of sexualities and to what Foucault (2012a) calls mechanism of sexuality, as its ramifications (the regulation of the bodies and the interpellation, for example), and make the subversion of the identity possible. For the keeping of such technologies, the reiteration within culture and discourse is constantly necessary, and for that the theory of gender performativity, as postulated by Butler (2015a) accounts for the complex process of “maintaining the gender” of a certain individual. Such process consists of a series of cultural and discursive acts performed, up to a certain point, intentionally, by the subject as a product of gender technologies. These acts are regulated by what Althusser (1980) names “ideological State apparatuses” and they seem to be in consensus with the current norm. To Rich (2010) this norm is called heteronormativity and is always compulsory, its work is to regulate bodies, identities and genders, however this regulation collects its price by the obliteration of certain existences. This paper proposes a queer reading of The first bad man, a novel by the north-american writer Miranda July, to discuss the way the character Cheryl Glickman’s gender is constructed and deconstructed along the narrative and if the novel contemplates only the binary expressions of gender (male and female), or if July sees other gender identities, although marginal, possible.