This essay poses two critical questions about trans politics as elaborated in the Global North today: Who is the subject of gender self-determination? And what, precisely, is mobilized by tying political sovereignty to gendered persecution and ethical world-making, trans or otherwise? To answer those questions, both liberal and antistate iterations of gender self-determination are read through the lens of Judith Butler’s writing on the fractious relationship between ethical responsibility and politics. Focusing on Butler’s engagement with Emmanuel Levinas through a Jewish tradition, the author argues that trans politics have grounded claims to liberal individual and radical collective sovereignty alike in a diasporic metaphor of displacement from a rightful home. In the final analysis, Butler’s work outside of the theory of gender’s performativity helps make clear that gender, as a vector of self-determination and political assembly, advances colonial and settler interests—even when trans.
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December 1, 2024
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Research Article|
December 01 2024
Who Is the Subject of Gender Self-determination?
Jules Gill-Peterson
jules gill-peterson is an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) and A Short History of Trans Misogyny (Verso, 2024).
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differences (2024) 35 (3): 202–223.
Citation
Jules Gill-Peterson; Who Is the Subject of Gender Self-determination?. differences 1 December 2024; 35 (3): 202–223. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-11525374
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