Contributions of queer theory to a political approach to corporeality in cultural psychology

Introduction

Since the end of the 20th century, the social and human sciences have experienced an intense critical debate, which has contributed to the revision of dominant theories and postulates. Among them are postulates that have contributed to the exclusion, pathologization, and normalization of several forms of human experience, especially those of LGBTQIA+ subjects, women, people of colour, poor people, children, etc. In this context, important studies have emerged that bring to the scope of academic discussions agendas that have been ignored by these sciences, or restricted to political and social movements. Some examples of the topics of these studies come from feminism, anti-racist, and post-colonial studies.

Throughout Modernity, theoretical models in Psychology, strongly inspired by Descartes’ philosophical project, tended to overvalue the isolated individual, conceived as a rational, self-centered being, endowed with autonomy and freedom, rights and duties—an image of the psychological subject coherent with the dominant socio-economic order (Hall, 2005), and the dominant scientific approaches between the 18th and 20th centuries. Thus, early psychological studies followed a notion of subjectivity based on individual, cohesive, and stable identity over time (Hall, 2005; Lopes De Oliveira, 2021, 2023). However, since the late 20th century, this paradigm has been subject to criticism, raised by different epistemological perspectives, including post-structuralism, feminism, constructionism, and the linguistic turn in philosophy, this one caused by the contribution of the second stage of Wittgenstein’s work (1979). ¹

A common aspect of these new theoretical and epistemological perspectives is the attempt to move beyond an idealistic view of the psychological subject, emphasizing the concrete nature of its subjective construction, and anchoring the entire psychic process in corporeality. Human experiences come to be seen as diverse, and plural, while subjectivity will be understood as relational, sociocentered, and discursively organized. As an effect of the new strands disseminated in the human and social sciences, increasingly since the second half of the 20th century, the body has been rediscovered and becomes an object of interest in critical perspectives in the human sciences, inspired, especially, by the work of Michel Foucault (1985, 1978, 1987, 2012). ²

It is important to note that, throughout this process, interest in the body has not been entirely absent in psychology. From developmental psychology to clinical psychology, from medical psychology to psychoanalysis (see e.g., Dunbar, 1935; Erikson, 1968; Freud, 1990; Piaget, 1955; Winnicott, 1971) the central role of the corporeality for the formation and organization of psychological life has been emphasized by several theoretical perspectives. However, by treating the body as if it was merely a vessel to house the mind, and neglecting the power dynamics that pervade and shape them, these perspectives often perpetuate a continuation of the modern epistemological trajectory set forth by Descartes. They view the body as an object to be controlled, disciplined, and normalized, thereby reproducing the nature/culture dualism and its derivatives mind/body and sex/gender. Given this controversial scenario, we consider it essential that Psychology consolidates itself as an interdisciplinary science engaged in critical dialogue with other fields of knowledge and diverse communities, which have consistently undertaken deliberations concerning the bidirectional relationship between body and subjectivity. Notably, gender studies (Butler, 2011a, 2011b; Haraway, 2010; Preciado, 2014; Rubin, 1975) emerge as a significant domain in this context. Gender studies challenge dualisms such as body-mind and sex-gender, observing that the binary distinction between male and female is part of a broader set of social constructs around gender. These constructs, while producing normalized bodies and subjects, also perpetuate a hierarchical social order that marginalizes and excludes various dimensions of human experience.

Considering Cultural Semiotic Psychology’s deep concerns regarding the interconnectedness of culture and subjectivity (Valsiner, 2014, 2016), in this paper we reflect on the cultural construction of corporeality and subjectivity, taking into account the cultural meanings that cross through the body and, therefore, construct the subjects. Drawing on gender studies, particularly Queer studies, we argue that the body should be understood in its political inscription, constructed not only by biological and individual factors, but also by political, social, and cultural factors. Advancing on the elaborations of queer theorists about sex, gender, and body, the present work intends, therefore, to contribute to a non-dichotomous understanding of corporeality’s role in forming subjectivity.

Body and corporeality in the human sciences

According to Jean Jaques Courtine (2006, 2013), ² the body, as a scientific concept, is a recent invention, dating from the early 20th century. Until the end of the 19th century, the body was approached by human and social sciences studies as an anatomical structure, or, as a mere continent of the soul, or, a tool for its public expression, thus reifying the soul/body dualism. Such dualism led disciplines such as philosophy and psychology to focus exclusively on the soul and relegate the body to a subaltern, minor role as if it was nothing but a source of misguide and errors, due to passions “that the soul had to dominate in the name of reason” (Courtine, 2006, p. 165).

Starting in the 20th century, there was a rupture in this dominant paradigm. Studies have emerged that seek to erase the rigid wall that dichotomized body and soul, influenced, in special, by psychoanalysis, Husserl’s phenomenology (1859–1938), and Marcel Mauss (2003), who formulated the concept of body techniques. As a result, the human and social sciences began to reflect the vision of a lively body, characterized by the unity of life, both corporeal and spiritual. The first scientific trend that took the body as an object of knowledge was psychoanalysis, as Sigmund Freud (Breuer & Freud, 1957) addressed the relationship between the body and sexuality and observed that hysteria and its conversion symptoms are processes inscribed in the body; he inaugurates the conception that the unconscious speaks through the body (Courtine, 2006, 2013).

Husserl (1859–1938) conceived the body as the original cradle of meanings. His ideas influenced most of the French philosophical thought, from existentialism to phenomenology, but gained special prominence in the work of Merleau-Ponty (1964). The latter saw in the body not something apart from consciousness, but its very niche, where the subject’s experiences are anchored and sedimented. The body is active and communicates with the world in a dialectical way, in a close relationship with existence: “the body is material existence, and existence is nothing more than subjective embodiment” (Courtine, 2006, p. 165, citing Merleau-Ponty, 1964).

The notion of “body techniques” by Marcel Mauss (2003) is relevant for its contribution to the “discovery of the body” (Courtine, 2006, p. 165), after an anthropological study that investigated soldiers of the First World War. Mauss observed the many styles in which soldiers of different nationalities marched and dug trenches, and realized that each society has its own “body techniques”, which influence how people use their bodies in culturally-structured ways when dancing, running, jumping, marching, using guns, etc. With this, he concludes in favor of the historic and sociocultural character of human bodies, that are exposed to multiple forms of semiotic regulation by which they are constituted, and function in different systems of human activity.

However, despite their historic importance, the above-mentioned theories do not seem to have been successful bringing about a real epistemological turnaround in the status of the body as a social scientific concept, therefore the body continued to appear very timidly in the public debate until the end of the first decade of the 20th century. The forces that searched to control it and discipline the bodies according to the demands of normative behavior were still dominant. Thanks to the powerful technologies of the disciplinary society (Foucault, 1987, 2012), the body was reduced to an object of rigorous moral control, imposed by institutions such as the family, the school, and the army. After the Second World War, new perspectives, such as French structuralism, became more and more influential, leading to a shift in the social sciences focus of analysis—from individual subjects to discourses. Thus, although a loosening of disciplinary control was noticed by that time, the issues related to the body remained peripheral in the realm of the field composed by psychoanalysis, Marxism, and linguistics, all considered as part of the critical theoretical perspectives within humanities, until around the 1970s, that set their focus on topics as ideology, state apparatuses, and discursive structures, leaving aside everything that was conceived as banal, organic, corporeal (Courtine, 2013).

Sometime between the 1960s and 1970s, the most important turning point was observed. Initially, the theoretical discourse shifted from issues of structure and language to issues of body and power. The progressive inclusion of the body as an object of scientific study was intermingled with the experiences lived by the bodies within the culture at that time. After the events of May 1968 in France, special, deep sociocultural and political transformations took place, leading to the irruption of the body as a topic for the social and human sciences. These important social uprisings in France were mainly led by ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation minorities, converting the body into the main character in the scenario of the demands for freedom and rights. The significance of the body became notably evident through slogans like “our bodies belong to us”, voiced during feminist marches advocating for abortion legalization and later reiterated by representatives of the homosexual movements. The use of the body in that context

indicates what was at the time the political side of the problem of the body as an academic topic: discourse and structures had pledged allegiance to power, whereas the body sided with the oppressed, marginalized categories of society. Language was an instrument of domination over speechless bodies: women, the mad, children, colonized people, and minorities of race, class, and gender had nothing but their bodies with which to oppose the discourse of power (Courtine, 2006, p. 166).

What are the fundamentals of this scientific (re)discovery of the body? As emphasized by Courtine (2013), the most important landmark of the movement of human sciences toward the body comes from the work of Michel Foucault (1985, 1978, 1987, 2012). In his proposition around the genealogy of powers, Foucault highlights that the target of political technologies, or, the microphysics of power, is the intimate details of the human organism. Foucault approaches the body as an element of fundamental importance in the subjectivization process of the modern subject and analyzes how it becomes the main target of the microphysics of power.

The most representative texts of this phase are: ‘History of Sexuality I: An Introduction’ (Foucault, 1978, 1985) and ‘Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison’ (Foucault, 1987, 2012). The first deals with the implementation of the dispositif of sexuality. Dispositif, as defined by Foucault, denotes a network of practices, institutions, and power relations that shape and govern society and individuals, exerting influence over knowledge, subjectivities, and social control. Specifically, the “dispositif of sexuality” pertains to how sexuality was integrated into strategies of social regulation. This integration entailed the control and management of bodies while framing identities as either normal or pathological. The second text focuses on the mechanisms of power/knowledge, that operated through strategies of punishment, discipline, and surveillance, as ways of domination of the bodies.

The body is the concrete reality of the subject. This reality includes the habits, impulses, emotions, etc., which are watched, disciplined, governed, and docilized by the forces of power (Foucault, 1978, 1985, 1987, 2012). The body is immersed in a “political field” (Foucault, 1987, 2012, p. 33) in which power relations operate materially to control it, making it productive and submissive. This control takes place through various means and practices, such as disciplines, the systematic organization of bodies according to times and spaces, confessions, panoptic constructions, examinations and reports, and hygiene controls, among others. Thus, the microphysics of power takes as its object precisely the corporeality of the individual and the entanglement of knowledge and practices that act upon it, producing power.

The so-called sexuality dispositif (Foucault, 1978, 1985), which invaded the practices and life of the bourgeoisie from Christianity to psychoanalysis, deserves attention when it comes to understanding the control of bodies. Thanks to this dispositif, the forces of power participate in the construction of behaviors, thoughts, and identities, elucidating how these forces work to maintain power relations and the prevailing micro-political order in society (Foucault, 1978, 1985). The dispositif of sexuality is not limited to regulating sexual activities, it also encompasses a range of power mechanisms that shape the construction of identities and the modes of being and acting. Some of these mechanisms are: policing the female bodies; control over reproduction; pathologization of non-normative gender expressions, and sexual behaviors and orientations; and control over access to healthcare services, among others. Along with this process of subject control through the sexuality dispositif, knowledge is more and more intertwined with power. Fields of knowledge such as Psychoanalysis and Psychology serve as instruments of the biopower, thus contributing to the internalization of the dispositif of sexuality by individuals. Psychological instances such as the unconscious, the consciousness, and the personality guide the individual incorporation and adoption of societal norms, values, and power structures as part of their own belief systems and subjectivities. The same confessional dispositif around desire and guilt, originally implemented by Western Judeo-Christian culture, is reproduced in the practice of psychoanalysis (Foucault, 1978, 1985). Although with different goals, both treat, in some way, desire as something hidden and the bearer of truth about the subject to be unveiled. Both sexuality and the practice of producing detailed accounts of it would fulfill the same role, a movement towards the interior, allowing access to the most intimate aspects of the subject, and, towards the exterior, by the discursive expression of eroticism, objects of different forms of the government. Thanks to Psychoanalysis sex become an object of discourse, in fact, something that is even more talked about than it is practiced. Since the 18th century, power had a positive, productive feature, fabricating subjectivities through knowledge, discourses, pleasures, etc. (Foucault, 1987, 2012). Therefore, in contemporary times, the politics of sex is no longer operationalized by the law of interdiction; instead, it should be described as the production of sexuality. Such production involves stimulations that normalize it, and contribute to engendering the normal and the abnormal, with regards to sex and gender.

Within this critique of the idea of a deep, interior self, the Christian notion of the soul is also the object of reflection by the Foucauldian genealogy. Like the body, the soul is considered a social construct, a discursive element that contributes to imprinting truths about bodies. Instead of an a-historical, transcendental entity dissociated from the body, the soul is the privileged focus of the dispositifs that exert power/knowledge over the bodies and inscribe in it the historic marks of socioculture. Corporeality is thus intersected by conflicts that manifest both subordination to forms of domination and resistance against these very forces. Courtine (2006, 2013) attributes to Foucault an important role in the shift of conceptions about the relationship between body and history and emphasizes that this is a role that can no longer be ignored by the production of knowledge in human sciences. Following a similar track, we insist that Psychology should approach human beings through lenses that take seriously the embodied processes, the unity of mind and body. In this sense, we highlight the importance of taking into account the context in which the subjects, and their bodies, are located and the forces of power that cross through them. In other words, corporeality is not a universal, innate human characteristic. Bodies carry in their normative constitution differences derived from dialogical tensions present in the sociocultural fabric. Differences transform each body into a political arena where clashes related to race, gender, sexuality, class, age, capacities, and skills occur, etc. These aspects urge to be assumed by critical psychology, prompting it to actively participate in interdisciplinary dialogue with perspectives such as cultural studies, social theory, gender studies, and Queer Theory. These perspectives have contributed to a more profound examination of the political and multifaceted nature of the body.

The status of corporeality in Cultural Semiotic Psychology

The movements within general psychology towards the body, the “turn to the body” (Brown et al., 2011), are marked by ups and downs, and the recognition of the role of corporeality in psychological life is far from having become a dominant trend. Dichotomies as mind/body, or, sex/gender, which we aim so eagerly to deconstruct, are still reproduced in many studies (Kempen, 1996; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015).

Conversely, Cultural Semiotic Psychology represents a critical perspective that underscores the interdependence between the individual and culture. While various positions exist within it regarding the dual unity of mind and body, the latter is still regarded as a significant mediator in the relationship between self and culture. In this perspective, Valsiner (2014) conceives the body as a locus of complex, unique experiences, a crossroads between past and future, and the external/internal world. The bidirectional processes of internalization and externalization occur in the inclusive separateness of subject and culture. The body is the stage in which experience occurs, and the object of cultural markings that guide person/other interactions.

The “body is the social membrane of the mind” (Valsiner, 2014, p. 71). Through the body, we receive a multitude of cultural messages, which are actively reconstructed into new intrapsychic patterns that will later be externalized, taken back to the public sphere, and offered to the interpretation and (re)signification of others, be it in material or symbolic ways, in a continuous semiotic dynamic. This active, intentional, and distinctive process of internalization and externalization inevitably involves the body, drawing from a multitude of shared cultural resources. The most basic acts of personalization take place in the body (Valsiner, 2014). Examples of these acts of personalization are the “body decorations” (Valsiner, 2014, p. 63), paintings, and accessories such as piercings, which have been observed as habits of the human species since the beginning of its history.

In this vein, Nedergaard (2016) argues that the body works as a border zone that allows for the construction of meanings. Based on the notion of Thresholds of Meaning, elaborated by Robert Innis (2016), she develops a theoretical approach around the concept of ‘semiotic skin’ (Nedergaard, 2016, p. 388). The semiotic skin is constituted as a border between the body and the world: “an abstract membrane/border that allows humans to make sense of things, separating them from other things in life in order to unite them in hypergeneralized sign fields in order to anticipate the future and identity creation” (Nedergaard, 2016, p. 400). The mind and body unity are constructed in relation to socially shared cultural resources, through the processes of internalization and externalization that depend on the semiotic skin, which regulates the psyche and builds identity. While uniting/separating the personal side from the external reality, the semiotic skin makes possible the dialogical relationship between them. Going beyond the biological characteristics of the skin, the author notes that the skin has abilities not only to protect, but to adapt to external factors, both physical and psychological (Nedergaard, 2016). Furthermore, as a biosemiotic agent, it connects the inner and outer worlds, maintaining the continuous exchange of information between people and reality. Additionally, the semiotic skin functions as a symbolic protection of identity, a barrier between the subjective world and the environment. “This barrier is semipermeable, allowing certain aspects of communication with the world to pass through, as well as preventing other aspects from entering, aiming to protect itself and to register and control the hierarchy of signs to make meaning” (Nedergaard, 2016, p. 401).

Nedergaard’s (2016) description is very interesting, especially as it suggests that all semiotic processes and the very construction of subjectivity are embodied processes. At the same time, we identify some limits in it to be here explored, in dialogue with gender studies.

First, this approach seems to be limited to semiotic processes in which the hierarchy of signs converges with the normative semiotic systems of culture, paying little attention to non-normative groups and subjects. When we move our attention to subjects and groups whose bodies are conceived as abnormal ones, or, bodies associated with disadvantageous groups, amidst the structurally unequal relations of our society, we need broader theoretical lenses. How the semipermeable border operate the dialogic relationship between subject and world when the body is subject to negative socio-culturally constructed meanings that sustain different forms of stigma, discrimination, and prejudice, such as those related to skin color, gender, sexual orientation, and disabilities?

A second point refers to the focus on the affective-semiotic role of the semiotic skin. Bringing affectivity to semiotic processes is something innovative in the face of the predominance of rationalistic approaches in Psychology and Semiotics. However, at the same time, the theory fails to consider the body in all its complexity, which involves, especially, considering its political dimension.

Therefore, we advocate a more comprehensive cultural semiotic analysis of corporeality, one that goes deeper than the skin. This is because we understand that the body is imbued with the experiences it harbors, and as such, it has the capacity to enlighten us about the political dimension of subjectivity. Let us consider, for example, the signs of social class expressed in the bodies: whether in our teeth conditions, the calluses on our feet, sun spots, or wrinkles, as effects either of the food quality, diseases, or lack of access to care. None of this can be reduced to the skin, but to corporeality, historically constituted. The signs related to gender and sexuality, ways of expressing desires, ways of walking, sitting, talking, etc., also go beyond the skin. As noted by Bento (2006), the sexed bodies go beyond themselves, they are expanded bodies that also speak through clothes, accessories, and other signs. These convey far more than individual preferences; they signify class status, racial identity, gender norms, and other factors that intricately shape the interactions between bodies, among bodies, and within their surroundings.

The point is that even in critical perspectives, such as Cultural Psychology, there is still a lack of analyses that emphasize the political dimension of corporeality itself, that is, that recognize and understand the forces of power that produce bodies and subjectivities. In a non-systematic literature review, we observed that efforts in this direction are mostly located in branches of Social Psychology, especially in studies that consider inequalities related to social markers of difference, in dialogue with gender/feminist studies (Parlee, 1996; Radley, 1996; Sampson, 1996). In this paper, we present contributions from Queer Theory on sex, gender and the body to understand a political dimension of corporeality and, therefore, to overcome the body/subjectivity dichotomy.

Body and sex: Historical cultural constructions

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the human and social sciences were heavily influenced by prevailing medical discourses, which imposed a classification on bodies, framing them and purportedly establishing an objective divide between the normal and the abnormal or deviant bodies. The body was considered normal when it fulfilled expectations and followed parameters such as rationality, autonomy, productivity, and conformity to dominant social norms. In essence, the social-scientific construction of bodies rested upon the reification of binary distinctions– sexual, gender, race, class, and capacities, among others. – and the perpetuation of discourses that sustained the pathologization of marginalized bodies, which were deemed as abnormal: LGBTQIA+ people, people of colour, individuals with disabilities, low-income individuals, those with mental illness, immigrants and refugees, children, women, and others. This kind of hierarchization was even extended to categorizing individuals as human or non-human, as the very conception of humanity was associated with the normality defined by dominant scientific discourses and knowledge.

Regarding gender, one of the dominant goals of social norms, the normal body was the one that had gender, sex, sexual desire, and subjectivity aligned within a socially constructed sexual matrix (woman-vagina-heterosexuality-fragility-emotion-passivity x man-penis-heterosexuality-rationality-aggression-domination). ³ Gender, body, morality, language, and institutions function as “semiotic systems of social recognition” (Borba, 2014, p. 444), inseparable from the construction and maintenance of inequalities. Biologically based justifications were adopted mainly because they met the discourses, acts, and signs in charge of producing female and male bodies according to the dominant social demands.

In the transition from the 20th to the 21st century, new discourses and perspectives emerge around the body, which converts it into a cultural object. The essentialisms and classifications derived from medical thought and positivism are questioned. These emerging perspectives on the body are often influenced by Queer Theory, particularly by the works of authors such as Judith Butler, 1987, 2011b), Joan Scott (1995), Paul B. Preciado (2007, 2011, 2014), and others. For these scholars, one of the central concerns lies in deconstructing the dichotomous relationship between body and sex. The Queer Theory would demonstrate that not only the body, but also sex is a product of culture, and can no longer be considered as something natural. In other words, sexual dimorphism is a discursive production that corroborates the division of people between humans and non-humans, one of the dichotomies that underlie the colonial system of domination (Lugones, 2007, 2014). ⁴

Although not homogeneous among themselves, the hegemonic discourses produced by medical and scientific knowledge in the 19th century described the bodies from binary categories, thereby dividing bodies into two sexes: male versus female. Contradicting this perspective, Thomas Laqueur (1994) produces a historiography of sex, since Antiquity, showing differences and transformations in the views about the body, over time, and demonstrating the historical and cultural character of the understandings of the topic that marks each period, briefly exposed here.

During Antiquity and the Renaissance, conceptions of the body were characterized by an isomorphic perception of the relationship between the feminine and the masculine. This means that the feminine was considered as a continuation of the masculine, the woman as a stunted man, and the vagina, considered an inverted penis (Laqueur, 1994). It is only at the end of the 18th century that the notion of biological sex emerged, the same which prevails until the present day, in which gender gives meaning to sex (Laqueur, 1994). In this perspective, historically and culturally constructed ideas about sexual difference are the material with which what is understood today as biological sex is produced. The invention of sexual difference provided support for the rooting of patriarchal politics, based on supposedly natural differences to justify the inequality between men and women, and the broader access of men to spaces of power. The conception of sexual dimorphism is based on the opposition and complementarity between male and female anatomies in which the bodies of men and women come to be seen as opposites that attract each other, and whose main function is sexual reproduction. In this scenario, heterosexuality emerges as a condition that gives coherence and support to sexual differences.

The recognition of the existence of intersex bodies is one important evidence that sexual dimorphism does not refer to nature, but to culture, besides being a segregator model, that excludes several subjects and groups. Since they do not fit the hegemonic matrix of intelligibility about bodies, intersex bodies are considered abnormal, whose humanity is denied. And, in some cases, such bodies are mutilated, submitted to “correction” surgeries, forced to fit into the dominant trends, as a condition to be accepted, understood, and sexualized.

The different forms of scientific construction of the naturalization of the sex categories overshadow the arbitrary character of the criteria of bodies division that, consolidated in the cultural-historical process, finally, define how and who can exist. And, the intersex, trans and non-binary experiences demonstrate the acute artificiality and constructed character of this division, even without having been produced by surgery.

The name assigned to a person at birth does not determine gender identity or define its subjectivity, it just informs about the modes of normalization of existence imposed by social institutions and culture. Sex, then, is not a mere attribute or a system of categorization, it is part of a regime of power that makes bodies intelligible (Bento, 2006; Gomes, 2020). Following this path, Queer Theory considers gender as a process that continuously unfolds throughout life. The construction of gender does not end when the sex of the baby is revealed, or when the name is assigned. In fact, gender is carved day after day in the details of everyday performances - clothing, accessories, ways of speaking, walking, etc.

In 1975, Gayle Rubin coined the term “sex-gender system” to affirm the inseparability of the terms, as a “set of arrangements through which a society transforms biological sexuality into a product of human activity” (Rubin, 1975, p. 2). From this perspective, it is not possible to access an alleged natural body, because it would be necessary to do it in a supposedly neutral state of the body, out of language and culture, and free of any level of meaning-making. As this is an ideal condition, then Rubin concludes that bodies can only be accessed as sexed, gendered bodies.

However simple, this idea is revolutionary. The recognition of bodies as gendered contributes to destabilizing long-established dichotomies, for example, the sex/gender, and the nature/culture dichotomies (Gomes, 2020). However, when we adopt the idea of the sex-gender system, it does not mean merging these categories into one, or, reducing sex to gender, for instance. Giving up the category sex, in the example before, means reducing the potency of the body, with the risk of returning to the currently abandoned understanding of the body as a blank page, on which the discourses will be inscribed. For us, differently, by approaching sex-gender as a systemic, dialogical unity, we search for a theoretical foundation to explain the gender-subjectivity and body-subjectivity relations in the same non-dichotomous fashion. Queer theory plays an important role in this process.

Contributions from queer theory: The body in Butler and Preciado

Queer Theory results of the theoretical approximation between the so-called Cultural Studies, and French post-structuralism. Its main contributions result from the effort to question the binary oppositions of gender and sexuality, bringing this problematization to the center of feminist studies. Although loaded with historically produced meanings, the body is considered by Queer Theory as malleable, and manipulable, while the subject is seen as an agent that participates in its constitution. Subjects are not a mere product of the imposition of culture on a body, which would transform its nature and give rise to mental life. Since birth, the subject lives in the midst of a pre-existing system of discourses – including those of gender – that (s)he has not chosen nor had him/herself contributed to construct. Even though the subject is compelled to take it for granted, when performing gender (Bento, 2006; Butler, 2011b).

Thus, in a manner compatible with the critical postulates of Semiotic Cultural Psychology, Queer Theory considers that we only access the world through discourses. Meanings are culturally constructed, and we are constituted by their action upon us. At the same time, we are part of the very process of constitution and transformation of culture. Queer studies are particularly interested in the knowledge network that guides the process of meaning production, sedimenting social practices that can be further reinterpreted, re-inscribed in subversive, innovative ways, and finally, lead to novel ways of existing. The two major common points that unite different queer theories – and their great contribution to psychology and the human sciences in general – is the abolition of gender normalization and the emphasis dedicated to the discarded bodies (the abnormals, trans/queer/intersex people, homosexuals, etc.).

According to Butler (1986), the body is a multidimensional object: first, it has a material reality that is defined within a specific social context; second, the body can be conceived as a situation, the locus where one receives and also reinterprets, dialectically, the cultural messages. These are reasons why neither the body nor the sex is considered by Butler as natural. As an effect, “since the natural body is not known or knowable, every experience is a gendered experience and every form of the body life is thus known and realized through gender” (Gomes, 2020, p. 8).

Seeking to deconstruct the normalizing processes that constitute the bodies, hierarchizing and dehumanizing the subjects through binary oppositions, Judith Butler (2011a, 2018) presents us with the central notion of ‘gender performativity’. Performativity is considered by the queer thinker as the reiterative process by which discourse not only portrays a phenomenon but produces the very effects it names. In this sense, considering gender as performative means understanding it as something that functions while in action. Gender operates amid the subjects’ concrete performances, and is not just one of their attributes nor something that belongs to them. Also, gender is repeatedly produced and reproduced through semiotic resources converted into the subject’s acts: besides language, the way of speaking, the tone of voice, clothes, hair, etc., there are many forms to convey performativity. It is worth noting that these acts are “repeated within a highly rigid regulatory framework” (Butler, 2011c, p. 33). In this sense, gender is not only a personal expression but also a social technology operated by institutions—school, medical, linguistic, domestic, legal, police, etc.—that guide the subjects’ daily lives.

At least as far as Western societies are concerned, the subject’s gender performativity begins even before birth, when the first expectations about who and how the newly conceived subject is. The anxiety for knowing that little being leads to curiosity about its sexual features, a piece of information that seems to provide materiality to the person in formation. The tangle of expectations and projections about the subjectivity of the baby begins long before birth, which will soon materialize into gendered toys, clothes, colors, and attitudes. The future anticipated for the child by the social environment is mostly anchored in the normative differentiation of boys and girls, on the basis of a network of semiotic constructions about what the subject should “be” (how they should behave, what preferences they should have, what and whom they should like). In other words, an intricate set of forms of cultural normalization early interpellated the baby’s developmental trajectory, canalizing it accordingly to conventional paths. The most important effect of all this process is the production of a gendered subject, coherent with the binary notion of masculinity and femininity shared in our culture and, intrinsic to it, the compulsory heterosexuality that conforms to the sense of normal sexuality. “However, how is it possible to say that all children born with a vagina will like the pink color, dolls, toys that do not require much strength, energy, and intelligence?” (Bento, 2011, p. 550). These are discourses and practices that seek to construct genders according to dominant norms in society, but which do not correspond to descriptors of a given biological or natural reality. Thus, gender and sexuality should be conceived of, at the same time, as embodied and as part of a discursive construction. Subjects that do not fit into gender norms - “masculinized” women; “effeminate” men; homosexuals, trans, etc. - evidence brilliantly that social roles are not natural and that we can deviate from and even transform these norms in the context of everyday relationships.

In any case, understanding that it is possible to effectively deviate, to be different from what is expected by society, is a very painful process. One must face a regime of control over both sexuality and gender expressions and identities, which inflicts violence and constant humiliation upon the deviant subject (Prado & Junqueira, 2011). Nevertheless, Butler is optimistic about the possibilities of denaturalizing and proliferating identities, the ability of subjects to go beyond the limits of the models that founded them as fixed, definitive beings, based on the “constructed nature of heterosexuality” (Salih, 2016, p. 96). While acknowledging that we still need to better understand how these deviations take place—when “something queer” is at work (Butler, 2011a, p. 12, 2018).

The conceptual path to understanding this possibility of ‘deviation’ is exactly through the body – through affections, desires, and experiences that provide it with the force to resist. Only when we look at the embodied subjectivity we can truly understand the dialogicity inherent to the subject/world relationship, seeing deviation as resistance, as the ability to break with culture, and to transform it. This is also the way to understand how subjective processes are located, and constituted by the social context - in its micro, meso, and macro dimensions. This is because, from the reflections proposed by Queer Theory, we understand that bodies/subjects are constructed by language, but that they exceed it, extrapolating the limits of dominant knowledge (Butler, 2011a, 2018; Gomes, 2020; Preciado, 2014).

This understanding by Butler is aligned with Shoshana Felman’s (2003) notion of “speaking bodies” as she refers to bodies that exceed their intention when uttering language acts. Grounded in the perspective of performative speech acts, conceived by John Austin ⁵ , Felman (2003) notes not only that every language act is also a bodily act, but also, that the relationship between the body and the speech always contains a scandal. The scandalous feature of the language act comes from the fact that it “does not know what it is doing,” and it “subverts both consciousness and knowledge (of language)” (Felman, 2003, p. 67). In this sense, scandal is what extrapolates the body’s conscious communicating intentions. Butler coincides with Felman in the perception that the meanings performed by the body go beyond what is said, for the body is “the blind spot of discourse” (Butler, 2013, p. 11).

This excess intrinsic to the corporeal dimension of subjectivity is what gives language its performative power, and, at the same time, it is the breach for subversion, aligning body/speech, body/mind, etc., in an inseparable and scandalous relationship (Felman, 2003). Thus, the scandalous character of the acts performed by speaking bodies prevents them from simply reproducing the hegemonic meanings of culture, turning them capable of reinterpreting these meanings and re-inscribing them into new semiotic possibilities. This is why we believe that the subjects considered abnormal by culture are the ones who carry the most generative potential to induce cultural transformation. The bodily acts “can re-inaugurate the historical chain of meanings given to the bodies. For this to happen, however, these experiences must be livable, must be allowed, must gain possibility, which implies changing the epistemologies of production of norms about bodies” (Gomes, 2020, p. 8).

Paul B. Preciado is another exponent of Queer Theory who uses the notion of “speaking bodies” (Preciado, 2014, p. 21) to refer to subjects and overcome the male-female dichotomy. The discourses that are based on the assumption of a nature/culture opposition as a way to legitimize “the subjection of certain bodies to others” (Preciado, 2014, p. 21) are rejected by him, and the current hetero-centered social contract is replaced by a “contrasexual contract”.

Paul Preciado and Judith Butler are conventionally associated with Queer Theory, but there are meaningful differences between them, the most important being the notion of performativity. Preciado considers that gender is not only performative ⁶ , and this position leads him to pay greater attention to the technologies that construct the bodies. More than performative, gender identity is a process of prosthetic embodiment, anchoring it in the use of prostheses, technologies, or different cultural dispositifs that alter the experience of the body and the way we perceive ourselves. In this sense, Preciado understands that the performative invocation of gender refers to a process that is “purely constructed and at the same time entirely organic” (Preciado, 2014, p. 29).

Consider, as an example, the many technologies (hormones, surgeries, makeup, clothes, haircuts, jewelry, ornaments, etc.) necessary to fabricate any gender. Prosthetic processes involve biotechnological processes, use technologies to control and manufacture bodies and subjectivities, and, thus, define some performances as natural and others, as unnatural, and abnormal. Preciado (2014) goes beyond, defining contemporary society as pharmacopornographic. This means that bodies and identities are much influenced by drugs (hormones, rejuvenation products, silicone) and by technologies that control and produce the experience of pleasure (prostheses, dildos, dating, and pornographic sites). In pharmacopornographic societies, technologies are diluted in the body and operate at the molecular level, totally transforming the modes of subjectivization. The body is seen as part of capitalist merchandise, as an object to be worked upon and consumed.

However, Preciado does privilege the political dimension of bodies, highlighting the role of agency and the subversive forms of action for the creation of new forms of subjectivity and collective resistance. This is achieved by the subversive use of technologies of pleasure production, namely, the “technologies of freedom” (Preciado, 2018, p. 31, p. 31) ⁷ . An important example refers to trans people, who use medical technologies to modify their bodies to fit their gender identity, in which they challenge the binary gender norms and body standards imposed by society. Abnormal bodies (intersex, queer, trans, etc.) provoke a tension in the inner side of the heteronormative logic that presides over the binary construction of bodies in contemporary society, letting space in society for new bodies and subjectivities, new possibilities for being in the world. But this subversion is not limited only to the abnormal, it can be extended to other forms of subversive use of medical technologies, such as the search for new possibilities of pleasure and subjectivity through drugs, or the modification of the body to create new forms to express and live gender and sexuality. No body, not even those that totally fit patterns of normality, are natural ones, or free from alterations, be it physical training, surgical interventions, aesthetic modeling, hormonal treatments, and other forms of body change, adopted by different cultures or at certain times of life. For this reason, cisgender bodies should not be understood as the result of a perfect fit between nature and culture (Gomes, 2020; Preciado, 2014), but are also the effect of modifications, albeit culturally accepted, unlike the bodily changes experienced by trans people, which are targets of violence.

Concluding remarks

This article aimed to assess if and how Queer Theory can contribute to the epistemological foundations of critical scientific perspectives, in the framework of Cultural Semiotic Psychology. In line with the project of the theoretical reconstruction of the human sciences from a critical perspective, our goal is to reject the disembodied view of the subject typical of traditional psychology and provide alternative arguments to support the theoretical construction of embodied subjectivity. Drawing on contributions from Queer Theory, we advocate for a political approach to the body in this construction, understanding that it is not merely a biological or individual object. The body is also shaped within and by culture, influenced by norms, values, and dominant semiotic systems. Such aspects have a profound impact on subjectivity, suggesting an approach that recognizes body-subjectivity as an interconnected unity.

Queer Theory has made at least two major contributions to the social sciences and psychology, namely (i) challenging the normativity of gender and sexuality, and (ii) critiquing fixed notions of identity, emphasizing its embodied nature. Building upon these contributions, we argue that gender is inscribed in the body; it is the locus of all experiences, the situation of interpretations. There is no human experience outside the body, just as there is no experience of corporeality outside of gender.

Bodies are an intrinsic part of complex systems of meaning in a given culture and a historical moment. The ways in which male, female, slim, fat, and queer bodies are interpreted, disciplined, and regulated in each society are rooted in the broader social, ideological, and power structures. These systems include social norms and markers of difference such as gender, as well as race, class, age, cognitive abilities, motor abilities, and so on, which contribute to hierarchizing individuals and groups in our society. Hierarchization tends to act as a barrier to dialogicity in human personal experience and in interpersonal and cultural relationships. Therefore, the pursuit of consistent explanations for human experiences at the psychological level entails understanding how all these markers intersect and traverse subjects in everyday life.

Queer Theory invites us to pay special attention to dissident bodies' forms of action and resistance, and to the productive role that most of the forms of dissent play in transforming societies and theories. When dissident subjects create new possibilities of existence beyond gender binarism, for instance, they show us that the body is both a space where multiple power forces materialize and a site of contestation, resistance, and negotiation. This is the invitation we embrace in this article. With this, we hope to have contributed to overcoming dichotomies based on a critical and political analysis of corporeality in cultural psychology.