Butler’s agency theory is a political praxis against heterosexual normativity’s violence

Evidence

Clearly Butler’s elaboration of the notion of agency should be understood in the specifi context of the political interventions in which her work is in.. serted. The theoretical practice Butler has developed over the last fi teen years is deeply informed by a concern for the violence that heterosexual nor.. mativity enacts and the way in which it delimits the possibilities of livable hu.. man existence. Her theorization of agency therefore must be understood in its performative dimension: as a political praxis aimed at unsettling dominant discourses of gender and sexuality. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 165

Categorization

• DEFINE: Situates Butler’s performative account of agency as politically motivated rather than purely theoretical.
• XREF: connects to: the MOC “The Forge and the Other: How Power, Discourse, and Encounter Cast the Self”; the MOC “The Violence That Builds: How Modern Order Is Forged, Not Broken, by Force”