Can queer performative practices serve as valid research methodologies?
Performativity is an act that enacts meaning through presentation. It does not represent reality but creates it. Performer and audience are both co-creators of meaning. This article presents four examples of queer performative practices - drag kinging, genderqueering, polyamory, and kink - to explore whether they can be used as research methodologies, considering their potential for generating new knowledge.
Before delving into these practices' characteristics, it is crucial to discuss what makes them queer. Queerness implies non-normative genders, sexualities, or relationships, which may intersect with race, class, age, disability, religion, ethnicity, and other social identities. Performances can challenge heteronormativity and cis-heterosexual domination by highlighting diverse experiences and subjectivities. They may involve subverting stereotypes, desexualizing bodies, reclaiming shame, creating alternative communities, and redefining power dynamics. Drag kinging involves men performing feminine roles in public, while genderqueering challenges binary gender categories. Polyamory refers to romantic and/or sexual relations between more than two people, while kink involves consensual non-monogamy and BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, masochism). These practices have been studied using interviews, surveys, observational studies, and field notes, yet their performativeness has received less attention. Can they serve as valid research methodologies?
Drag kinging and genderqueering may offer insights into identity formation, representation, and power dynamics. Drag kinging allows men to explore the female experience and challenge gender norms. Genderqueering blurs traditional gender roles and identities, calling out their limitations. Both performances can reveal how dominant ideologies shape self-perceptions and interactions. Secondly, polyamory may shed light on intimacy, communication, and community-building. Polycule members often negotiate boundaries, roles, and responsibilities, addressing power imbalances within relationships. Thirdly, kink can provide insight into pleasure, pain, control, and desire. It involves consent, negotiation, trust, and vulnerability, challenging societal taboos around sex and violence.
Ethical considerations should guide performative practice design and interpretation. Consent is crucial for all parties involved in the performance, as well as ensuring safety and confidentiality. Performers must be aware of potential harm and avoid exploitation or objectification. Researchers should avoid imposing their interpretations, respecting participants' agency, and acknowledging their subjectivity.
Queer performativity requires awareness of intersectionality and contextual factors that may influence the performance's meaning and impact. It also needs transparency regarding the study's purpose, methods, and implications.
Queer performative practices can be valuable research tools if designed ethically and interpreted critically. They allow for new perspectives on identity, relationships, and social structures.