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With the help of philosophers of language like JL Austin and feminist theorists like Judith Butler, we have come to recognise identity as performative. Through our speech acts, through our gestures and — especially in a digital age — through the virtual versions of ourselves we project into the world, we create and curate identities.
To be recognised, however, we are expected to conform to certain categories. And so the world also imposes our identities on us through performance; for Butler, famously, this starts the moment we are born and someone declares “it’s a boy!”, or “it’s a girl!” Our bodies can speak, but they often do so ambiguously, and others choose how to “read” or interpret them. Thus, as Butler puts it, “we are both formed and we form ourselves, and that’s a living paradox”. ..
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