Gender Performativity and Unstable Identity in Contemporary Queer Romanian Prose

Despite its importance in the analysis of gender in various research fields, Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity circulates in rather restricted academic spaces in Romania, as her gender studies is not yet a wide field of research. The importation and particularization of the discussion of gender as a social construct is influenced by various factors: from the persistent patriarchal structure of a society in which the post-communist legacy is still felt, to the simultaneity of theoretical receptions of works authored by Butler and several other types of feminist discourse, such as Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanist approach. This paper analyses to what extent these theories produce effects in contemporary Romanian literature, especially in prose with queer issues at its core. The paper further examines the way in which the category of socially constructed gender can be used as a tool for analysing the configurations of the human subject as a sexualised Other in contemporary Romanian literature.