The Fully Armed Self: Cultivating Post-Gender Subjects

Abstract

The final part of this book aims to take on board and operationalise all of the precepts of the book thus far: that the attribution of sex/gender is restricting of freedom; that the self comes to be in relations with others and in social context; that there is the potential that this becoming could be more enabling; and that a collective enabling mode of being could be characterised by a queer ethic of androgynous reciprocity. I will identify some key sites where there are opportunities to ‘intervene’ in the symbolic violence of sex/gender difference and foster a more androgynous ethos, and a more reciprocal ethic, or way of being and relating. By applying these insights to practice, I am recognising, and attempting to contribute to, an alleviation of the problem that: A lot of voices tell us to think nondualistically, and even what to think in that fashion. Fewer are able to transmit how to go about it, the cognitive and even affective habits and practices involved, which are less than amenable to being couched in prescriptive forms. (Sedgwick 2003: 1)