Abstrakt
Non-binary gender as an umbrella term refers to any gender beyond the male/female categories. With the progressing LGBT+ movement and future predictions referring to all persons equally "regardless of their chosen gender" (Cave, Klein, 2015), the question of philosophical and societal limits of being non-binary is a fundamental one for understanding the patterns in the current sign system.
Binary as such is of philosophical nature and can be interpreted as political, as e.g. in the works of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler who both accelerated feminist criticism by analysing how the masculine is privileged in the construction of meaning. Also, for Martin Heidegger binary is a subject of criticism as he tried to establish a new dualistic-thinking humanism in which being comes before metaphysical oppositions.
However, in his attempt to define being through its difference to beings, being is dependent on the difference. There is a significant problem with Heidegger's approach to gender and sex.
The neutral Dasein is neither of the two sexes but as factual it is a gendered being (Geschlechstwesen). Derrida analyses the pre-differential state as precondition for uniqueness of each gender, which is separated by space and time of endless difference, and Butler investigates the reinterpretation of meanings of differences and the becoming of gender.
The goal of this article is to compare the approaches of these three scholars to find the possibilities, preconditions and limits of non-binary gender. Thus, I read Heidegger and compare his thoughts on sex and gender of Dasein with the perspective of Derrida and Butler and then I discuss the limits of Butler's approach by using the perspective of Derrida and come to a conclusion on visibility of gender signs and their validity in discourses.
Together with Butler, I assume that there is no gender identity but performatively constituted expressions (Butler 1990, 25), whose origin is own desire for recognition, that's why I don't differentiate between sex/gender/desire. In his lectures on Geschlecht, Derrida describes inter alia the way logocentrism has been genderized on the example of Dasein, a fundamental concept in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger which has opened novel possibilities.
Although these three thinkers rarely come together in comparisons, I am of the opinion that analysing them in this sequence is optimal for the reasoning about gender and its limit within the process of structural reorganization of society in the Western culture through the 20th and 21st centuries. I argue that the point of clash of their arguments dwells in the interlinkage of thinking, acting and signifying of a politicized material body.
All of them problematize authenticity and repetition. Heidegger provokes the idea of a neutral and bodiless Dasein which can become authentic but where no becoming of gender is possible, Derrida seeks the pre-differential state which enables becoming, and Butler seeks the way in which gender is becoming.
Although Heidegger tried to establish thinking beyond dualistic terms, he defined being by using its difference from beings, i.e. he thought of being through difference and escaped the problem of identity, including the sexual or gender identity of Dasein. Derrida criticized the binary domination, reviewed the conditions for the functioning of the prime beginning, which he understands as the primordial sexual difference that existed before the binary opposition.
In this context, sex is pre-differential, unsigned, naked but is being veiled by the cloths of language and culture. This pre-differential state can be understood as a positive potential for a non-binary identity, a possibility of sexual multiplicity and denotation of self as any possible sex.
Similarly, as a stroke strikes validity as for example when coining the coin, the formation of gender should be understood as striking, respectively as signification rather than construction or production. It is a violent act which is exercised from the outside on the surface which is initially reconciliatory.
In the space opened by Derrida and by using his instruments of decomposition and citationality, Butler builds her concept of performativity and gender performance as a practice by which discourse produces effects that it names. She regards binary as fiction which has the regulatory function to confirm the heterosexual coherency.
The materiality of sex is violently created and operates as a ritual. Such performativity as a predicate used for creating facts is based on a game of sign because whatever we think of materiality it is always embedded in a chain of signs that constitutes its concept.
Possibility of subversion offered by Butler does not "mint" the validity of non-binary identity because this is being done, with Derrida's words, by a stroke which is the discourse itself. It has its power just by the sign, if it would not operate with signs, it wouldn't be visible.
However, in the space of the current "we" invisibility means recognisability, i.e. the legibility of the sign. By breaking the power of the current "we" or "discourse" can the possibility of sexual multiplicity be afforded, respectively of non-binary identity.
But its strike, which would impede the validity of such identity, will only be possible in chaos. Until then, the signs of the non-binary identity will be assigned to the ideal created by the actual "we", i.e. to the ideal of masculinity, respectively femininity, likewise there will be the effect of phallogocentrism.
Subversion is necessarily political because it requires a refusal of repeating the imposed sign and its replacement by a modified sign in a new context. It can take place only within the discourse because it cannot be left out.
Concluding on her approach, I argue that sex/gender/desire depends on the strength of the discourse and on the strength of subversion; their essence is incidental and can be compared to the essence of thrownness, which Derrida describes on the basis of Heidegger's thrownness into being. The spreading of non-binary visibility can further abolish the effects of the discourse, but not the discourse itself.
It is the power of the "monster" which shifts away into a field of impossibility, excludes, respectively pathologizes. Similarly, the expressions of non-binary gender identity are excluded because they are visible and therefore unreadable.
Although Derrida is considering the possibilities of a pre-differential state and Butler points out to the possibility of returning back into it, neither of them shows a way how it would be possible to overcome the power of discourse because, in my opinion, the existence outside of the discourse is not possible. Likewise, it is not possible to break the logic of positivity by destruction because we would lose communication and thus ourselves.
Thus, logocentrism cannot be done away with, it is only possible to disturb it and let the act of questioning it function further.