Paper 204: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies

 

Paper 204:Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity and Orlando : A Biography


Personal Information: -

Name: -Manasi Joshi

Batch: - M.A. Sem 3 (2024-2026)

E-mail Address: -mansijoshi202@gmail.com

Roll Number: - 15


Assignment Details: -


Topic: Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity and Orlando: A Biography

Paper & subject code: - Paper 204: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies

Submitted to: - Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar


Abstract This explores the interplay between Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity and Orlando: A Biography (1928) by Virginia Woolf, in order to understand how literature anticipated and resonates with contemporary debates about gender fluidity, trans identities, and media representation in the age of identity politics. Butler’s key argument in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) is that gender is not a fixed identity or essence, but rather something we perform—repeated acts within a regulatory frame that produce the illusion of a stable gendered self. Woolf’s novel, with its centuries-spanning protagonist who changes sex from male to female and navigates multiple historical epochs, poses a radical challenge to the binary, naturalised sex/gender system. By reading Orlando through the lens of Butler’s performativity, this essay argues that Woolf articulated a proto-queer, fluid notion of gender that aligns surprisingly well with today’s understanding of trans, non-binary, and gender-fluid identities, and offers insight into their representation in media and culture. The analysis traces how Woolf’s narrative anticipates and enriches Butler’s theoretical framework, and how together they provide a map for understanding how identity politics now negotiates visibility, performance, and resistance.

Keywords gender performativity; gender fluidity; trans identity; non-binary; media representation; Virginia Woolf; Judith Butler; identity politics

Introduction In recent decades, discourse around gender has undergone a profound transformation. What once seemed a binary and biologically determined distinction between male and female is now widely understood (in academic, activist and popular circles) as a spectrum of identities, expressions and performances. Central to this shift is the work of Judith Butler, whose theory of gender performativity has become foundational in queer theory, gender studies and identity politics. At the same time, literature has long anticipated and prefigured questions about gender’s instability, mutability and performative nature. One of the most remarkable literary experiments in this regard is Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography (1928). Woolf’s protagonist lives across centuries, undergoes a sex change from man to woman, and thereby defies the fixed categories of sex and gender. This essay brings together Butler’s theoretical insights and Woolf’s imaginative narrative to explore how the novel anticipates today’s debates about gender fluidity, trans and non-binary identities, and their representation in media and culture. By applying the concept of performativity to Orlando’s life, I will argue that Woolf provides an early and vivid fictional analogue of the dynamic, enacted texture of gender that Butler theorises. Moreover, I will consider how this inter-textual engagement helps us understand contemporary media representations of gender fluidity and the challenges of identity politics today.


1. Butler’s Concept of Gender Performativity Judith Butler argues that gender is neither a natural attribute nor the expression of a stable identity; rather, it is a repeated stylisation of the body, a series of acts within a regulatory frame that over time ‘solidify’ into the appearance of a coherent gendered subject.


Butler writes: “Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.”


In other words, there is no “gender identity” behind the expressions of gender; rather, gender identity is constituted by those very expressions. 


This has several implications: first, it challenges the binary distinction between “man” and “woman”, second, it renders gender fluid and changeable rather than fixed, and third, it invites resistance or subversion of normative gender performances (what Butler calls ‘gender trouble’). 


In the age of identity politics, this means that trans, non-binary, gender-fluid and other gender-nonconforming identities can be understood not as exceptions to a stable binary system, but as expressions of the instability of that system itself. Butler’s work invites us to see how cultural norms enforce certain gendered behaviours and how deviation from them becomes a site of critique and transformation.


2. Woolf’s Orlando and the Fluidity of Gender


Virginia Woolf’s Orlando offers a literary experimentation with gender long before contemporary notions of trans and non-binary identities were rhetorically available. The protagonist, Orlando, lives for centuries, changes sex from male to female about halfway through the novel, and thereby experiences life under both gender categories. Critics have observed that Woolf uses this device to destabilise the male/female dichotomy: “Through this rather fluid depiction of gender in Orlando, Woolf implies that the dichotomous male-versus-female understanding of gender is merely a social construction.” 


The shift is not simply physical but symbolic: Orlando’s essence remains the same person even as gender changes. As one writer observes: “The change of sex, though it altered their future, altered nothing in their identity.” 


Further, Woolf uses clothing, social expectations, and historical contexts to show how gender is enacted and enforced rather than natural. 

Thus, Orlando can be seen as a proto-figure of gender fluidity: the novel stages a life that crosses and collapses gender boundaries, time periods, and social expectations. The narrative presents gender not as fixed but as mutable, performative, and culturally mediated.




3. Linking Butler and Woolf: Disability of the Body and Performance of Gender


Bringing Butler and Woolf together allows us to see a rich interplay between theory and fiction. Butler’s claim that gender is constituted through performance is echoed in Woolf’s staging of Orlando’s life: the novel dramatizes the passage through gender categories and the social implications of those categories. Orlando’s transformation underscores the idea that gender identities are not given but made, enacted and changed.


For instance, when Orlando becomes a woman, the social world changes for her: legal status shifts, dress codes shift, expectations shift. Yet Orlando inwardly remains the same, suggesting that gender identity is less fundamental to selfhood than society assumes. This aligns with Butler’s view that identity is not a ground for action but an effect of repeated action. The novel thus anticipates the performative perspective: Orlando does gender rather than is gender.

Moreover, Orlando traverses historical epochs—from Elizabethan England to the early 20th century—thus emphasising that gender norms are not universal or timeless but historically contingent and socially regulated. Woolf’s use of time and change echoes Butler’s critique of the “naturalness” of gender.


Moreover, Orlando traverses historical epochs—from Elizabethan England to the early 20th century—thus emphasising that gender norms are not universal or timeless but historically contingent and socially regulated. Woolf’s use of time and change echoes Butler’s critique of the “naturalness” of gender.


4. Contemporary Angle: Gender Fluidity, Trans Identities and Media Representation

In the present era of identity politics and expanding recognition of trans and non-binary identities, the performative theory of Butler and the narrative of Woolf become especially relevant. Gender fluidity — the idea that gender can shift over time or that it is not fixed to birth-assigned sex — finds a precedent in Orlando’s story, and a theoretical articulation in Butler’s performativity.


Media representation of trans and non-binary identities increasingly reflects the view that gender is not fixed. At the same time, mainstream culture often still treats gender as a binary and as tied to ‘biological sex’. Butler’s theory helps explain why representation matters: because the performances we see on screen, in literature, and in everyday life contribute to the construction of gender norms. When representations break the binary, they open space for alternative identifications and disrupt the normative regulatory frame.


Woolf’s novel, though based on an earlier context, can be read today as anticipating the visibility of gender-fluid lives. Orlando’s shift is depicted not as a pathological aberration but as a lawful part of the character’s life-span, thereby normalising change and fluidity. In this sense, Orlando helps us rethink media representations: it suggests that representation of gender-nonconforming lives can be inclusive, imaginative and generative, rather than simply problematised or sensationalised.


Moreover, the present debates around trans identities often revolve around recognition, visibility, rights, and representation. Butler’s idea of gender trouble shows how visible performances of gender can challenge the regulatory norms. Woolf’s narrative shows how lived experience of gender change (even in metaphorical/historical guise) might destabilise the categories themselves. Together they provide a theoretical and literary template for understanding how identity politics around gender works: it is not merely about recognising “other” genders but about recognising that the category of gender itself is not fixed.


5. Implications and Critique


While the linkage between Butler and Woolf is fruitful, it is important to note some caveats. Woolf’s Orlando is a fantasy, not the lived account of trans experience; the social realities of trans people today (legal, medical, social, political) differ significantly from Woolf’s imaginative realm. At the same time, Butler’s dense philosophical prose sometimes abstracts from embodied and material realities of trans, non-binary, gender-nonconforming people. But when read together, the two works complement each other: Woolf offers narrative richness and metaphorical imagination, Butler offers theoretical clarity and normative critique.


For media representation today, this combined lens invites us to ask: how are performances of gender shown? Are they treated as fixed destinies or as fluid journeys? Do characters embody change, multiplicity, complexity? And perhaps most importantly: how do media and literature fail or succeed in representing the forms of life that challenge the normative gender frame? From this vantage point, Orlando becomes not just a literary curiosity, but a deep resource for understanding how gender identity and expression are constructed, enacted, resisted and represented.


Conclusion


This has brought together Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando to explore the dynamics of gender fluidity, trans identity, and representation in media within the age of identity politics. Butler teaches us that gender is not a fixed essence but a performance — a doing rather than a being — shaped by societal norms, repeated acts, and regulatory frames. Woolf’s novel, meanwhile, dramatizes a life that transcends historical epochs and fixed gender categories, thereby anticipating notions of gender fluidity and change long before contemporary discourse made them visible. Reading Orlando through Butler’s lens shows how literature can pre-empt and inform theoretical understandings of gender, and how both literature and theory can help us make sense of today’s debates around trans identities, non-binary lives, and media representation. In an era when those debates are increasingly prominent, this combined theoretical-narrative framework offers a richer appreciation of how gender is performed, represented and resisted—and invites us to imagine new possibilities of identity, beyond the binary, beyond the fixed, and towards the fluid.


References


Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.



“Feminist and Queer Studies: Judith Butler’s Conceptualisation of Gender.” ENS de Lyon, mniedda, 02 Oct. 2020.


“Gender as Performance: An Interview with Judith Butler.” Radical Philosophy Archive.


“Gender Fluidity and Androgyny in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.” International Journal of Social Science and Human Research, vol 5, issue 6, June 2022.


“Waves, Particles and Pronouns — Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’.” The Royal Society Blog, 2020.


Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. Hogarth Press, 1928.


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