Inverted Appellation and Discursive Gender Insubordination: An Austrian Case Study in Gay Male Conversation

Abstract

In this article, Matti Bunzl draws on ongoing ethnographic research on the social organization and cultural articulation of same-sex sexuality in contemporary Austria to ground a reading of the socio-discursive dimensions of `inverted appellation' - the use of feminine references for `male' persons (and vice versa). He presents his interpretation in the context of Judith Butler's work on the subversive potential of drag. As he argues, inverted appellation among gay men carries the possibility of a disruptive critique of the heterosexist reproduction of normative gender through the parodic exposure of its naturalizing strategies. In this manner, gay men can at once appropriate and resist their abject positioning in the larger socio-sexual field, contributing, in the process, to a resistive rearticulation and creative reimagination of the performative construction of gender and sexuality.

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