The Performativity of Deviant Identity

• In Event: 477 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 18. Children, Youth, and Violence 2

Abstract

This paper applies contemporary performativity theory, particularly as developed by Judith Butler, to the construction of deviant identity. Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida (1988), Butler (1999) argued that gender identity is continually re-performed in situated interactions – as opposed to representing a pre-existing, gendered essence. Similarly, deviant identities emerge from situated re-enactments, as social actors continually make behavioral choices in material environments. In a way consistent with social dependence theory in criminology, the paper argues that life course events and circumstances continually change material environments – within which commitments toward normative and deviant lines of action are made. In particular, affiliations with deviant subcultures profoundly shape the meaningful materialities against which deviant identities are continually re-made. Social interventions and social policies should consider the ways in which the stabilization of material environments becomes important to the stabilization of both normative and deviant identities.

Author

• Steven W. Sherlock, Saginaw Valley State University