Troubling Gender: How Drag Reconstitutes Perceptions of Gendered Performance

The project will analyse how existing forms of performance and gender performativity deconstruct social boundaries through drag and cross-dressing and will focus on modern drag performance and the performative aspects of identity, bodily materiality and interpretations inscribed on the body by the self and others. It will look at how new movements in drag, such as Tranimalism, resist the perceived 'mainstream' performances of drag today and theorise how these movements act as oppositional or destabilising forces (consciously or unconsciously) to the traditional formations of drag performance that dominate popular cultural imagination and perceptions of gender. By looking at these reinterpretations of performing gender, this thesis asks the questions:
- How is drag perceived in a context of increasingly broad and fluid gender identification?
- How can these performances help us conceptualise the self as a gendered performative body in society?
- How do drag styles of performance decentralise and destabilise hegemonic ways of viewing, reading, and enacting gender?
Scholarly interest thus far has primarily focused on how drag performance and identities classified as 'other' engage with, and often attempt to subvert, issues of gender in various ways. However, a study in how one is able (or if one is able) to theorise drag which is produced outside of binary constructs of gender and the implications of this is still required. My thesis will fill this gap and takes up this challenge by engaging more explicitly with new and contemporary drag performance than has hitherto been the case, notably in movements that attempt to subvert the viewer's expectation of what 'drag' is and what it consists of by playing with gender in non-binary/genderless and de-anthropocentric ways.
I will examine how the performers hide, flaunt, or distort gender characteristics of the human body when portraying their own body and the sexuality of the character onstage to engage with and query non-binary/non-conventional performances of gender. I will theorise how the performer, by playing with and resisting the hegemonic social readings of gender on the body, is liberated from social expectations, and is thus able to make political, social, comedic commentaries on gender that play with current common conceptions of gender. In looking at drag that reassesses the 'need' for gender in drag performances, I will analyse if these new movements are building on past movements or utilising new forms of expression to expose gender in new and unexpected ways.

The project will use qualitative research - primarily documentary analysis, interviews, and observation. Working from an ethnographic approach, the subjective experience of performer and audience member is integral to my analysis and my methodology. This will involve interrogating performers' and audience's perceptions to shape my theoretical analysis in relation to gender supported by first-hand observation and interpretation by attending shows and discussions at alternative/differently-gendered drag events I will work with non-binary creative artists involved in gender performance, as well as observation of events/performances and subsequent surveys and interviews with audiences - including visual and sensory performances online. This project will also explore how gender is being reconceptualised through the performance of drag and how this both informs and is informed by new social awareness surrounding gendered performance. This ethnographic, qualitative approach allows for the flexibility and scope of response that I expect to encounter from participants, and allows readings of the performances as ephemeral, often unrepeatable, acts of gender performativity and their effect on the observer.