The shape of selves (and socialities) to come: post gender and post sex theory and practice
There have been calls recently by prominent social theorists and queer theorists for futureoriented, re constructive theory and practices which attempt to fuse radical destabalisations of identity with positive socialities which takes these deconstructions as their stating point and locus (Butler 2012; de Lauretis 2011; Sennett 2012; Weiner Young 2011) While there have been ongoing (albeit rare) normative arguments for getting rid of gender and moves towards strategies for imagining selves and societies 'beyond gender' (e.g. Risman, Lorber& Sherwood 2012) these calls rarely engage effectively with current significant theorisations around the ontological status of sex and gender. I argue that to consider these two impulses together would underpin a cohesive, positive praxis for a reconstructive way of understanding the self and others, and a way of behaving together, which is without the restrictive constituting forces of sexual difference and gender and as such represents a longer term strategy. This paper will consider the implications or corollaries of leading edge ontological theory around sex and gender from 'new materialism' and 'post constructionism' which radically destabilise the fixed and biological root of sexual dimorphism and the anterior construction of difference which constitutes sex and gender (Hird 2004; Lykke 2010) for the more socially and politically praxis oriented approaches such as those of Lorber et. al. (2012) I am concerned with where this ontology leaves re constructive strategies for confronting the problematic of the inequalities of gendered societies and subjectivities and what might be the 'shape of selves to come' after queer theory's legacy, and after gender.