The Performative Power of Queer Assembly

Abstract

This paper addresses some relations between the spatial politics of queer assemblies in spaces of protest and the constitution of collective political subjects. It does so by exploring the spatial politics of queer activism within the global Occupy movements, in the light of Judith Butler’s work on the performative power of assembly and the ambivalences of the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia. Specific challenges faced by queer activists in various encampments will be addressed in order to expose some tensions between the constitutive exclusions inherent to the constitution of spaces of protest and the processes of coalition building needed to effectively overcome those very constitutive exclusions.

Keywords

• heterotopia
• protest space
• public assembly
• queer activism
• constitutive exclusions