Insurrection at the level of ontology

anarcho-queer performativity in Judith Butler

Abstract

This article proposes a theoretical-philosophical reflection on anarcho-queer performativity in the thought of Judith Butler, with the aim of understanding how performativity can operate as an ethical, political, and epistemological practice of resistance against the norms that regulate the recognition of bodies and lives. Starting from the understanding of performativity as a field of ontological and social dispute, the study analyzes the shift carried out by Butler around the notion of the queer, especially through her reflections on precarity, alliances, and shared vulnerability in dialogue with authors such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. The research seeks to demonstrate that queer performativity is not limited to the critique of fixed identities, but rather constitutes a practice of destabilizing the normative structures that define which lives can be recognized as human, legitimate, and livable. Methodologically, this is a qualitative research of a hermeneutic and bibliographical nature, grounded in the interpretative analysis of Butler’s central works, especially Precarious Life (2004), Frames of War (2009), and Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015), in dialogue with interpreters of queer theory and contemporary political thought. The concept of “insurrection at the level of ontology” is presented as the central axis of the analysis, indicating a critique of normative epistemologies that distribute recognition and intelligibility in differential ways. The final considerations indicate that anarcho-queer performativity constitutes an ethical-political horizon of resistance and collective creation, aimed at expanding the conditions of livable lives, building alliances, and contesting the hierarchical forms of power that administer contemporary precarity.