Abstract
f speaking subjects are always the products of cultural and historical forces, then how do they assume political agency to resist those forces? In queer theory, the most basic answer to this question requires an understanding of discourse, indeed of any action, as performative-as exercising agency within the conditions set by a person's current and historical contexts. The problem for many people who have no experience in speaking/reading/acting as is that the performative nature of discourse is not readily visible. Because their experiences with discourse have not consistently placed them in positions in which they needed to speak back to cultural values that defined them in problematic ways, they have difficulty understanding why others must do so. Thus, for many people, the ideologies of culture and discourse appear neutral and their sense of agency as relatively unencumbered.
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