Melancholic gender writings in Judith Butler and Édouard Louis

Abstract

This text seeks to address writings that are mobilized to confront or elaborate melancholic gender states. Our intention is to draw on writings by those of Judith Butler and Édouard Louis to highlight a creative and ethical-political face of melancholy, while also offering the possibility of initiating both a process of appropriating self-narratives and a critique of the oppressive references stemming from heteronormativity. The act of writing, as it involves gender issues, presents itself here as a melancholic craft that seeks to respond to the reconstruction of lives often ruined by a past of erasure and loves violated by heterosexual normativity.