Re-defining and re-claiming the limits of gendered subjectivity

This paper shares some of the ways in which one woman explains her understandings of her gendered subjectivity via attachments to notions of `difference . In order to display the ways in which the participant carefully makes sense of herself within the limits of heteronormative notions of gender and sexuality the author presents for consideration and analysis an image as well as a number of short poems shaped from interview data. In this paper the author uses queer theoretical concepts from Judith Butler (1997; 1999; 2004) and feminist geography, plus ideas around loss and melancholia from an edited text by David Eng and David Kazanjian (2003) to make alternate readings of attachments to gendered subjectivity and notions of difference. As such the following paper offers a place from which to generously theorise articulations of difference as agentic by re-defining and re-claiming the limits of gendered subjectivity. The paper also presents for consideration poetic representation as an alternative approach for sharing stories of difference.