The Workings of Interpellations: Speech Acts between Empowerment and Defeat in Boys Don’t Cry

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of speech acts in Boys Don’t Cry as a linguistic counterpart to what Halberstam has called the “transgender gaze” in the film. By bringing together Butler’s discussion of hate speech in Excitable Speech and the movie’s staging of repeated act of self-affirmation and external interpellation, this contribution explores the potentiality and limitations of language in defining identities.