Judith
Butler Titles:
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In
Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler further develops her distinctive
theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most
"material'' dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the
inquiries she began in Gender Trouble, Butler offers an original
reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power
of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter'' of bodies, sex,
and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex''
from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She offers
a clarification of the notion of "performativity'' introduced
in Gender Trouble and explores the meaning of a citational politics.
The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud
on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris
is Burning,'' Nella Larsen's "Passing,'' and short stories
by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity''
and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory. |
| Bodies
That Matter |
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In
a new introduction to the 10th-anniversary edition of Gender Trouble--among
the two or three most influential books (and by far the most popular)
in the field of gender studies--Judith Butler explains the complicated
critical response to her groundbreaking arguments and the ways her
ideas have evolved as a result. Nevertheless, she has resisted the
urge to revise what has become a feminist classic (as well as an
elegant defense of drag, given Butler's emphasis on the performative
nature of gender). The book was produced, according to Butler, "as
part of the cultural life of a collective struggle that has had,
and will continue to have, some success in increasing the possibilities
for a livable life for those who live, or try to live, on the sexual
margins." An attack on the essentialism of French feminist
theory and its basis in structuralist anthropology, Gender Trouble
expands to address the cultural prejudices at play in genetic studies
of sex determination, as well as the uses of gender parody, and
also provides a critical genealogy of the naturalization of sex.
A primer in gender studies--and sexy reading for college cafés. |
| Gender
Trouble |
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Undoing
Gender addresses the regulation of sexuality and gender that takes
place in psychology, aesthetics, and social policy. These essays
revisit the problem of kinship in light of new challenges to the
family form, interrogate the meaning and purposes of the incest
taboo, and challenge the ways in which intersexuality and transsexuality
are pathologized. The volume also includes a reading of Willa Cather,
a speculation on the millennial goals of feminist theory, as well
as a cultural analysis of sexual and racial panic in the censorship
of the arts.
Undoing Gender
deepens issues introduced by Butler's earlier scholarship: the materiality
of the body, the meaning and instrument of human agency, the relation
between power and the psyche or power and the body, psychic triangulation
and the incest taboo, the political limits and conditions of psychoanalysis,
and the ramifications of rights discourse for those who are, by
definition, unauthorized to make use of those terms. The volume
ends with a reflection the way that philosophy is, and must be,
engaged with cultural questions of how power works. |
| Undoing
Gender |
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