Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity / Edition 2

by Judith Butler

Overview

Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415924993
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/28/1999
Edition description:	10TH ANNIVERSARY
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	1580L (what's this?)

About the Author

Judith Butler is Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Among her books are Bodies That Matter and Excitable Speech, and Feminists Theorize the Political (coedited with Joan W. Scott), all available from Routledge.

Table of Contents

PREFACE

i. "Women" as the Subject of Feminism

ii. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire

iii. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate

iv. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary

and Beyond

v. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance

vi. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement

II. PROHIBITION, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE PRODUCTION OF THE HETEROSEXUAL MATRIX

i. Structuralism's Critical Exchange

ii. Lacan, Riviere and the Strategies of Masquerade

iii. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender

iv. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification

v. Reformulating Prohibition as Power

III. SUBVERSIVE BODILY ACTS

i. The Body

Politics of Julia Kristeva

ii. Foucault, Herculine and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity

iii. Monique Wittig: Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex

iv. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions

CONCLUSION: From Parody to Politics

Editorial Reviews

The most authoritative attack to date on the naturalness of gender. This is a brilliant and innovative book.
— Lingua Franca

Sandra Lee Bartky

Radical feminist Butler investigates the theoretical roots of an ontology of gender identity to show their political parameters. She questions traditional and feminist sex/gender distinctions, arguing that the basic concepts in this discourse are themselves produced by relations of power. The result is a subversive and sometimes original work drawing on Foucault, Lacan, Sartre, etc. Unfortunately, Butler's style is often difficult and unreadable, like the French philosophers who've influenced her, and her controversial ideas will try the patience of all but the most sympathetic scholars. Too bad. Her numerous critics would have had a field day with this variation of gender-is-culture argument, based on De Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Yet Butler is not as convincing as De Beauvoir, despite 19 pages of footnotes. For specialists only.-- Mark P. Maller, Cicero P.L., Ill.

Library Journal

Since its original publication in 1990, this work has been translated in 9 languages and has become one the key works of contemporary feminist theory. It offers a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world. Material is in sections on subjects of sex/gender/desire; prohibition, psychoanalysis, and the production of the heterosexual matrix; and subversive bodily acts. This edition contains a new preface by the author, situating the work within the past decade of passionate debates on gender and sexuality, and countering some common misconceptions about the book and its aims. The author is professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at UC-Berkeley. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

...as a philosopher of gender Judith Butler is unparalleled.

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