Judith Butler, Gender Trouble

The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198717133.013.59 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Clare Chambers

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Feminist Theory ◽

Queer Theory ◽

Identity Politics ◽

Identity Theory ◽

Judith Butler ◽

Stable Category ◽

Gender Trouble

This chapter discusses Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (GT) and its legacy in political theory. It sets out five themes of GT: the claim that identity is always the result of power; the interplay between sex, gender, and desire; the critique of “identity politics,” including any feminism that posits a stable category of “women”; the concept of performativity; and the possibility of change via subversive performance. The chapter then goes on to discuss the major impact that GT has had on feminist theory, queer theory, trans theory, and intersectionality, along with the surprising lack of impact on theories of multiculturalism and identity theory more broadly. Finally the chapter discusses some main criticisms of the book.

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‘An Incalculable Effect’ : Subversions of Heteronormativity

Political Studies ◽

10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00654.x ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 55 (3) ◽

pp. 656-679 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

Samuel A. Chambers

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Queer Theory ◽

General Problem ◽

Judith Butler ◽

Implicit Theory ◽

Robust Response ◽

Feminist And Queer Theory

The writings of Judith Butler are now canonised in the fields of feminist and queer theory, yet her contribution to politics and her role in the field of political theory remain uncertain. I argue, perhaps uncontroversially, that Butler's is a politics of subversion; I also contend, perhaps more contentiously, that Butler's understanding of subversion only takes clear shape in light of her implicit theory of heteronormativity. Butler's work calls for the subversion of heteronormativity; in so doing her writings both illuminate the general problem of normativity for politics and offer a robust response to that problem. Butler resists the tendency to treat norms as merely agreed-upon standards, and she rebuts those easy dismissals of theorists who would take seriously the power of norms thought in terms of normativity and normalisation. Butler's contribution to political theory emerges in the form of her painstaking unfolding of subversion. This unfolding produces an account of the politics of norms that is needed desperately by both political theory and politics. Thus, I conclude that political theory cannot afford to ignore either the theory of heteronormativity or the politics of its subversion.

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Performativity and Performance

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.013.30 ◽

2015 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Moya Lloyd

Keyword(s):

Feminist Theory ◽

Performance Studies ◽

Jacques Derrida ◽

Hate Speech ◽

Judith Butler ◽

Gender Performativity ◽

Catharine Mackinnon ◽

And Performance ◽

Gender Trouble

This chapter explores the concepts of performativity and performance in feminist theory. It begins by examining the idea of gender performativity in the work of Judith Butler, tracing its development from her earliest writings through Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, and showing how Butler’s initial argument draws from phenomenology and from performance studies (where acts are understood in theatrical terms). This is followed by a discussion of gender understood ethnomethodologically as a type of routine performance or form of “doing.” The second half of the chapter focuses on linguistic theories of performativity, derived from J. L. Austin and Jacques Derrida, and how they have been used by feminists, such as Catharine MacKinnon, Rae Langton, and Judith Butler, to illustrate pornography and hate speech. After a discussion of the performativity of pornography, the focus turns to citationality, resignification, and “talking back.”

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Gender Precarity: Gender Identity and the Economy of Authenticity

Orbit Writing Around Pynchon ◽

10.20919/exs.9.2019.241 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 61-75

Author(s):

Benjamin Carpenter

Keyword(s):

Gender Identity ◽

Feminist Theory ◽

Identity Politics ◽

Sex And Gender ◽

Trans People ◽

The Common ◽

Gender Based ◽

And Gender ◽

Gender Trouble

In this paper I examine the role of authenticity within contemporary debates about gender identity with an eye to exploring the structure of sex and gender-based oppressions - with particular consideration with the marginalisation of trans subjects. I begin with a return to Butler's Gender Trouble to critically examine her ontology of gender and the suggestion that gender cannot be a matter of authenticity. Though this disagrees with the common schematic of trans identity mobilised within contemporary identity politics, this paper seeks to use this critique to provide a deeper explanation of trans oppression within the context of Butler's heterosexual matrix. The aim of this move is to situate trans struggles as central within philosophical feminist theory - whilst breaking from several of the shortcomings of contemporary identity ontology. These considerations will then be explored alongside Butler's work in Precarious Life, wherein the oppression of trans people will be explored in how these subjects bear a greater burden of authenticity - wherein trans genders are automatically regarded as authentic whereas cis genders remain unquestioned. This contextualises the rhetorical and ontological move adopted by many trans activists whereby they present gender as a matter of absolute and inviolable fact - which is incompatible with Butler's ontology of gender. Using bother of Butler's texts, we can regard this move as the pursuit of an impossible security, a move that serves to obscure the inauthenticity of gender overall. Instead, we are encouraged to embrace in inauthenticity of gender and to refuse to allow ourselves to sink into an economy of authenticity that marginalises trans subjects.

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Constitutive Exclusion

10.1093/oso/9780190625986.003.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Sina Kramer

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Feminist Theory ◽

Queer Theory ◽

Theoretical Frameworks ◽

Politics Of Recognition ◽

Political Actors ◽

Political Borders ◽

Political Agents ◽

Constitutive Exclusion ◽

Do So

This chapter introduces “constitutive exclusion” and makes the case for it as a framework for understanding why some claims are unintelligible as political claims, and some actors unintelligible as political agents. While many theoretical frameworks—political theory, critical theory, feminist theory, queer theory, and Afro-pessimism—rely on constitutive exclusion, none take it up explicitly. I do so around three claims: First, political borders are drawn through the internal exclusion of radical political actors, whose claims are then rendered unintelligible. Second, a politics of recognition is insufficient as a response to these exclusions, as recognition is often consistent with domination and disavowal. Third, the radical potential buried within internal exclusions is accessible by means of a method attentive to the temporality and materiality of these exclusions. The critical work of the book is in service of a future in which we no longer define ourselves through such exclusions within.

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Other People's Struggles

10.1093/oso/9780190945862.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Nicholas Owen

Keyword(s):

Social Psychology ◽

Social Movements ◽

Political Theory ◽

Identity Politics ◽

Global Justice ◽

British History ◽

Original Theory ◽

The Past ◽

Contemporary Politics ◽

Do So

Other People’s Struggles is the first attempt in over forty years to explain the place of “conscience constituents” in social movements. Conscience constituents are people who participate in a movement but do not stand to benefit if it succeeds. Why do such people participate when they do not stand to benefit? Why are they sometimes present and sometimes absent in social movements? Why and when is their participation welcome to those who do stand to benefit, and why and when is it not? The work proposes an original theory to answer these questions, crossing discipline boundaries to draw on the findings of social psychology, philosophy, and normative political theory, in search of explanations of why people act altruistically and what it means to others when they do so. The theory is illustrated by examples from British history, including the antislavery movement, the women’s suffrage and liberation movements, labor and socialist movements, anticolonial movements, antipoverty movements, and movements for global justice. Other People’s Struggles also contributes to new debates concerning the rights and wrongs of “speaking for others.” Debates concerning the limits of solidarity—who can be an “ally” and on what terms—have become very topical in contemporary politics, especially in identity politics and in the new “populist” movements. The book provides a theoretical and empirical account of how these questions have been addressed in the past and how they might be framed today.

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Butler and Postanalytic Philosophy

Hypatia ◽

10.1017/hyp.2021.16 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-26

Author(s):

Paul Giladi

Keyword(s):

Identity Politics ◽

Cognitive Strategies ◽

Judith Butler ◽

Feminist Identity ◽

Wilfrid Sellars ◽

Poststructuralist Feminism ◽

Pragmatic Account ◽

Space Of Reasons ◽

Definition Of

Abstract This article has two aims: (i) to bring Judith Butler and Wilfrid Sellars into conversation; and (ii) to argue that Butler's poststructuralist critique of feminist identity politics has metaphilosophical potential, given her pragmatic parallel with Sellars's critique of conceptual analyses of knowledge. With regard to (i), I argue that Butler's objections to the definitional practice constitutive of certain ways of construing feminism is comparable to Sellars's critique of the analytical project geared toward providing definitions of knowledge. Specifically, I propose that moving away from a definition of woman to what one may call poststructuralist sites of woman parallels moving away from a definition of knowledge to a pragmatic account of knowledge as a recognizable standing in the normative space of reasons. With regard to (ii), I argue that the important parallels between Butler's poststructuralist feminism and Sellars's antirepresentationalist normative pragmatism about knowledge enable one to think of her poststructuralist feminism as mapping out pragmatic cognitive strategies and visions for doing philosophy. This article starts a conversation between two philosophers whom the literature has yet to fully introduce to each other.

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Solidarity after identity politics: Hannah Arendt and the power of feminist theory

Philosophy & Social Criticism ◽

10.1177/019145379902500105 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 97-118 ◽

Cited By ~ 33

Author(s):

Amy Allen

Keyword(s):

Feminist Theory ◽

Identity Politics ◽

Hannah Arendt

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Judith Butler

10.36198/9783838530383 ◽

2009 ◽

Author(s):

Lars Distelhorst

Keyword(s):

Gender Studies ◽

Judith Butler ◽

Gender Trouble

Judith Butler, eine der bekanntesten US-amerikanischen Intellektuellen und Querdenkerin der feministischen Wissenschaft, hat die "Gender Studies" nachhaltig beeinflusst. Ihre frühen Schriften "Gender Trouble" und "Bodies that Matter" waren Initialfunke für die Etablierung deutschsprachiger akademischer Geschlechterstudien. Diese schillernde Persönlichkeit und ihre vielfältigen provokanten Theoriepositionen stellt dieser UTB-Band vor.

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The Inherent Link between Gender and Sexuality: A Queer View to the Portrayal of Women in Herland, Things Fall Apart, Bombay Brides, and The Winner Stands Alone

SALASIKA: Indonesian Journal of Gender, Women, Child, and Social Inclusion's Studies ◽

10.36625/sj.v4i1.74 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 13-22

Author(s):

Suparna Roy

Keyword(s):

Women Characters ◽

Judith Butler ◽

Gender And Sexuality ◽

The Body ◽

Subject Position ◽

Symbolic Order ◽

Helene Cixous ◽

Cultural Perspectives ◽

Things Fall Apart ◽

Gender Trouble

Stevie Jackson and Jackie Jones regarded in her article- Contemporary Feminist Theory that “The concepts of gender and sexuality as a highly ambiguous term, as a point of reference” (Jackson, 131, ch-10). Gender and Sexuality are two most complexly designed, culturally constructed and ambiguously interrelated terms used within the spectrum of Feminism that considers “sex” as an operative term to theorize its deconstructive cultural perspectives. Helene Cixous notes in Laugh of Medusa that men and women enter the symbolic order in a different way and the subject position open to either sex is different. Cixious’s understanding that the centre of the symbolic order is ‘phallus’ and everybody surrounding it stands in the periphery makes women (without intersectionality) as the victim of this phallocentric society. One needs to stop thinking Gender as inherently linked to one’s sex and that it is natural. To say, nothing is natural. The body is just a word (as Judith Butler said in her book Gender Trouble [1990]) that is strategically used under artificial rules for the convenience of ‘power’ to operate. It has been a “norm” to connect one’s sexuality with their Gender and establish that as “naturally built”. The dichotomy of ‘penis/vagina’ over years has linked itself to make/female understanding of bodies. Therefore my main argument in this paper is to draw few instances from some literary works which over time reflected how the gender- female/women characters are made to couple up with a male/man presenting the inherent, coherent compulsory relation between one’s gender and sexuality obliterating any possibility of ‘queer’ relationships, includes- Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915), Bombay Brides (2018) by Esther David, Paulo Coelho’s Winner Stands Alone (2008) and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall apart (1958).

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Cuerpo indeterminado: La precariedad del cuerpo en el discurso feminista

Revista de la Academia ◽

10.25074/0196318.0.47 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 20 ◽

pp. 47

Author(s):

María Isabel Peña Aguado

Keyword(s):

Feminist Theory ◽

Queer Theory ◽

Female Body ◽

The Body ◽

Philosophical Tradition ◽

Font Size ◽

Feminist Discourse ◽

Feminist Movements ◽

Cuerpo Femenino

La teoría feminista heredó de una tradición filosófica hostil la identificación de cuerpo y mujer. Partiendo de esta identificación de mujer y cuerpo es comprensible que un cuestionamiento del concepto ‘mujer’ influya asimismo en el lugar que va a encontrar el cuerpo dentro del movimiento y teoría feministas. Ese lugar será diferente dependiendo de las diversas reivindicaciones que marcan las diferencias entre los distintos feminismos y teorías queer. La pregunta que se plantea es hasta qué punto la precariedad del cuerpo femenino dentro de la misma teoría feminista es consecuencia del cuestionamiento del concepto de mujer o si, por el contrario, no será más bien el rechazo a una realidad corporal concreta lo que ha permitido y ayudado a desarmar los conceptos de ‘mujer’ y ‘mujeres’ hasta el punto de considerarlos como innecesario para el mismo discurso y políticas feministas contemporáneos.Palabras claves: cuerpo, mujeres, feminismo, Teoría Queer Indeterminacy of the body: precariousness of body in the feminist discourseFeminist theory inherited the identification of woman and body from a hostile philosophical tradition. Given this identification, it is understandable that a questioning of the concept ‚woman‘ also influences the place that the body will find in the feminist movements and theories. The question that arises is how far the precariousness of the female body within feminist theory itself is the result of a questioning of the concept of ‘woman’ or whether, on the contrary, it is the rejection of a concrete corporal reality which has enabled and helped to disarm the concepts of ‚woman‘ and ‚women‘ to the point of considering them unnecessary for contemporary feminist discourse and politics. Keywords: body, women, feminism, Queer Theory

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