Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"

by Judith Butler

In Bodies That Matter, renowned theorist and philosopher Judith Butler argues that theories of gender need to return to the most "material" dimension of sex and sexuality: the body. Butler offers a brilliant reworking of the body, 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.

Genres: Feminism, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Gender, Queer, Gender Studies

258 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Judith Butler is an American philosopher, feminist, and queer theorist whose work has profoundly shaped gender studies, political philosophy, ethics, psychoanalysis, and literary theory. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Hungarian-Jewish and Russian-Jewish family, Butler was raised in a Jewish cultural and ethical environment that fostered an early engagement with philosophy, ethics, and questions of identity, attending Hebrew school and specialized ethics classes as a teenager. They studied philosophy at Bennington College before transferring to Yale University, where they earned a BA in 1978 and a PhD in 1984, focusing on German idealism, phenomenology, and French theory, including Hegel, Sartre, and Kojève. Butler taught at Wesleyan University, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins University before joining the University of California, Berkeley in 1993, where they co-founded the Program in Critical Theory, served as Maxine Elliot Professor, directed the International Consortium of Critical Theory, and also hold the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School. Butler is best known for Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, works in which they introduced the theory of gender performativity, arguing that gender is constituted through repeated social acts rather than a fixed identity, a concept that became foundational in feminist and queer theory. They have also published Excitable Speech, examining hate speech and censorship, Precarious Life, analyzing vulnerability and political violence, Undoing Gender, on the social construction of sexual norms, Giving an Account of Oneself, exploring ethical responsibility and the limits of self-knowledge, and Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, addressing public protest and collective action, while their 2020 book, The Force of Nonviolence, emphasizes ethical engagement in social and political struggles. Butler has engaged in global activism, supporting LGBTQIA rights, opposing anti-gender ideology, advocating for Palestinian rights, critiquing aspects of contemporary Israeli policy, and participating in movements such as Occupy Wall Street, while navigating controversies including critiques of their comments on Hamas and Hezbollah, debates over TERF ideology, and disputes over the Adorno Prize, illustrating the intersections of their scholarship and public interventions. Their work extends into ethical theory, exploring vulnerability, interdependence, mourning, and the recognition of marginalized lives, as well as the performative dimensions of identity and the social construction of sex and gender. They have influenced contemporary feminist, queer, and critical theory, cultural studies, and continental philosophy, shaping debates on gender, sexuality, power, and social justice, while also participating in public discourse and advocacy around education, political violence, and anti-discrimination. Butler is legally non-binary in California, uses they/them pronouns, identifies as a lesbian, and lives in Berkeley with their partner Wendy Brown and their son.

Reviews

[Amber · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel like it's socially irresponsible to conduct a conversation about such an important topic using language that makes that conversation inaccessible to so much of the population. We get it. You're a smarty pants. But you fail to move the pegs when you're only talking to other academics.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst I can't speak highly enough of the fantastic ideas in this book, it does share a problem with many post-modern critical writings. It insists on hiding simple yet powerful ideas behind overly esoteric language, potentially rendering them inaccessible to people who could make great use of them. A book intended to have consequences for society as a whole shouldn't be written in language that is only understandable to those privileged few who posses degrees in related subjects. Given the subject matter, it is clearly impossible that jargon be avoided altogether. Still, there were many moments where things could have be said simply but were not.

If it were possible to give separate reviews for content and form, I would give five stars for content and one for form and recommend that people read it, but be prepared for an uphill struggle. Since this is not possible however, I will give it three stars and recommend that people read it, but be prepared for an uphill struggle.

[Avital · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Bodies that Matter Judith Butler replies to the criticism of her earlier book Gender Trouble. She argues with the feminist thinkers who see the body as matter--a material body with a sexual specification. According to her the body does not exist beyond a cultural construction. It serves as a site for the feminist theory independently of such a pre-discursive definition. In her introduction she explains:
For surely bodies live and die; eat and sleep; feel pain, pleasure; endure illness and violence; and these “facts,” one might skeptically proclaim, cannot be dismissed as mere construction. […] But their irrefutability in no way implies what it might mean to affirm them and through what discursive means. Moreover, why is it that what is constructed is understood as an artificial and dispensable character? (xi).

The construction of bodies is a constitutive constraint, and bodies are understood through it. She states again that both body and gender are parts of discourse. The only way to reach the matter beyond discourse is through discourse itself. After all, it is the discourse that defines the body as a matter existing beyond it.
Inspired by Foucault, she contends that discourse is based on power relations and manipulated by those who control the sources of knowledge. The definition of what is natural is manipulated as well. Henceforth, the materiality of the body is discursive. The material body, its boundaries and its sexuality, materialize through the repetition of policing norms. The norms attribute meaning to it. Even the body limits are the product of social codes according to which certain practices are allowed and others are not.
Butler goes back to the concept of performativity and confirms that repeatedly performed acts normalize an attributed gender, as well as marks of race, class and sexuality. Discourse defines certain bodies as natural, thus marginalizing others. This alludes to the fact that the accepted body does not owe it to its biological characteristics but to cultural signs.
Based on Luce Iragaray’s Lacanian analysis, Butler also investigates the political coherence for which certain bodies are not legitimized. Through her own and Iragaray’s analysis of Platos’ work Timaeus, she reaches the conclusion that the marginalized bodies are related to homosexuality. She concludes that deconstruction cannot be based on already constituted references. Only a truly open debate can bring change.

[Rachel Lu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finished this a couple weeks ago but wanted to write a review so I didn't update anything. Yet, here I am, reviewless (needed to take better notes while reading this). Since I'm going to skim through this again anyway, I'm just going to post this for now. My current thoughts:

1. Butler has some really interesting concepts and phrases (gender is a performance/gender performativity/the performativity of gender) that has been adopted into the mainstream dialogue and misinterpreted. When Butler says gender is performative, she doesn't mean that an individual necessarily has the agency to act and perform gender. But she is also not deterministic. More on this later.

2. HOWEVER, her language (the language she uses to explain her concepts and thinking) is abysmal. Butler herself acknowledges this while conceding the difficulty of her predecessor's writings as well (Lacan, Freud, etc). Her spiel is that her concepts are pushing against the other hegemonic, discursive materialities that structure the matrix of relations among people, so she needs to write AGAINST the grain. I get it. But then, a couple days ago, I read an essay of hers from 1988 on performative acts and gender constitution, which related similar concepts in a much more direct, clear manner, and it didn't change or simplify those concepts in any way. So I don't see a point in her later convoluted syntax and diction. Someone in the reviews section said that he/she thinks it's irresponsible that Butler makes it so inaccessible to read about such important concepts. I would have to agree.

3. On the topic of language, (the materiality of) language is not the same as (strictly) materiality (as if one can say strictly materiality and separate the two, but still) but they're also not opposed. They're intertwined. Though there is no materiality outside of language, the body is not JUST language as "every effort to refer to materiality takes place through a signifying process which, in its phenomenality, is always already material” (37-8).

4. Butler's textual analysis of Paris is Burning, Willa Cather's short stories and Nella Larsen's Passing is much more accessible and interesting (if at some points also very questionable). There are still moments of psychoanalysis, which she both uses and dismantles to discuss matter, gender and compulsive heteronormativity, but it's more tangible.

Okay, that's it for now. More soon.

[rita · Rating 5 out of 5]

chegando ao fim deste partir de pedra que a Judith Butler encetou até chegar aos corpos que se materializam e contam [“matter”] vem me à cabeça o Vergílio (não fosse ele um império romano desde que comprei o “Pensar” num domingo de manhã, a caminho do Nimas, quando parei numa banca de livros, daquelas onde encontramos sempre as edições mais insólitas e esgotadas aos melhores preços): “só será definível talvez o que é exterior a nós - não o que interiorizamos e faz parte do que somos e se integra no nosso estar sendo”.

os estudos de género, creio, sempre dançaram muito em torno de tentar definir algo que não é definível, nem tem de ser, ou tão pouco deve ser. mas é compreensível que assim o seja, pois não passa do mesmo automatismo reflexivo e combativo com que reagimos a um ataque.

assistimos à ascensão da extrema-direita e, no campo político, o fenómeno replica-se: eles, esses que andam aí e andaram aí a espreitar debaixo das pedras desde que se fez abril, trazem para cima da mesa a questão da imigração como o grande problema da sociedade atual, colocando-a fora de proporção, e a reação é rebater. rebater porque não faz sentido, porque é sensionalista, porque não se baseia em factos, mas sim em percepções e preconceitos.

porém, todavia, contudo, de repente estamos todos sentados numa mesa a discutir aos berros a imigração (como se fosse mais uma ceia anual natalícia com familiares xenófobos, homofóbicos, racistas e machistas), enquanto a educação, a habitação, a saúde, a violência doméstica, e tantos outros problemas prementes se encontram na mesa das crianças, relegados e renegados para um terceiro, quarto ou nono plano; como se estivessem com pulseira amarela a morrer numa sala de espera de um SNS constantemente alvo de desinvestimento enquanto se discute a privatização da saúde como a cura para todos os males (já agora, privatize-se o ar que respiramos também!).

o mesmo aconteceu no domínio dos estudos de género. a sociedade colocou-nos em caixinhas heteronormativas que dependem, por definição e de raiz, das exclusões que criam e, de repente, estamos a discutir as exclusões. estamos a tentar encontrar mais caixinhas que sejam inclusivas e a querer re-definir e re-significar uma essência que não cabe em gavetas, por mais armários que se arranjem, porque haverá sempre algo a viver na margem do que não é, nem tem de ser, nem isto, nem aquilo.

a lufada de ar fresco que a Judith Butler traz neste livro, mais do que em “Problemas de Género”, é não seguir a mesma metodologia. é regressar à origem. é expor logicamente a falta de lógica dos caminhos que foram tomados e ainda se querem
tomar. se em “Problemas de Género” estamos, à luz de uma vela, a começar a questionar a ideia de género e a refletir na superfície da performatividade, a continuação do “Corpos que Contam” transporta-nos para um armazém cheio de luzes LED que iluminam qualquer sombra.

aprofunda-se a reflexão sobre o estatuto material do corpo e sobre como os corpos são produzidos e reconhecidos socialmente através de práticas reiteradas que, através do discurso, produzem o que dizem estar produzido num plano pré-existente. advogar uma indefinibilidade não é negar a materialidade e importância dos corpos, é tão só reconhecer que essa materialidade não é nem natural, nem pré-discursiva: é moldada e delimitada por normas sociais, políticas e culturais.

se em “Problemas de Género” temos algumas pistas para começar a refletir na performatividade não só do género, mas do próprio sexo em si, aqui abrem-se os estores e as portas para expor que o corpo não é apenas um dado biológico: é construído através da linguagem, do discurso e das práticas sociais que paradoxalmente dizem encenar algo que já está construído.

é com mestria que a Judith Butler mostra como essas normas determinam quais corpos contam [matter], sendo reconhecidos como legítimos, e os corpos que ficam à margem, abjetos, excluídos, não reconhecidos em algo tão básico como a sua humanidade; como os corpos que contam só contam porque há corpos que não contam, porque as definições dependem da patologização das exclusões que necessariamente encerram.

a maneira como a Judith Butler desconstrói estas construções é uma coreografia da interseccionalidade do feminismo com as questões de classe e raça, numa leitura verdadeiramente holística destas prisões sociais que vigiam e punem (Foucault reference ex vi da Judith Butler!!) os corpos que são artificial e socialmente (in)significados.

em linguagem de jurista, o sexo e o género são um costume, uma prática reiterada com convicção de obrigatoriedade, na definição do Oliveira Ascensão; uma repetição de normas e atos regulados que criam a norma ao mesmo tempo que abrem espaço para as exceções que a desafiam.

o discurso aparece, assim, como uma arma de poder que limita os nossos corpos e identidade, mas também como uma arma de poder que, através de livros como este, nos faz ter esperança de que é possível quebrar as correias que nos pesam tanto nos pulsos; ou, pelo menos, perceber que não passam de correias e os nossos corpos e identidades, mesmo quando são marginalizados e excluídos, colocados nos limites das ontologias existentes e dos esquemas de inteligibilidade, afinal, contam [matter]; afinal, se não cabem nos termos que o discurso normativo nomeia não é porque não têm lugar ou não existem ou não deviam existir, mas apenas tão só porque, por definição e essência, não é possível descrever plenamente o que se nomeia e não se podem condensar nos termos identitários que reiteradamente se prescrevem com um propósito castrador. romper, enfim, a compulsão da cadeia da significação e citação que enforma as exclusões constitutivas e contingentes.

enfim, este livro fez a minha química cerebral saltar tanto num trampolim que tenho a certeza que todas as releituras que faça no futuro me vão trazer novas realizações que não percebi da primeira vez porque sou só uma garota sem o backround e o estofo filosófico que este livro exige, CARAMBA!!

~ “O «fracasso» do significante em produzir a unidade que parece nomear não resulta apenas de um vazio existencial, mas da capacidade de o termo incluir as relações sociais que provisoriamente estabiliza mediante um conjunto de exclusões contingentes. Esta incompletude resulta de um conjunto determinado de exclusões sociais que retornam para assombrar as reivindicações identitárias definidas pela negação; é preciso ler e usar estas exclusões na reformulação e na expansão de uma reiteração democratizadora do termo. Que não possa haver inclusividade plena ou final resulta, pois, da complexidade e da historicidade de um campo social que nunca se pode - e que, por razões democráticas, nunca se deveria poder - condensar em nénhuma descrição.

Quando preenchemos o conteúdo de uma identidade com um conjunto de descrições, o resultado é inevitavelmente fraccionário. Estas descrições includentes geram sem querer novos lugares de contestação e uma série de resistências, renúncias e recusas de identificação com os termos. Os termos «mulheres» e «queer», não sendo referenciais, instituem identidades provisórias e, inevitavelmente, um conjunto provisório de exclusões.

O ideal descritivista cria a expectativa da possibilidade de plena e finalmente enumerar características. Em resultado disso, orienta a política identitária a confissão plena do conteúdo de qualquer categoria identitária. Quando o conteúdo se revela ilimitavel, ou é limitado num acto peremptório de exclusão, a política identitária mergulha em disputas faccionadas a propósito da definição de si ou de se exigirem testemunhos cada vez mais personalizados e específicos de transparência própria que nunca satisfazem plenamente o ideal sob o qual operam.

Compreender o termo «mulheres» enquanto lugar permanente de contestação, lugar feminista de combate controverso, é assumir que nao se pode - e, por razões politicamente relevantes, nunca se deveria poder - fechar esta categoria. Que a categoria nunca seja descritiva é condição da sua eficácia política.
Neste sentido, o que se lamenta nesta categoria por ser desunião e facciosismo no ângulo descritivista afirma-se, no ângulo anti-descritivista, como potencial aberto e democratizador.

As inúmeras recusas de «mulheres» em aceitarem as descrições dadas em nome das «mulheres» não demonstram apenas as violências concretas que um conceito parcial impoe, mas a impossibilidade constitutiva de um conceito ou de uma categoria imparciais ou exaustivos. Diz-se que se conseguiu um conceito ou uma descrição imparciais excluindo o campo político que se diz ter esgotado. Esta violência é simultaneamente exercida e rasu-rada numa descrição que se afirma derradeira e inclusiva. Para minorarmos e reformularmos esta violência, temos de aprender um duplo movimento: invocar a categoria, instituindo provisoriamente uma identidade, e ao mesmo tempo abri-la enquanto lugar de contestação política permanente. Que o termo seja contestável não implica não o usarmos, nem a necessidade de o usarmos implica que não devamos sempre interrogar as exclusões que dele advêm, justamente para aprendermos a viver a contingência do significante político numa cultura de contestação democrática” <333

[M. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This woman frustrates me greatly, for she thinks you can't pin her down, but she's so repetitive and obvious that even though this promises to provide the much needed clarifications to Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, it just reaffirms everything I knew that was wrong with that book. In her vision, not only gender is a construct, but sex too.

Of course she does not entirely reject the body, but says that there is nothing there which is not mediated by culture as if culture was bad on the whole. Of course, this is where the "BuT wHaT aBouT hErmApHrOdIteS?" argument comes from, failing to consider that even then, intersex people are a) extremely rare, and b)overwhelmingly genetically male. Sex is also determined by chromosomes rather than by a "phallogocentric Lacan dervided" construct. None of this takes away the reality of sex as such.

Annoyingly enough, she has no better idea than to go on about psychology for a lot of time in the book, never considering that she's making up *constructs* to defy the constructs she dislikes.



Science, folks.

[Μαρία Γεωργιάδου]

λίγο πιο απλά να τα 'γραφες ρε Τζούντιθ...

[Erdem Tasdelen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This certainly cleared up a few ideas that seemed vague in Gender Trouble. Butler asserts here that the performativity of gender does not imply an agency that allows one to put it on and take it off as one pleases, which is in dialogue with Spivak's elaboration of deconstruction where she dismisses the idea of free play. Performativity in this sense is a repetitive reiteration that imagines and images a coherent identity at the cost of its own complexity. It is not a matter of antagonizing the one who performs or the performance itself, but to make the distinction, which then results in the shattering of the heterosexual matrix.

What still needs further elaboration within this discussion is the materiality of sex. I understand and concur with Butler's dismissal of the idea that sex is in a sense a tabula rasa free of identity onto which gender is projected. Sex, then, also enters our perception through discourse, and is made sense of discursively. But where does one draw the line? Which part of the materiality of the body is to be understood as that which is essential to sexuality? To say that our understanding of sex is shaped by discourse is one thing, but that requires a clarification of the extent to which genitality dictates sexuality. On the other hand I really admire Butler's suggestion that a project worth pursuing is of alternative imaginary schemas for constituting sites of erotogenic pleasure. I was first introduced to this idea through Elizabeth Grosz's reading of desire in Spinoza, which led to a call for the proliferation of zones of pleasure, one that would not privilege genitality. I would certainly like to think and read more on this.

I have to admit that I'm still not sure about Butler's insistance on psychoanalysis as a tool of empowerment that can be appropriated. It seems to me thus far that Lacan's phallogocentric discourse (along with Zizek's reading of Lacan and criticism of poststructuralism, feminism and particularly Foucault) is bluntly sexist, heterosexist and essentialist. I certainly like reading Butler's take on it, and there is some due credit to this idea of reversal (which can also be traced back to the appropriation of the word 'queer' itself by queer activists), but I'm not entirely convinced that this is the best way to deal with contemporary issues. I'd like to think that psychoanalysis has lost its widespread influence on how we make sense of the world.

And just how beautiful is this: "The power of the terms 'women' or 'democracy' is not derived from their ability to describe adequately or comprehensively a political reality that already exists; on the contrary, the political signifier becomes efficacious by instituting and sustaining a set of connections as a political reality. In this sense, the political signifier in Zizek's view operates as a performative rather than a representational term. Paradoxically, the political efficacy of the signifier does not consist in its representational capacity; the term neither represents nor expresses some already existing subjects or their interests. The signifier's efficacy is confirmed by its capacity to structure and constitute the political field, to create new subject-positions and new interests."

[Ty · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's worth reading but I consider Butler much stronger on immigration and citizenship concerns than on those of sexuality. I recognize her lexicon makes a fair bit of her writing generally inaccessible but having taken on her works half a dozen times, I don't notice that anymore.

From using the sole, individual, case of David Reimer to make sweeping statements on gender (which she conflates into sex at the most disturbing of times), imposing a change in pronouns onto someone else's repeatedly expressed preference to then declaring it supports transsexuals when in fact it is routinely used in anti-medical transition rhetoric, I struggle to voice my opposition to her work amidst the flood of praise she garners from most people in my circles.

[Daniela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Butler not only looks like a mad German philosopher but writes like one.

[Svitani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leer a Butler no es fácil, pero, ¿de dónde viene la crítica? ¿Cómo es posible que se tache a Butler de que su discurso no es accesible al público cuando -evidentemente- ella es filósofa? Creo que en nosotros cae la responsabilidad de leer el qué, cuándo y cómo. Poco a poco, que la crítica no caiga donde no tiene que caer y no queramos tampoco empezar la casa por el tejado. Este libro sí me parece accesible siempre y cuando se lea desde la modestia y con una intención de complementarla. No todos podemos ser divulgadores, y eso está perfecto también.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, it feels pretentious to give Butler 5-stars, or to consider this one of the best books I read this year, but I think she's just fantastic. People bitch and moan about her 'moonspeak' but frankly, I think it's rare to find a theorist or a philosopher more inclined to help the reader understand--there's a highly methodical, repetitive quality to the way she states her ideas. It's clear to me that she *wants* her reader to follow along, it's just that the ideas at hand are frequently so dense that it's near-impossible to 'master' them in the way she seems to. I know I've got many many readings of this text ahead of me, because even having read this a couple of months ago (and reread a couple of the chapters over the course of the semester for papers and such), I'm already losing my grasp in the quicksand of a lot of it. The introduction and the title chapter are perhaps the most dense and the most challenging to just read through, but both are well worth it. Some of the "Lesbian Phallus" chapter was over my head because of my limited experience with Freud, Lacan, and Irigaray--but it also had some really unexpected, hilarious lowbrow dick humor from Butler (she says at the beginning of the chapter something along the lines of "perhaps the promise of a phallus is always somewhat disappointing"). Her readings of Nella Larsen's 'Passing' and the documentary-film 'Paris is Burning' are both simply awe-inspiring; for each, she breaks them down into their most basic components and offers compelling interpretations of each in the context of her own argument--and against others' arguments (this is particularly fun to watch in the chapter on 'Paris is Burning').

In short, this was not my first experience with Butler, but it was my most in-depth--and it was so rewarding. I genuinely found this to be one of the most provocative, engaging, and all-around-best books I worked through this year. Looking forward to more experiences with good ol' Judy B.

[Sabrarf · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is clearly a better version of her other book "gender trouble". It explains in much more detail the queering performativity which allows individuals to define themselves beyond just sexuality!

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 20% I understood of this was BRILLIANT.

[Marta D'Agord · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nesse livro, publicado originalmente em 1993, a autora analisa o ponto de vista heterocêntrico na relação entre sexo e gênero e desses dois com o racismo. A autora escreve esse livro em continuidade a outro, Problemas de Gênero, buscando desenvolver mais amplamente a noção de performatividade que teria produzido mal-entendidos em alguns leitores. Na tradução do inglês para o português, perdemos a duplicidade do matter, que diz do material, da materialidade, e também do que importa. Trata-se de um livro denso pois são muitas as referências filosóficas.
Vou enfocar o que considero os pontos fortes do livro. O ponto de partida a ser sempre lembrado é a distinção de Gayle Rubin entre os domínios da sexualidade e gênero. Dos oito capítulos, destaco algumas partes: a análise histórica do uso do termo queer na língua inglesa e que me fez associar à breve análise freudiana do termo Unheimlich na língua alemã, encontrando na língua portuguesa duas traduções: estranho e infamiliar. Em dois capítulos, há uma análise literária da invisibilidade do homoerotismo e do racismo. Do romance My Ántonia, de Willa Cather, publicado em 1918, o gênero é trabalhado na questão do uso de personagens masculinos como uma forma de crossdressing. No outro capítulo, as questões imaginárias de homens e mulheres brancos em torno da sexualidade das mulheres negras são analisadas no romance Passing de Nella Larsen, publicado em 1929. O título envolve o “passar por” branco, no caso da personagem preta que convivia com brancos que, ao negarem o racismo, negavam que ela fosse preta.
Outro capítulo analisa outras questões que vão além da performatividade de gênero na cena de bailes LGTB novaiorquinos da década de 1980 (a partir do documentário Paris is Burning de 1990). Ao final, Butler propõe focalizar as restrições como limites do que se pode e do que não se pode construir. Esses limites são relativos às formas hegemônicas de discurso. Se o uso do vocábulo queer fez com que seu sentido mudasse, foi porque um movimento político contra-hegemônico adotou esse vocábulo. Esse é um exemplo histórico de emergência de outras falas, outros discursos sobre o sexo e a sexualidade.

[lou]

ok i didn't technically "finish" this book but i read all the parts of it that i needed to!

[J9sch · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the top three books, I've ever read!
Intellectually stimulating and well written work

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second Judith Butler book I've read (the other being Gender Trouble), and I found it as interesting and enlightening as the first. As a cis male, I would originally be thought of as an outsider. However, once you enter into the text you realise that this has repercussions for every individual regardless of sex, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or any other form of identity you can think of. Discussing gender may focus on those who are oppressed (as in feminism or gay and lesbian studies) or marginalised/excluded (as in queer theory) but it nonetheless allows one to reflect back upon one's own situation.

It's true that Butler isn't the easiest read you could hope for. She's the winner of the Bad Writer of the Year award, which says a lot. Rather than defending the quality of her writing, I'd prefer to defend the content. I don't think there's a great philosophical reason to defend her style, so I won't. Some sentences amble on forever and I did actually need to go back and break them down in a way I haven't done since I was in primary school. However, I disagree thoroughly with critics like Nussbaum who argue that there is no substance behind the lengthy sentences and it's just another Derridean attempt to be obfuscatory. Let's face it: that's the general criticism of anyone who falls under the unhelpfully broad monikers of "postmodern" or "continental" philosophy, even those that I've always found clear like Foucault or Laclau.

Stylistic problems aside (something we have to accept in Butler's work), there is still plenty to get you thinking especially the chapters on "Paris is Burning", her re-reading of Zizek and Laclau (and, dare I say, improvement upon them), as well as the closing chapter on being "Critically Queer".

A superb read, especially for an impulse buy.

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

i've been carrying this around for years now, reading bits of it. i don't think i'll ever read it in its entirety; not dedicated enough to wrestle with butler's style when i don't need to i suppose. nevertheless, the ideas in here are important and matter still 25 years later.

[Kaitlyn Myers · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a manner which echoes that of Faulkner and his long-winded contemporaries, Judith needs to practice getting to the point. She writes of important topics, yet the message is often hidden in a mish-mash of unnecessarily complex metaphors and/ or demonstrative stories.

[Ayleen Julio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tan interesante como complicado de leer. Relectura necesaria e imperativa.

[Ceres · Rating 5 out of 5]

una persona chulísima hablando del devenir semiótico-material del cuerpo. nada puede salir mal.

[Tia]

Most difficult book on my fields list, probably? The writing is actually quite elegant, despite what Butler’s detractors like to say, but I just do not have the facility with Lacan or post-Freudian psychoanalysis to work through a lot of this. It certainly helps to know about debates around performativity/speech act theory, queer theory, and the publication of Gender Trouble before you go in. There are a lot of fascinating reaches here that I will have to revisit at some point when I am smarter.

Also I am quite ruffled by the reviews on here that complain about it being “too academic”… it’s an academic book written by a philosopher, sweetie! Nowhere does it claim to be something else—it is a response to debates in a particular field.

[anto · Rating 4 out of 5]

ok i get it, butler is hard to read. they are, but so are most academic texts. and while i wholeheartedly agree that academia should be wayy more accessible, butler still is a linguistics and philosophy professor, so of course their writing is on another level of pretentiousness. and that’s fine. if you want digestible judith butler just watch one of their interviews on youtube. butler is still alive and gives talks and shit.

[Elisa]

un 0 en ser claro y conciso se lleva este libro

[Alex Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here Judith Butler expands on the agental role that "queering" performativity allows for the creation of individuals beyond sexuality. While most of the book is geared towards shoring up (and critiquing) psychoanalytic roles of sexual determination of identity and subjectivity, Butler also includes a few complex examples of how marked positions within the sexual dichotomy as it relates to phallics and sexual identity is problematized.

Although at times with terse sentences that sometimes say too much in one bite, I feel that Butler successfully sees both sides of the issue and navigates through this minefield with a fresh outlook on how sexuality plays a role in determining how we consider ourselves and how we consider others. Using the various figures of transgender and drag and so on, Butler ultimately demonstrates that the agency relationship of performativity still requires that dichotomous hetereosexual cut. Although the performative natures of drag and trans, "queering" normative roles is always a subversive possibility, the reliance of the dichotomous hetereosexual norms as a queering always has the possibility of retroactively reinforcing rather than subverting. Put on the street, a gay pride rally may make non-normative hetereosexuals express themselves with aplomb but it will also allow conservative types to dig further into their entrenchment simply because the dichotomy is always invoked as a way of identifying who we are and where we are located.

This transcendental cut is a difficulty with queering, one that Butler does not seem able to resolve. In a way, this has to do with the fact that despite performativity's power in one's ability to redefine one's self, this is always in relation to how others can define one's self through their acts. Thus her chapter on "lesbian phallus" and the straight woman as a melancholy lesbian or the straight man as a melancholy straight man is a way to note that all positions are "queering" when we begin to eradicate the normative judgements socially and understand the relations on the sexual "phallic" transcendental as mere positional exchange. We may want to inhabit certain positions above others, and in that sense all identity is performative and "queering" when understood through alternate filters.

In a way, Butler stops in an appropriate spot. She doesn't go too deep into critiquing transcendental reason (as obviously this would take us afar off field) but she doesn't shy away from mentioning either, when appropriate. I feel that her ending could be tighter, as she takes a very long time to conclude where she wants to end, but she does the best that she can in outlining the fact that identity is created through sexual performativity as blind truth procedure rather than as an ontological given. She engages feminist theorists to this end in a way that is appropriate, although I feel she spends a little too much time with psychoanalysis, simply because she needs a bulwark that is hetereo-normative in order to sexualize the field in order to make her point.

The twist from ontology to procedure is really the takeaway key here, to how Butler redeploys social identity for all of us. Taken in that approach, in theory, we could have avoided sexuality all together in performativity, but the charged nature of sexuality as a key to identity allows Butler to tackle the subject all the more strongly. Bravo.

[Lucia Eslava · Rating 4 out of 5]

Com a fan dels llibres teorics, aquest m’ha agradat per que m’exprimeix el cervell. Com parla de la dicotomia de l’absencia i al presencia crec que dona peu a pensar-hi més enllà

[Dasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Of course, this book is full of important information. Butler's separation of the body and gender as sites of performativity that is socially constructed under sites of power and discourse is greatly interesting. The argument that the body isn't just matter but rather something that *becomes* via social constructions and negotiations is interesting and important in understanding the field of gender and sexuality.

The issue is that to access this information requires reading Butler's dense, convoluted writing style. It is such a slog to read it is barely worth it and is a prime example of what happens when academics are encouraged to write only for other academics - information is gatekept away from the non-academic population and reinforces the "us versus them" mentality inherent in much of academia's privatizing work.

[Anton]

I gave up trying to read this because it’s not in any way enjoyable to read and I have better things to do rather than trying to decipher this text. I might give this another shot at some point if I can find the book in my native language or have the energy to really focus on the text.

[Sam Bolton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read for my diss.

They did it again...