The Judith Butler Reader

by Judith Butler, Sara Salih

Judith Butler’s work has challenged and changed the frames of reference within which people speak, think, and live categories of identity. Her innovative and politically far-reaching insight that gender is performative and that identity is a scene of construction continues to exert a crucial impact in numerous critical-theoretical fields, including politics, philosophy, feminist and queer theory, literary and cultural studies. Behind Butler’s radical theorizations of gender, sex, sexuality, power, and “race” lies the urgent normative inquiry into the differential way the human is produced and effaced within the field of contemporary power.

The Judith Butler Reader is a collaborative effort by Sara Salih and Judith Butler to bring together writings that span Butler’s impressive career as a critical philosopher, including selections from both well-known and lesser-known works. Salih’s introduction emphasizes the political and ethical importance of Butler’s ideas, and she supplies editorial material that will assist students in their readings of theories that stand at the forefront of contemporary theoretical and political debates.

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

382 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

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

[Aly Chace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found it to be a very good collection of many of Butler's preeminent works. I also found the background and introduction this collected reader provides to be crucial to navigating through Butler's work - especially if you haven't read the literature she draws from so heavily (Wittig, Foucault, Hegel, and others).

[Elizabeth]

As seen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/helenlewis/status...

[Litro · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of central passages from Butler's eminent works on gender and sexuality. Difficulty to read and digest, unless one has some familiarity with Hegel and and a grasp of Foucault. A must read for those studying gender and sexuality from any perspective or paradigm.

[Janice]

Have this copy.

[Laurel Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good old Judy Butler, this edited collection of her central eminent works on gender and sexuality can be difficult to read and digest, unless you already have some familiarity with Hegel and and a grasp of Foucault. That aside, this really is a must read for anyone studying gender and sexuality from any perspective. I feel like I could read this ten times more and find more, and I already feel like I have taken in a lot.

[a.m. kozak · Rating 2 out of 5]

The stuff on gender is by far the best, but her writing style is belaboured, and the literary-based essays I find too superficial. I find myself asking 'so what?' Interesting ideas about bodies, though.

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, I really like Judith Butler! I do not, however, like writing about her.