Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of IdentityOne of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent. |
Contents
Prohibition Psychoanalysis and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix | |
Subversive Bodily Acts | |
Notes | |
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Common terms and phrases
analysis appears argues attributes Beauvoir becomes binary bisexuality category of sex category of women cathexis causal claims clearly coherence compulsory heterosexuality configurations constitute context critical critique cultural intelligibility desire differentiation discourse displacement dispositions distinction domination economy effect Essays establish female homosexuality feminine feminism feminist theory Foucault Freud gender identity Gender Trouble genealogy h/er hegemonic hence Herculine Herculine Barbin Herculine's homosexuality ideal identification incest taboo instituted internal Irigaray juridical Kristeva Lacan lesbian Lévi-Strauss libidinal linguistic male masculine masquerade maternal body meaning melancholia Michel Foucault Monique Wittig multiplicity natural normative notion object ontological oppression original paternal law performative phallogocentrism Phallus phantasmatic pleasures poetic language political position possibilities practices precisely prediscursive presupposes primary prior produce prohibition psychoanalytic question radical refusal reification relation repression s/he semiotic sense sex/gender distinction sexual difference signifying social Straight Mind strategy structure subversive suggests Symbolic understand understood unity University Press univocal woman