2. Judith Butler (1956-present)
• American philosopher
• Feminism, queer theory, political theory, literary studies, and
queer politics
• Major works:
• Gender Trouble: Feminism & the Subversion of Identity (1990)
• Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993)
• Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997)
• Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004)
• Giving an Account of Oneself (2005)
• Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (2009)
• Parting Ways: Jewishness & the Critique of Zionism (2012)
• Foucault’s The History of Sexuality
3. SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS:
GROUP 1:
When Butler states “it is no longer clear that feminist theory ought to try to settle the
questions of primary identity in order to get on with the task of politics”, what is she
arguing? What has been the problem of the “primary identity” of “woman” that Butler see
as a central failure of (Western) feminist debates and feminist thinkers like De Beauvoir?
GROUP 2:
Butler states that to claim gender is performative means that the gendered body “has no
ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality”. What is Butler
arguing here when she claims that gender is performative? How is gendered identity
constantly produced and reproduced through “citational repetitions” according to Butler?
GROUP 3:
Butler is critical of thinkers who (explicitly or implicitly) assume a natural and a priori
(sexed) body upon which cultural meanings are placed. Why is she critical of this
perspective? How does Butler’s critique of a pre-existing and pre-cultural “body” apply to
ideas about biological sex?
4. • Destabilizing the category of “woman”
• Gender as performative
• Performance v. Performativity
• Citational repetitions
• Deconstructing “sex” and “bodies”
• What is “the female body”?
• Nature/Culture
• Radical questioning of essentialism
• Why is “how/what you sexually desire” a central part
of who you are in our society?
• What does a non-essentialist queer politics look
like?
7. • Destabilizing the category of “woman”
• Gender as performative
• Performance v. Performativity
• Citational repetitions
• Deconstructing “sex” and “bodies”
• What is “the female body”?
• Nature/Culture
• Radical questioning of essentialism
• Why is “how/what you sexually desire” a central part
of who you are in our society?
• What does a non-essentialist queer politics look
like?
