Judith Butler 1

Judith Butler

Judith Butler

Born February 24, 1956Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.

Era 20th / 21st-century philosophy

Region Western philosophy

School Continental philosophy, Third-wave feminism, Critical theory, Queer theory, Postmodernism, Post-structuralism

Maininterests Feminist theory, Political philosophy, Ethics, Psychoanalysis, Discourse, Embodiment, Sexuality, Jewish philosophy

Notableideas Sex and gender as social construction, gender performativity

Part of a series on

Feminist philosophyMajor works

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) The Subjection of Women (1869) The Second Sex (1949) Gender Trouble (1990)

Notable theorists

Mary Wollstonecraft Simone de Beauvoir Judith Butler

Important concepts

Feminism Gender Equality Performativity

v t e [1]

Judith Butler 2

Judith Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist, whose work has had asignificant influence on the fields of feminist, queer, and literary theory, philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics.Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature and the Co-director ofthe Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has taught since 1993. She isperhaps best known for her works Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies ThatMatter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex," where she challenges the sex/gender distinction and develops her theoryof gender performativity. Indeed, Butler's conception of gender performativity has shaped the scholarship of anentire generation in feminist and queer studies.Her books include Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth Century France (1987, 1999), GenderTrouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990, 2007), Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of"Sex" (1993, 2011), Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997), The Psychic Life of Power: Theories inSubjection (1997), Antigones Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (2000), Undoing Gender (2004), PrecariousLife: Powers of Violence and Mourning (2004), Giving an Account of Oneself (2005), Krieg und Affect (2009),Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (2009). Her most recent monograph is Parting Ways: Jewishness and theCritique of Zionism (2012). All of her books have been translated into numerous languages; Gender Trouble, alone,has been translated into twenty-seven different languages. In addition, she has co-authored and edited over a dozenvolumes the most recent of which is Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (2013), coauthored withAthena Athanasiou. Over the years she has also published many influential essays, interviews, and publicpresentations. Butler is considered by many as "one of the most influential voices in contemporary politicaltheory,"[2] and as the most widely read and influential gender theorist in the world.Butler has received honorary degrees from St. Andrews University (2013); McGill University (2013); UniversitParis VII (2011); University Bordeaux-III (2011), and Grinnell College (2008). She is the recipient of a range ofawards, including the Theodor W. Adorno Award (2012), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's DistinguishedAchievement Award (2008), two American Council of Learned Society Fellowships (2008, 1988), a FordFoundation Fellowship (2008), the Brudner Memorial Prize for Lifetime Achievement for contributions to Lesbianand Gay Studies from Yale University (2004), a Laurence Rockefeller Fellowship (2001), a Guggenheim Fellowship(1999), as well as a Fulbright-Hays Scholarship (1978). She has been a member in the School of Social Sciences atthe Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (198788), and received an Andrew Mellow Postdoctoral fellowship inthe Humanities Center at Wesleyan University (198586). Butler has had visiting appointments at Birkbeck,University of London (2000-), Columbia University (2012, 2013), The New School (2011), the cole NormaleSuprieure (2008), the University of Amsterdam (2002), Princeton University (2001), Stanford University (1998),and York University (1991). Until 2011, she was also the Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at the EuropeanGraduate School, and from 2003 to 2007 she was the Andrew White Professor at Large at Cornell University. Shehas been an invited plenary speaker in diverse venues and delivered public lectures in North and South American,Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.Butler has also been outspoken on many contemporary political issues. She has been active in lesbian and gay rights,and, more recently, she has engaged with the question of Palestine/Israel. She is a vocal critic of Israeli politics andhas repeatedly emphasized that Israel does not represent all Jews.

Early life and educationButler was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a family of Hungarian and Russian Jewish descent. Most of her maternal grandmother's family perished in the Holocaust. As a child and teenager, she attended both Hebrew school and special classes on Jewish ethics, where she received her "first training in philosophy." Butler stated in a 2010 interview with Haaretz that she began the ethics classes at the age of 14 and that they were created as a form of punishment by her Hebrew school's Rabbi because she was "too talkative in class." Butler also stated that she was "thrilled" by the idea of these tutorials, and when asked what she wanted to study in these special sessions, she

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responded with three questions preoccupying her at the time: "Why was Spinoza excommunicated from thesynagogue? Could German Idealism be held accountable for Nazism? And how was one to understand existentialtheology, including the work of Martin Buber?"Butler attended Bennington College and then Yale University where she studied philosophy, receiving her B.A. in1978 and her Ph.D. in 1984. She taught at Wesleyan University, George Washington University, and Johns HopkinsUniversity before joining University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. In addition, she joined the department ofEnglish and Comparative Literature at Columbia University as a visiting professor in the spring semesters of 2012and 2013 and has the option of remaining as full-time faculty.Butler currently lives in Berkeley, California, with her partner, the political scientist Wendy Brown, and their son,Isaac.

Overview of major works

Performative Acts and Gender Constitution (1988)Butler begins to develop the arguments of the performativity of gender in this essay, which is later expanded uponand continues to work through in the book Gender Trouble. Butler uses Freud's notion of how a person's identity ismodeled in terms of the normal. She revises Freud's notion of this concept's applicability to lesbianism, where Freudsays that lesbians are modeling their behavior on men, the perceived normal or ideal. She instead says that all genderworks in this way of performativity and a representing of an internalized notion of gender norms.[3] Butler argues fora performative understanding of gender, as opposed to the idea that gender performance is an expression of somesort of innate or natural gender. Butler argues that the performance of gender, itself creates gender. Additionally, shecompares the performativity of gender to the performance of the theater. She brings many similarities, including theidea of each individual functioning as an actor of their gender. However she also brings into light a critical differencebetween gender performance in reality and theater performances. She explains how the theater is much lessthreatening and does not produce the same fear that gender performances often encounter because of the fact thatthere is a clear distinction from reality within the theater.

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)Gender Trouble was first published in 1990, selling over 100,000 copies internationally and in different languages[citation needed]. Alluding to the similarly named 1974 John Waters film Female Trouble starring the drag queenDivine, Gender Trouble critically discusses the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Sigmund Freud,Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray, Monique Wittig, Jacques Derrida, and, most significantly, Michel Foucault. The bookhas also enjoyed widespread popularity outside of traditional academic circles, even inspiring an intellectual fanzine,Judy![4]

The crux of Butler's argument in Gender Trouble is that the coherence of the categories of sex, gender, andsexualitythe natural-seeming coherence, for example, of masculine gender and heterosexual desire in malebodiesis culturally constructed through the repetition of stylized acts in time. These stylized bodily acts, in theirrepetition, establish the appearance of an essential, ontological "core" gender. [citation needed] This is the sense inwhich Butler famously theorizes gender, along with sex and sexuality, as performative. The performance of gender,sex, and sexuality, however, is not a voluntary choice for Butler, who locates the construction of the gendered,sexed, desiring subject within what she calls, borrowing from Foucault's Discipline and Punish, "regulativediscourses." These, also called "frameworks of intelligibility" or "disciplinary regimes," decide in advance whatpossibilities of sex, gender, and sexuality are socially permitted to appear as coherent or "natural." [citation needed]

Regulative discourse includes within it disciplinary techniques which, by coercing subjects to perform specificstylized actions, maintain the appearance in those subjects of the "core" gender, sex and sexuality the discourse itselfproduces.[5]

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A significant yet sometimes overlooked part of Butler's argument concerns the role of sex in the construction of"natural" or coherent gender and sexuality. Butler explicitly challenges biological accounts of binary sex,reconceiving the sexed body as itself culturally constructed by regulative discourse.[6] The supposed obviousness ofsex as a natural biological fact attests to how deeply its production in discourse is concealed. The sexed body, onceestablished as a natural and unquestioned fact, is the alibi for constructions of gender and sexuality, unavoidablymore cultural in their appearance, which can purport to be the just-as-natural expressions or consequences of a morefundamental sex. On Butler's account, it is on the basis of the construction of natural binary sex that binary genderand heterosexuality are likewise constructed as natural.[7] In this way, Butler claims that without a critique of sex asproduced by discourse, the sex/gender distinction as a feminist strategy for contesting constructions of binaryasymmetric gender and compulsory heterosexuality will be ineffective.[8]

Thus, by showing both terms gender and sex as socially and culturally constructed, Butler offers a critique ofboth terms, even as they have been used by feminists. Butler argued that feminism made a mistake in trying to makewomen a discrete, ahistorical group with common characteristics. Butler said this approach reinforces the binaryview of gender relations because it allows for two distinct categories: men and women. Butler believes that feministsshould not try to define women and she also believes that feminists should focus on providing an account of howpower functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in the society at large but also within thefeminist movement. Finally, Butler aims to break the supposed links between sex and gender so that gender anddesire can be flexible, free floating and not caused by other stable factors. The idea of identity as free and flexibleand gender as a performance, not an essence, is one of the foundations of Queer Theory.

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (1993)Bodies That Matter seeks to clear up readings and supposed misreadings of performativity that view the enactmentof sex/gender as a daily choice.[9] To do this, Butler emphasizes the role of repetition in performativity, making useof Derrida's theory of iterability, a form of citationality, to work out a theory of performativity in terms of iterability:

Performativity cannot be understood outside of a process of iterability, a regularized and constrainedrepetition of norms. And this repetition is not performed by a subject; this repetition is what enables asubject and constitutes the temporal condition for the subject. This iterability implies that 'performance'is not a singular 'act' or event, but a ritualized production, a ritual reiterated under and throughconstraint, under and through the force of prohibition and taboo, with the threat of ostracism and evendeath controlling and compelling the shape of the production, but not, I will insist, determining it fullyin advance.

Iterability, in its endless undeterminedness as to-be-determinedness, is thus precisely that aspect of performativitythat makes the production of the "natural" sexed, gendered, heterosexual subject possible, while also and at the sametime opening that subject up to the possibility of its incoherence and contestation.Wikipedia:Explain jargon

Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997)In Excitable Speech, Butler surveys the problems of hate speech and censorship. She argues that censorship isdifficult to evaluate, and that in some cases it may be useful or even necessary, while in others it may be worse thantolerance. [citation needed] She develops a new conception of censorship's complex workings, supplanting the myth ofthe independent subject who wields the power to censor with a theory of censorship as an effect of state power and,more primordially, as the condition of language and discourse itself. [citation needed]

Butler argues that hate speech exists retrospectively, only after being declared such by state authorities. In this way,the state reserves for itself the power to define hate speech and, conversely, the limits of acceptable discourse. In thisconnection, Butler criticizes feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon's argument against pornography for itsunquestioning acceptance of the state's power to censor. [citation needed]

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Deploying Foucault's argument from The History of Sexuality Vol. 1, Butler claims that any attempt at censorship,legal or otherwise, necessarily propagates the very language it seeks to forbid. As Foucault argues, for example, thestrict sexual mores of 19th century Western Europe did nothing but amplify the discourse of sexuality it sought tocontrol.[10] Extending this argument using Derrida and Lacan, Butler claims that censorship is primitive to language,and that the linguistic I is a mere effect of an originary censorship. In this way, Butler questions the possibility of anygenuinely oppositional discourse; "If speech depends upon censorship, then the principle that one might seek tooppose is at once the formative principle of oppositional speech".Butler also questions the efficacy of censorship on the grounds that hate speech is context-dependent. Citing J.L.Austin's concept of the performative utterance, Butler notes that words' ability to do things makes hate speechpossible but also at the same time dependent on its specific embodied context. [citation needed] Austin's claim that whata word does, its illocutionary force, varies with the context in which it is uttered implies that it is impossible toadequately define the performative meanings of words, including hate, abstractly.[citation needed] On this basis, Butlerrejects arguments like Richard Delgado's which justify the censorship of certain specific words by claiming the useof those words constitutes hate speech in any context. In this way, Butler underlines the difficulty inherent in effortsto systematically identify hate speech.

Undoing Gender (2004)Undoing Gender collects Butler's reflections on gender, sex, sexuality, psychoanalysis and the medical treatment ofintersex people for a more general readership than many of her other books. Butler revisits and refines her notion ofperformativity and focuses on the question of undoing "restrictively normative conceptions of sexual and genderedlife".Butler discusses how gender is performed without one being conscious of it, but says that it does not mean thisperformativity is "automatic or mechanical". She argues that we have desires that do not originate from ourpersonhood, but rather, from social norms. The writer also debates our notions of "human" and "less-than-human"and how these culturally imposed ideas can keep one from having a "viable life" as the biggest concerns are usuallyabout whether a person will be accepted if his or her desires differ from normality. She states that one may feel theneed of being recognized in order to live, but that at the same time, the conditions to be recognized make life"unlivable". The writer proposes an interrogation of such conditions so that people who resist them may have morepossibilities of living.[11]

In her discussion of intersex, Butler addresses the case of David Reimer, a person whose sex was medically"reassigned" from male to female after a botched circumcision at eight months of age. Reimer was "made" female bydoctors, but later in life identified as "really" male, married and became a stepfather to his wife's three children, andwent on to tell his story in As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, which he wrote with JohnColapinto. Reimer committed suicide in 2004.

Giving an Account of Oneself (2005)In Giving an Account of Oneself, Butler develops an ethics based on the opacity of the subject to itself; in otherwords, the limits of self-knowledge. Primarily borrowing from Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault, FriedrichNietzsche, Jean Laplanche, Adriana Cavarero and Emmanuel Levinas, Butler develops a theory of the formation ofthe subject. She theorizes the subject in relation to the social a community of others and their norms which isbeyond the control of the subject it forms, as precisely the very condition of that subject's formation, the resources bywhich the subject becomes recognizably human, a grammatical "I", in the first place.Butler accepts the claim that if the subject is opaque to itself the limitations of its free ethical responsibility andobligations are due to the limits of narrative, presuppositions of language and projection. "You may think that I am infact telling a story about the prehistory of the subject, one that I have been arguing cannot be told. There are tworesponses to this objection. (1) That there is no final or adequate narrative reconstruction of the prehistory of the

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speaking "I" does not mean we cannot narrate it; it only means that at the moment when we narrate we becomespeculative philosophers or fiction writers. (2) This prehistory has never stopped happening and, as such, is not aprehistory in any chronological sense. It is not done with, over, relegated to a past, which then becomes part of acausal or narrative reconstruction of the self. On the contrary, that prehistory interrupts the story I have to give ofmyself, makes every account of myself partial and failed, and constitutes, in a way, my failure to be fullyaccountable for my actions, my final "irresponsibility," one for which I may be forgiven only because I could not dootherwise. This not being able to do otherwise is our common predicament" (page 78).Instead she argues for an ethics based precisely on the limits of self-knowledge as the limits of responsibility itself.[citation needed] Any concept of responsibility which demands the full transparency of the self to itself, an entirelyaccountable self, necessarily does violence to the opacity which marks the constitution of the self it addresses. Thescene of address by which responsibility is enabled is always already a relation between subjects who are variablyopaque to themselves and to each other. The ethics that Butler envisions is therefore one in which the responsibleself knows the limits of its knowing, recognizes the limits of its capacity to give an account of itself to others, andrespects those limits as symptomatically human. [citation needed] To take seriously one's opacity to oneself in ethicaldeliberation means then to critically interrogate the social world in which one comes to be human in the first placeand which remains precisely that which one cannot know about oneself. In this way, Butler locates social andpolitical critique at the core of ethical practice. [citation needed]

"Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire" (2005)In a piece entitled I Women as the Subject of Feminism published in Cudd, Ann E. and Robin O. Andreasen, eds.2005. Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Judith Butler identifies twoproblematic tendencies in the contemporary feminist movement. One of these is that feminism's subject is Women,which is a discursive formation and effect of a political system that places this category in a subordinate positionrelative to the category of Men (146). Attempting to emancipate Women is self-defeating because it reaffirms thisdiscursively constructed category and its inferiority to Men (146). Freedom for females does not go beyond thecategory of Women; it is rather constrained within it. In this sense, Butler draws our attention to the necessity toreconsider the subject it claims to represent, women.In this work, Butler also argues that feminists need to be more self-critical and not identify the enemy as singular inform (150). There is a tendency in feminism, according to Butler, to uncritically accept the notion of universalpatriarchy. Such a notion, has led many feminists researchers to appropriate non-Western cultures with the end ofproving this theory and universalizing western notions of oppression (147). Hence, there are many layers ofoppression, and they do not necessarily fit nicely in an air-tight hierarchy where women are at the very bottom (150).The enemy comes in many shapes and forms, and essentialist and reductionist claims only serves to obscure thenuances that are necessary to effectively identifying the enemy. Certain feminists, this author argues, have alsoproblematically sought to essentialize women out of an apparent necessity for unity of all women and a unifiedunderstanding this category (151). The claim that women who engage in heterosexual relations are enemies ofwomen and feminists, for instance, mimics the strategy of the oppressor(150) and only contributes to dividingwomen in a way that does not favor the feminist cause. Recognition and respect of divisions and differences in themovement can in fact facilitate coalition action (151). For this reason, Butler contends that the essentialincompleteness [of women'] permits that category to serve as a permanently available site of contestedmeanings[relieving it] of coercive force (151).

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Reception

Butler receives the Theodor W. Adorno Award in2012

Butlers work has been extraordinarily influential in feminist and queertheory, cultural studies, and philosophy. Yet her contribution to a rangeof other disciplines such as psychoanalysis, literary, film, andperformance studies as well as visual arts has also been significant.Her theory of gender performativity as well as her conception of"critically queer" have not only transformed understandings of genderand queer identity in the academic world, but have shaped andmobilized various kinds of political activism, particularly queeractivism, across the globe. Butler's work has also entered intocontemporary debates on the teaching of gender, gay parenting, and thedepathologization of transgender people. Indeed, so influential hasButler's challenge to traditional notions of sex and gender been thateven Pope Benedict XVI engaged critically with it. Manyacademics as well as political activists maintain that Butlers radicaldeparture from the sex/gender dichotomy and her non-essentialistconception of gender along with her insistence that power helpsform the subject revolutionized feminist and queer praxis, thought,and studies. Darin Barney of McGill University writes that: "Butler'swork on gender, sex, sexuality, queerness, feminism, bodies, political speech and ethics has changed the wayscholars all over the world think, talk and write about identity, subjectivity, power and politics. It has also changedthe lives of countless people whose bodies, genders, sexualities and desires have made them subject to violence,exclusion and oppression."

Others scholars have been more critical. In 1998, Denis Dutton's journal Philosophy and Literature gave Butler FirstPrize in its "Bad Writing Competition," which claimed to "celebrate bad writing from the most stylisticallylamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles." Dutton, however, discontinued the contest after beingcriticized for its apparently hostile spirit. Some critics have accused Butler of elitism due to her difficult prose style,while others claim that she reduces gender to discourse or promotes a form of gender voluntarism. Susan Bordo,for example, has argued that Butler reduces gender to language, contending that the body is a major part of gender,thus implicitly opposing Butler's conception of gender as performed.[12] A particularly vocal critic has been liberalfeminist Martha Nussbaum, who has argued that Butler misreads J.L. Austin's idea of performative utterance, makeserroneous legal claims, forecloses an essential site of resistance by repudiating pre-cultural agency, and provides nonormative ethical theory to direct the subversive performances that Butler endorses.[13] Finally, Nancy Fraser'scritique of Butler was part of a famous exchange between the two theorists. Fraser has suggested that Butler's focuson performativity distances her from everyday ways of talking and thinking about ourselves. [] Why should weuse such a self-distancing idiom?[14]

Political activismMuch of Butler's early political activism centered around queer and feminist issues, and she served, for a period oftime, as the chair of the board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Over the years, shehas been particularly active in the gay and lesbian rights, feminist, and anti-war movements. She has also written andspoken out on issues ranging from affirmative action and gay marriage to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and theprisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay. More recently, she has been active in the Occupy movement and has publiclyexpressed support for a version of the 2005 BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel.

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On September 7, 2006, Butler participated in a faculty-organized teach-in against the 2006 Lebanon War at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. Another widely publicized moment occurred in June 2010, when Butler refusedthe Civil Courage Award (Zivilcouragepreis) of the Christopher Street Day (CSD) Parade in Berlin, Germany at theaward ceremony. She cited racist comments on the part of organizers and a general failure of CSD organizations todistance themselves from racism in general and from anti-Muslim excuses for war more specifically. Criticizing theevent's commercialism, she went on to name several groups that she commended as stronger opponents of"homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, and militarism".[15]

In October 2011, Butler attended Occupy Wall Street and, in reference to calls for clarification of the protesters'demands, she said: "People have asked, so what are the demands? What are the demands all of these people aremaking? Either they say there are no demands and that leaves your critics confused, or they say that the demands forsocial equality and economic justice are impossible demands. And the impossible demands, they say, are just notpractical. If hope is an impossible demand, then we demand the impossible that the right to shelter, food andemployment are impossible demands, then we demand the impossible. If it is impossible to demand that those whoprofit from the recession redistribute their wealth and cease their greed, then yes, we demand the impossible."[16]

She is currently an executive member of the Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace in the United States and The JeninTheatre in Palestine. She is also a member of the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Adorno affairWhen Butler received the 2012 Adorno Prize, the prize committee came under attack from Israel's Ambassador toGermany Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, Dr. EfraimZuroff,[17] and the German Central Council of Jews. They were upset at Butler's selection because of her remarksabout Israel and specifically her "calls for a boycott against Israel."[18] Butler responded saying that "she did not takeattacks from German Jewish leaders personally."[19] Rather, she wrote, the attacks are "directed against everyonewho is critical against Israel and its current policies."In a letter in Mondoweiss, Butler stated that she developed strong ethical views on the basis of Jewish philosophicalthought and that it is "blatantly untrue, absurd, and painful for anyone to argue that those who formulate a criticismof the State of Israel is anti-Semitic or, if Jewish, self-hating."Butler was also attacked during this period for statements she had made years earlier about Hamas and Hezbollah.She was accused of defending "Hezbollah and Hamas as progressive organizations" and supporting their tactics.Butler responded to these attacks by stating that her remarks on Hamas and Hezbollah were taken completely out ofcontext and badly, if not wittingly, distort her established views on nonviolence. She has repeatedly condemned theviolence and non-democratic actions of these groups while clearly advocating for a politics committed tonon-violence. In a recent interview she explained that Hamas and Hezbellah are "progressive" insofar as they doaddress infrastructural needs that are quite acute under occupation. Precisely because such groups are supplyingimportant social services, it becomes harderyet more urgentto find ways of persuading people not to supporttheir violent tactics.Butler describes the origin of her remarks on Hamas and Hezbollah in the following way: "I was asked by a memberof an academic audience a few years ago whether I thought Hamas and Hezbollah belonged to the global left and Ireplied with two points. My first point was merely descriptive: those political organizations define themselves asanti-imperialist, and anti-imperialism is one characteristic of the global left, so on that basis one could describe themas part of the global left. My second point was then critical: as with any group on the left, one has to decide whetherone is for that group or against that group, and one needs to critically evaluate their stand."

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PublicationsThe following is a partial list of Butler's publications. 2013: Dispossession: The Performative in the Political, coauthored with Athena Athanasiou : ISBN

978-0745653815 2012: Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism : ISBN 0-231-14610-8 2011: Europe, N 983, mars 2011 : Georges Perros [20] co-authored by Avital Ronell and Joseph Joubert : ISBN

2-351-50038-5 2011: The Question of Gender : Joan W. Scott's critical feminism : ISBN 0-253-35636-9 2011: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere : ISBN 0-231-15645-6 2010: "Judith Butler Interviewed by N. & R. Blanchet" in Hurly-Burly, Issue 3 : ISSN 2101-0307 2009: "Ronell as Gay Scientist" in Reading Ronell, a collection of essays on the work of Avital Ronell, edited by

Diane Davis : ISBN 978-0-252-07647-3 2009: Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? : ISBN 1-84467-333-2 2009: Is Critique Secular?: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech : ISBN 0-9823294-1-5 2007: Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging (with Gayatri Spivak) : ISBN 1-905422-57-1 2005: Giving An Account of Oneself : ISBN 0-8232-2504-6 2004: Undoing Gender : ISBN 0-415-96923-9 2004: Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence : ISBN 1-84467-544-0 2003: Kierkegaard's Speculative Despair in The age of German idealism (edited by Robert C. Solomon): ISBN

0-415-30878-X 2003: Women and Social Transformation (with Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim and Lidia Puigvert) : ISBN

0-8204-6708-1 2002: Prejudicial Appearances: The Logic of American Antidiscrimination Law : ISBN 0-8223-2713-9 2001: "Sexual Difference As a Question of Ethics". bodies of Resistance [edited by Laura Doyle]. ISBN

0-8101-1847-5 2000: Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (with Ernesto Laclau and

Slavoj iek) : ISBN 1-85984-278-X 2000: Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death : ISBN 0-231-11895-3 1997: The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection : ISBN 0-8047-2812-7 1997: Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative : ISBN 0-415-91587-2 1993: Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" : ISBN 0-415-90365-3 1991: "Imitation and Gender Insubordination" in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (edited by Diana

Fuss): ISBN 0-415-90237-1 1990: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity : ISBN 0-415-38955-0 1990: "The Pleasures of Repetition" in Pleasure Beyond the Pleasure Principle: The Role of Affect in Motivation,

Development, and Adaptation (edited by Robert A. Glick and Stanley Bone): ISBN 0-300-05793-2 1987: Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France : ISBN 0-231-06451-9 1982: "Lesbian S & M: the politics of dis-illusion" in Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis

(edited by Robin Ruth Linden): ISBN 0-960-36283-5

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Selected honors and awards 2013: Doctorate of Letters, honoris causa, McGill University 2012: Theodor W. Adorno Award 2010: "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World", Utne Reader 2008: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award, University of California, Berkeley 2007: Elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society 2004: Brudner Prize, Yale University 2001: Rockefeller Fellowship[citation needed]

1999: Guggenheim Fellowship

References[1] http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ w/ index. php?title=Template:Feminist_Philosophy& action=edit[2] Derek Wai Ming Barker, "Judith Butler's Postmodern Antigone," in Tragedy and Citizenship: Conflict, Reconciliation, and Democracy from

Haemon to Hegel, p. 119, SUNY Press, 2009, ISBN 0791476294[3][3] Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.[4] Larissa MacFarquhar, "Putting the Camp Back into Campus," Lingua Franca (magazine) (September/October 1993); see also Judith Butler,

"Decamping," Lingua Franca (NovemberDecember 1993).[5] Butler explicitly formulates her theory of performativity in the final pages of Gender Trouble, specifically in the final section of her chapter

"Subversive Bodily Acts" entitled "Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions" and elaborates performativity in relation to the question ofpolitical agency in her conclusion, "From Parody to Politics." See

[6][6] For Butler's critique of biological accounts of sexual difference as a ruse for the cultural construction of "natural" sex, see[7] For Butler's discussion of the performative co-construction of sex and gender see The signification of sex is also addressed in connection with

Monique Wittig in the section "Monique Wittig: Bodily Disintegrations and Fictive Sex," pp. 14163[8] For Butler's problematization of the sex/gender distinction see[9][9] For example,[10][10] For example,[11][11] Butler, Judith (2004). Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge[12] Hekman, Susan. Material Bodies. Body and Flesh: a Philosophical Reader. Ed. Donn Welton. Blackwell Publishing. 6170. Accessed

through Google Books on Feb 24, 2008.[13] The Professor Parody (http:/ / www. akad. se/ Nussbaum. pdf)[14] Fraser, Nancy. False Antitheses. Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange. Routledge. 67. Accessed through Google Books on Feb

24, 2008.[15] Butler, Judith. I must distance myself from this complicity with racism (Video) (http:/ / www. egs. edu/ faculty/ judith-butler/ videos/

racism-and-commercialization/ ) (Transcript). (http:/ / www. egs. edu/ faculty/ judith-butler/ articles/ i-must-distance-myself/ ) ChristopherStreet Day 'Civil Courage Prize' Day Refusal Speech. European Graduate School. June 19, 2010.

[16] http:/ / www. salon. com/ 2011/ 10/ 24/ judith_butler_at_occupy_wall_street/[17] Envoy to Germany: Awardee ignores terror on Israel (http:/ / www. jpost. com/ JewishWorld/ JewishNews/ Article. aspx?id=282921)[18] German Jews oppose award for US philosopher (http:/ / www. ynetnews. com/ articles/ 0,7340,L-4274289,00. html)[19] Frankfurt Ripped for Honoring Jewish American scholar who backs Israel boycott (http:/ / www. haaretz. com/ jewish-world/

jewish-world-news/ frankfurt-ripped-for-honoring-jewish-american-scholar-who-backs-israel-boycott-1. 463424)[20] http:/ / books. google. com/ books?isbn=2351500385

Further reading Chambers, Samuel A. and Terrell Carver. ''Judith Butler and Political Theory: Troubling Politics. New York:

Routledge, 2008. : ISBN 0-415-76382-7 Cheah, Pheng, "Mattering," Diacritics, Volume 26, Number 1, Spring 1996, pp.108139. Kirby, Vicki. Judith Butler: Live Theory. London: Continuum, 2006. : ISBN 0-8264-6293-6 Eldred, Michael, 'Metaphysics of Feminism: A Critical Note on Judith Butler's Gender Trouble' (http:/ / www.

arte-fact. org/ mtphysfm. html) 2008. Evans, Adrienne; Riley, Sarah; Shankar, Avi (2010). "Technologies of sexiness: theorizing women's engagement

in the sexualization of culture" (http:/ / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1177/ 0959353509351854). Feminism & Psychology 20: 114131. doi: 10.1177/0959353509351854 (http:/ / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1177/ 0959353509351854). From the paper's

Judith Butler 11

abstract: In this paper we contribute to these [sexualization of culture] debates by presenting technologies ofsexiness, a theoretical framework that draws on Foucauldian theorizing of technologies of the self and Butlerswork on performativity.

Salih, Sarah. The Judith Butler Reader. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2004. : ISBN 0-631-22594-3 . ''Routledge Critical Thinkers: Judith Butler. New York: Routledge, 2002. : ISBN 0-415-21519-6 Thiem, Annika. Unbecoming Subjects: Judith Butler, Moral Philosophy, and Critical Responsibility, Fordham

University Press, 2008. : ISBN 0-8232-2899-1

External links Biography (http:/ / rhetoric. berkeley. edu/ people. php?page_id=1056& p=54) University of California,

Berkeley Biography (http:/ / www. egs. edu/ faculty/ judith-butler/ biography/ ) European Graduate School Works by or about Judith Butler (http:/ / worldcat. org/ identities/ lccn-n99-35460) in libraries (WorldCat catalog) Avital Ronell, Judith Butler, Hlne Cixous (http:/ / www. youtube. com/ watch?v=8k91WwJIhl8) approach the

notion of affinity through a discussion of "Disruptive Kinship," co-sponsored by Villa Gillet and the School ofWriting at The New School for Public Engagement.

Interview of Judith Butler about her new book (http:/ / www. egs. edu/ faculty/ judith-butler/ articles/media-death-frames-of-war/ ) "Frames of War" on New Statesman

Interview with Judith Butler: Gender is Extramoral (http:/ / www. barcelonametropolis. cat/ en/ page.asp?id=21& ui=7), Barcelona Metropolis, Summer 2008. (English)

Review of "Giving an Account of Oneself. Ethical Violence and Responsibility" (http:/ / www.barcelonametropolis. cat/ en/ page. asp?id=22& ui=449), by Judith Butler, Barcelona Metropolis Autumn 2010.(English)

"Dictionary of Literary Biography on Judith P. Butler (page 3)" (http:/ / www. bookrags. com/ biography/judith-p-butler-dlb/ 3. html)

Interview with Judith Butler about politics, economy, control societies, gender and identity (2011) (http:/ / rwm.macba. cat/ en/ sonia/ judith_butler/ capsula)

Judith Butler in conversation with Wesleyan University president Michael Roth (http:/ / www. youtube. com/watch?v=Rf4px4KyqbY)

Article Sources and Contributors 12

Article Sources and ContributorsJudith Butler Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=599187371 Contributors: (aeropagitica), 01011000, 6afraidof7, Absalom89, Afaprof01, Agnaramasi, Aheller, Akrabbim, AlLemos, Alison9, Alynna Kasmira, Amoeser, Anarcho hipster, Androby, Andycjp, Angie4, AnitaConchita, AnonMoos, Anthony Krupp, Anthrophilos, Aristophanes68, Artefactme, Artethical,Arvalz, Ashley Y, AustralianMelodrama, Avaya1, AxelBoldt, Babajobu, Backwardation5, Baked boxer, Bangpound, Bearcat, Beeblebrox, Bender235, Bing bada, Bmwer2000, BretH,BrownHairedGirl, Bruce Marold, BryanG, CJ Withers, Cabiria, Cadr, Cailil, CanadianLinuxUser, Carolynparrishfan, Celestra, Charles Matthews, Ched, Chris the speller, Clarince63,Classicfilms, Commodore Sloat, Coster34, Crasshopper, Crooked timber, Cyde, Cyvh, D6, DStoykov, Danny lost, David Edgar, DavidLeighEllis, Delirium, DiggitalHisttory, Dimadick, Dlv999,Dontworry, Doraannao, Doug Bell, Download, Driskil3, Drmies, Drone comin in, Drsocialism, Duja, Dysprosia, Eadric, Eb7473, Echeneida, Eduen, Emperorbma, EnglishTea4me, Enigmocracy,Esperant, Fetofs, Fredrik, FreeKnowledgeCreator, FreieKunst, FreplySpang, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Gaius Cornelius, Gbuelens, Gdarin, Geeksquad, Gidonb, Gingerup, GirasoleDE, Gnossie,Goatstein, Gobonobo, Gregbard, GregorBrand, Grendelkhan, Grunge6910, Guanaco, HG, Haymaker, Hillaryuc, Homagetocatalonia, Hooshmand.hasannia, Houshuang, Htanna, Hu12, Hyacinth,Hyperionsteel, I am One of Many, INkubusse, IWannaPeterPumpkinEaterPeterParker, Idinic, Ihardlythinkso, Ilse@, Infotainmentnihilist, Inglok, InverseHypercube, Inwind, Isolani, Izkrivena,JButler, JEN9841, JJstroker, JJstrokey, Jack O'Lantern, Jahsonic, January, Japanese Searobin, Javits2000, Jerry Jones, Jmabel, Jmakittie, John, Jonathan Stokes, Jossi, Jreberlein, Jschoder,Jtmcginn, K6ka, KConWiki, KSchutte, Kaliz, Kallionae, Karen Mercedes, Karim jurad, Kazkaskazkasako, Kbdank71, Khazar2, Kingsindian, Kittymalicious, Kmaguir1, Knucmo2, Koavf,Koenige, Korg, KylieTastic, Kzollman, Lacatosias, Lapaz, LaszloWalrus, Laura Anglin, Libroman, Ligulem, LittleOldMe, Liz, Loonymonkey, Lorentzo Lumiere, Loverofmusic1, Lulu of theLotus-Eaters, Lumos3, MPerel, Madmedea, Magioladitis, Malik Shabazz, Marta.Paczynska, MartinHarper, Masterpiece2000, Mathglot, Maunus, Mdy66, Meatsgains, MeltBanana, Mentifisto,Mercurywoodrose, Michael Hardy, Michaelcomella, MindMoves, Mocctur, Montrealais, Motorizer, Muggle1992, NatanHaasnoot, NawlinWiki, Neutraljones, Niceguyedc, Nicke Lilltroll,NicolasMejia, Nikkimaria, Noah Salzman, Oasisbob, Ohconfucius, Okinawasan, Omnipaedista, Opheicus, Owenhatherley, Paranoid Android1208, Pennyblindshow, Peter Fleet, Phatom87,Phenophexadin, Phil Sandifer, Phil donnawho, Phillipedison1891, Philososlav, Phoenixrod, Pigman, Pinkadelica, Pkeilty, Ponyo, Poor Yorick, Posavchera, Prision, Qwertwestern, Qwyrxian,RRKennison, Radicalamy, RafikiSykes, Refusecollection, Renewolf, RexQ, Rjwilmsi, Ronhjones, Ronline, Royspeaking, Rucha58, SRTolliver, STolliver2, SarahStierch, Seldom sunk, Seminoleerupts, Ser Amantio di Nicolao, Serpent-A, Sethmahoney, ShaneKing, Shanel, Shogo Kawada, Sholomsholom, Signifiance, Singularity 6, Skoojal, Solar-Wind, Somearemoreequal, Soosim,Sophie1975, Spencer, Spoon!, Ssjap, Stefanomione, Summary nanny, Svarisco, T bullshider, T@nn, Taranet, Tbhotch, The Singing Badger, The Vintage Feminist, TheJJJunk,TheSoundAndTheFury, Thewatchmaker, Thomos, ThorneyDayna, Tillwe, Timo Honkasalo, Timrollpickering, ToCrotIsWhatILike, Tom Morris, Tommy2010, Topbanana, Trialsanderrors,UtherSRG, Vanwan, VeryVerily, Vgranucci, Visualpleasure, Vojvodaen, Voyager640, Vulturell, Waacstats, WallaceYoG, Wassermann, Wblanejr, Welsh, WereSpielChequers, West6557,Wikipedian2009, Wikipelli, Witeboys, Wo st 01, Yus405, Zarcadia, Zenohockey, Zigzig20s, Zoicon5, , , 359 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and ContributorsFile:Judith_Butler_cropped.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Judith_Butler_cropped.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Contributors: Original uploaderwas Jreberlein at en.wikipediaFile:Adorno-preis-2012-judith-butler-ffm-287.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Adorno-preis-2012-judith-butler-ffm-287.jpg License: Creative CommonsAttribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors: User:Dontworry

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Judith ButlerEarly life and educationOverview of major worksPerformative Acts and Gender Constitution (1988) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (1993) Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997) Undoing Gender (2004) Giving an Account of Oneself (2005) "Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire" (2005)

Reception Political activism Adorno affair

Publications Selected honors and awardsReferences Further reading External links

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