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Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"
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...more
Paperback, 304 pages
Published
September 20th 1993
by Routledge
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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 vio...more
For surely bodies live and die; eat and sleep; feel pain, pleasure; endure illness and vio...more
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)...more
Butler, for about 100 pages, executes a virtuosic reading of Lacan that I thoroughly enjoyed, but then later on she mis-appropriates Zizek and tries to stic to her guns with old ideas about performativity and it doesn't really lead her anywhere. She ends up asking more questions than she answers, which of course is never a bad thing, but I thought she wwas taking me somewhere she wasn't. But I'm sure she's cleared some things up since she wrote this book, which was published in 1993, so I'll def...more
this was mostly really good; she says interesting things about signification and political strategy, I like it when people talk strategy to me; I don't care about Žižek but in the course of laying the smackdown on him she says some good things about names and patrilineage; I wish she had delivered more on her promise to theorise materiality because that was what I was reading this for; the title chapter reads like the first, vaguest chapter of the book I actually wanted to read; I understand, bu...more
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 o...more
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...more
this book confirms that judith butler is seriously a genius. it was Extremely helpful to read this book in class, rather than on my own, which is how i've attempted other butler. for instance, when you get to the chapter that follows Butler on Irigaray on Plato, it helps to have someone around that knows the French psychoanalysts. And when you start reading about mirrors, identity and Lacan, having someone versed in Freud is really a bonus.
so yeah, unless you know a fair amount of Zizek (and I u...more
so yeah, unless you know a fair amount of Zizek (and I u...more
Me acabo de acordar de este libro, ahora no sé por qué. El texto es una cosa densa que creo que iba sobre la diferencia entre sexo y género y de que quizá el cuerpo se construye psicológicamente (o físicamente, no me quedó claro si era en plan "metáfora" o no) a partir de la identificación con un género al nacer. El postmodernismo antes me impresionaba.
Menciona dos novelas que desde entonces tengo para leer:Passing y My Antonia.
Pero por lo que tengo un buen recuerdo es lo que aprendí no del lib...more
Menciona dos novelas que desde entonces tengo para leer:Passing y My Antonia.
Pero por lo que tengo un buen recuerdo es lo que aprendí no del lib...more
one of the first books that really clicked with theory for me as an undergrad. Difficult book, of course, but really useful for thinking materiality in the wake of linguistic/discourse-based, power/knowledge-focused post-structuralism. This book is still relevant today in thinking body and biology in the wake of continental philosophy and theory. I recently heard Catherine Malabou cite this book in a lecture she was giving on a critique of Foucault's power and materiality of the body and biology...more
Very hard to understand. I don't think gender is a social construct, ready to be deconstructed! Although I agree that to some degree social construction exists in gender differences. I couldn't finish reading this book because it is too confusing to read, my brain turns off automatically after reading it for a while. So I decided to leave it there and try to come back to it some time later.
Back when I was in my doctoral program, I both hated and loved Butler. (She was the only theorist whose dense writing style actually gave me migraines as I analyzed the text.) Now I appreciate her arguments. I'm glad I no longer "have" to read her, but I do, on occasion, pick up her books. Thank goodness I commented like hell in the margins and circled key phrases.
Butler always has some insightful work and I definitely build my own thoughts on her discourses. It is a hard read and requires time to digest and deconstruct her writing. Butler's work maybe difficult to approach but, like a good mathematics problem, the answers are there and it is a good mental workout getting them.
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 exp...more
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 exp...more
Very dense, difficult, challenging and provocative. Essential insights for feminist, queer and democratic theory. For my taste, far too much time spent addressing dated and obscure psychoanalytic theorists, but its core insights are profound and useful.
In Bodies That Matter (1993), Judith Butler further explains her theory of performativity, "always a reiteration of a norm or set of norms" (12) that works through citation. Not much here I'll probably be working with in comps
i appreciate this book's political and theoretical vision (a call for a feminism not rooted in identity politics and an analysis of gender and the body that is not disaggregated from sex and sexuality). that being said, i am left totally unsatisfied with her treatment of materiality, which is completely a-sensual (her conception of materiality...derived from derrida and lacan...understands the body as materialized through language). strangely, although the book is concerned centrally with perfor...more
Judith Butler is really hard to read! Really brilliant too. Just seriously slow going...
Wonderfully obtuse and obscure, perhaps deliberately so. Classic Butler.
One if not my favorite approach to sexual discourse. Butler is delicious.
Finally finished my re-read. Helping me think about form.
Tell it how it is Judith!!!
read CH2 only
I didn't read the entire book, just the parts that I needed to for my thesis. As always, I found Butler to be very accessible and understandble. She doesn't write all academically (I know, I am an academic), using big superfluous words. (there I go using a big word) Anyway, I found her to just as knowledgable in this book as in the numerous essays I have read of hers.
there is morass, but there is payoff.
Using this book in my paper on Brokeback Mountain. Butler begins to expand the scope of performativity in terms of discourse production. Well worth the read. Also, one of the most readable Butler books around, in my opinion :)
This pretty dense read raises more questions than it puts to rest, but it gives us a sense of how vintage Butler compares to contemporary.
1. I like the part where she talks about choosing a gender from the clothes closet.
2. thesis hinges on basic premise.
2. thesis hinges on basic premise.
Complex and compelling argument about gender and sexual politics as constructed through language and power.
Apr 12, 2008
Amy
marked it as to-read
I've read about half of this, and I think it's great. Would like to finish it when I get a chance.
Very painful to read. Needed it for one of my courses at uni but god, is it dense!
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Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist and feminist philosopher who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy and ethics. She is currently a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.
Butler received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984, for a dissertation subsequently publi...more
More about Judith Butler...
Butler received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984, for a dissertation subsequently publi...more
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updated Sep 20, 2009 12:03am