Judith Butler
For Butler, gender is not something we are but something we do – it comes into being through acts, repeated under social norms, until it seems natural.
Placement
Gender is performative: it is produced by repeated acts that cite norms – “Gender Trouble” (1990) became a founding text of queer theory (pronouns: they/them, also she/her).
Key ideas
- Performativity
- Gender Trouble
- Precarious life
Influence
Influenced by 11
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
influenced by
Butler’s first book, Subjects of Desire (1987), traced Hegel’s desire for recognition through its French readers; Hegel’s unhappy consciousness returns in The Psychic Life of Power (1997). J. Butler, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987); The Psychic Life of Power (1997)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Sigmund Freud
influenced by
Butler drew on Freud’s ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ and The Ego and the Id to read gender identity as melancholic incorporation of an ungrieved same-sex attachment (Gender Trouble, 1990). J. Butler, Gender Trouble (1990); The Psychic Life of Power (1997); S. Freud, “Trauer und Melancholie” (1917); Das Ich und das Es (1923)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
J. L. Austin
influenced by
Butler reworked Austin’s performative utterances, read through Derrida’s iterability, into a theory of gender performativity and of injurious speech (Bodies That Matter, 1993; Excitable Speech, 1997). J. Butler, Bodies That Matter (1993); Excitable Speech (1997); J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (1962); SEP “John Langshaw Austin”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
J. L. Austin › 1911–1960
Louis Althusser
influenced by
Butler took up Althusser’s interpellation and asked why the hailed subject turns round, finding a passionate attachment to subjection (The Psychic Life of Power, 1997). J. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power (1997); L. Althusser, “Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’État” (1970); SEP “Louis Althusser”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Louis Althusser › 1918–1990
Michel Foucault
influenced by ✓
Butler took Foucault’s view that power produces subjects it regulates and applied it to sex and gender, drawing on his edition of Herculine Barbin’s memoirs (Gender Trouble, 1990). J. Butler, Gender Trouble (1990); M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité I. La volonté de savoir (1976); Herculine Barbin dite Alexina B. (1978); SEP “Michel Foucault”
Michel Foucault › 1926–1984
Jacques Derrida
influenced by
Butler took Derrida’s iterability and citationality (‘Signature événement contexte’, 1971) to explain how gender norms gain force through repetitions that can also go astray (Bodies That Matter, 1993). J. Butler, Bodies That Matter (1993); J. Derrida, “Signature événement contexte” (1971), in Marges de la philosophie (1972); SEP “Jacques Derrida”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Jacques Derrida › 1930–2004
Show all (11)Show fewer
Hannah Arendt
influenced by
Butler took up Arendt’s right to have rights (Who Sings the Nation-State?, with Spivak, 2007) and space of appearance (Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 2015). J. Butler and G. C. Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-State? (2007); J. Butler, Parting Ways (2012); Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015); SEP “Hannah Arendt”
Evidence: AI draft
Hannah Arendt › 1906–1975
Mary Douglas
influenced by
Butler took Douglas’s view in Purity and Danger (1966) that the body’s boundaries mark social limits, while rejecting her structuralist divide of nature and culture (Gender Trouble, 1990). J. Butler, Gender Trouble (1990); M. Douglas, Purity and Danger (1966)
Evidence: AI draft
Mary Douglas › 1921–2007
Frantz Fanon
influenced by
In “Violence, Non-Violence: Sartre on Fanon” (2006) Butler read The Wretched of the Earth together with Sartre’s preface, asking whom each text addresses and how colonial violence shapes the bodies and the masculinity of the colonised. J. Butler, “Violence, Non-Violence: Sartre on Fanon”, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 27:1 (2006); repr. in Senses of the Subject (2015)
Evidence: AI draft
Frantz Fanon › 1925–1961
Adriana Cavarero
influenced by
Butler built on Cavarero’s Relating Narratives (1997; Eng. 2000), in which the self depends on others who tell its story, for Giving an Account of Oneself (2005). J. Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (2005); A. Cavarero, Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti (1997; Relating Narratives, 2000)
Evidence: AI draft
Adriana Cavarero › b. 1947
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
influenced by
Butler engaged with Sedgwick’s work in ‘Capacity’ (Regarding Sedgwick, 2002); Jagose’s introduction (1996) counts both among the founders of queer theory. J. Butler, “Capacity”, in S. M. Barber and D. L. Clark (eds.), Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Queer Culture and Critical Theory (2002); A. Jagose, Queer Theory (1996)
Evidence: AI draft
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick › 1950–2009
Influenced 1
Saba Mahmood
influenced
Mahmood took up Butler’s performativity, in which norms are inhabited through repeated bodily acts, but argued that Butler still tied agency to subverting norms (Politics of Piety, 2005). S. Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2005); J. Butler, Bodies That Matter (1993)
Evidence: AI draft
Saba Mahmood › 1962–2018
Criticism
Mutual critique 1
Nancy Fraser ⇄ mutual
criticised
In ‘Merely Cultural’ (1998) Butler objected that Fraser’s split between economic and cultural injustice relegates struggles over sexuality to recognition, although they concern the reproduction of capitalism. J. Butler, “Merely Cultural”, New Left Review 227 (1998); N. Fraser, “Heterosexism, Misrecognition, and Capitalism”, New Left Review 228 (1998)
Evidence: AI draft
criticised by
Fraser objected that Butler’s resignification offers no norms to distinguish emancipatory from oppressive change (‘False Antitheses’, 1991) and treated heterosexism as misrecognition rather than maldistribution (1998). N. Fraser, “False Antitheses”, Praxis International 11 (1991); “Heterosexism, Misrecognition, and Capitalism: A Response to Judith Butler”, New Left Review 228 (1998)
Evidence: AI draft
Nancy Fraser › b. 1947
Criticized by 2
Martha Nussbaum
criticised by
Nussbaum objected that Butler’s obscure prose and politics of subversive parody turn feminism away from material injustice and political action (‘The Professor of Parody’, 1999). M. C. Nussbaum, “The Professor of Parody”, The New Republic, 22 February 1999
Evidence: AI draft
Martha Nussbaum › b. 1947
Seyla Benhabib
criticised by
Benhabib objected that Butler’s performative theory of gender dissolves the subject and thus leaves no room for agency and feminist emancipation (‘Feminism and Postmodernism’, 1991). S. Benhabib, “Feminism and Postmodernism: An Uneasy Alliance”, Praxis International 11 (1991); repr. in Feminist Contentions (1995), with Butler’s reply “Contingent Foundations”
Evidence: AI draft
Seyla Benhabib › b. 1950
Criticizes 7
Jacques Lacan
criticised
Butler objected that Lacan’s symbolic law fixes sexual positions around the phallus as quasi-timeless, and recast the phallus as a resignifiable norm (Bodies That Matter, 1993, ch. 2). J. Butler, Gender Trouble (1990), ch. 2; Bodies That Matter (1993), ch. 2 “The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary”
Evidence: AI draft
Jacques Lacan › 1901–1981
Simone de Beauvoir influenced by
influenced by
Butler read Beauvoir’s ‘one becomes a woman’ as gender being an ongoing act of becoming (‘Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex’, 1986). J. Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex”, Yale French Studies 72 (1986); Gender Trouble (1990); SEP “Simone de Beauvoir”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
criticised
Butler objected that Beauvoir’s ‘one becomes a woman’ still keeps a natural sex beneath gender and a Cartesian dualism of mind and body (Gender Trouble, 1990, ch. 1). J. Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex”, Yale French Studies 72 (1986); Gender Trouble (1990), ch. 1
Evidence: AI draft
Simone de Beauvoir › 1908–1986
Pierre Bourdieu
criticised
Butler objected that Bourdieu ties the force of performative speech to prior institutional authority, leaving no room for subversive resignification (Excitable Speech, 1997; ‘Performativity’s Social Magic’, 1999). J. Butler, Excitable Speech (1997); “Performativity’s Social Magic”, in R. Shusterman (ed.), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader (1999)
Evidence: AI draft
Pierre Bourdieu › 1930–2002
Luce Irigaray
criticised
Butler objected that Irigaray’s feminine, excluded by a single masculine economy, is a globalising figure that keeps the heterosexual frame of sexual difference (Gender Trouble, 1990, ch. 1). J. Butler, Gender Trouble (1990), ch. 1; Bodies That Matter (1993), ch. 1
Evidence: AI draft
Luce Irigaray › b. 1930
Julia Kristeva
criticised
Butler objected that Kristeva’s semiotic, rooted in a pre-paternal maternal body, naturalises maternity and remains subordinate to the paternal law it contests (Gender Trouble, 1990, ch. 3). J. Butler, Gender Trouble (1990), ch. 3.1 “The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva”
Evidence: AI draft
Julia Kristeva › b. 1941
Catharine A. MacKinnon
criticised
Butler objected that MacKinnon’s account of pornography as speech that enacts women’s subordination overstates its performative power and invites state censorship (Excitable Speech, 1997). J. Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997); C. A. MacKinnon, Only Words (1993)
Evidence: AI draft
Catharine A. MacKinnon › b. 1946
Slavoj Žižek
criticised
Butler objected that Žižek’s Lacanian Real works as an ahistorical, quasi-transcendental limit that fixes sexual difference beyond political contest (Bodies That Matter, 1993; Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, 2000). J. Butler, Bodies That Matter (1993), ch. 7 “Arguing with the Real”; J. Butler, E. Laclau & S. Žižek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (2000)
Evidence: AI draft
Slavoj Žižek › b. 1949
Works
- 1990Gender Trouble
Gender as performative repetition – with and against Beauvoir, Lacan and Foucault.
On the discursive limits of “sex”.
Position
Butler’s Gender Trouble questioned a basic assumption of feminism: that there is a natural sex on which a cultural gender is merely built. Gender, Butler argued, is not something we are but something we do – it is “performative,” produced through the constant repetition of norms, gestures and speech acts. What appears natural is the effect of this repetition, regulated by a “heterosexual matrix.” Because norms must be repeated, they can also be shifted, parodied and subverted. In Bodies That Matter Butler extended the analysis to the materiality of bodies. Later works dealt with hate speech, vulnerability and grievable lives after 9/11. Butler became a founding figure of queer theory.
Life & context
Butler was born in Cleveland in 1956, studied philosophy at Yale and spent a year in Heidelberg; their dissertation dealt with the reception of Hegel in twentieth-century France. After teaching at Johns Hopkins they have taught at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1993. In 2012 they received the Adorno Prize of the city of Frankfurt.
Further main works
- Subjects of Desire (1987)
- Excitable Speech (1997)
- Precarious Life (2004)
Appears in
- Journey ‘The Linguistic Turn’ · Stop 10 of 10
- Journey ‘Feminist Philosophy’ · Stop 9 of 11
- Debate ‘What Is Gender?’
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