Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics)

This is quite brilliant book by one of the finest philosophers of our time. I am very much interested in Butler's writings. This one is a must read book on Gendered Reality and "troubled gender conformation"and for those who are interested in Butler's theory. It's a bit difficult and advanced in its language and concept. But I really enjoyed this book.

This book is a seminal work that challenges conventional notions of gender and identity. Butler's writing is both intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking, offering a deep analysis of how gender is constructed and performed in society. Her ideas have had a profound impact on feminist theory and have sparked important conversations about gender norms and roles.One of the strengths of "Gender Trouble" is Butler's ability to deconstruct complex ideas in a way that is accessible to readers. She uses a mix of philosophical inquiry, literary theory, and political analysis to explore the ways in which gender is enforced and resisted. Her argument that gender is performative, meaning that it is something we do rather than something we are, is particularly compelling and has influenced a generation of scholars and activists.However, some readers may find Butler's writing style dense and challenging at times, especially if they are not familiar with the theoretical frameworks she draws upon. Additionally, her ideas have been critiqued for being overly abstract and disconnected from the experiences of marginalized individuals.Overall, "Gender Trouble" is a groundbreaking work that continues to be relevant today. It is essential reading for anyone interested in feminist theory, gender studies, or the politics of identity.

Trabalho seminal.

Anyone who has read “Trans”, “Material Girls” or “Delusions of Gender” should read this book by Judith Butler. Without this it is impossible to understand what gender theory is about, what it is based on and where it comes from. Butler’s style makes it difficult to pick out quotations that summarise their thesis without writing out complete pages however there are some short passages that do contain key messages:“If gender attributes, however, are not expressive but performative, then these attributes effectively constitute the identity they are said to express or reveal.”“Genders can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent, neither original nor derived.”It is very important to grasp the nebulous and slippery nature of gender in their Weltanschauung. This is not really picked up in the “gender critical” literature and they would do a better job if they addressed it. However, Butler’s thought does not stop with gender because they apply similar reasoning to sex:“This construct called sex is as culturally constructed as gender, indeed, perhaps it was always already gender with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.”“Cultural configurations of sex and gender might then proliferate...confounding the very binarism of sex and its fundamental unnaturalness.”Approaching a book that is described as fundamental to gender theory the naive reader might expect to find an exposition of the issues of biology, psychology and sociology supported by facts and data. This would be to fundamentally misunderstand Butler’s academic approach. Butler starts by making clear that the purpose of the book is above all political; it is to disrupt the prevailing orthodoxy that in their opinion limits the full development of the feminist project. Butler bases their analysis on post war French thought, which others might loosely describe as “post-modernist” though they do not. Specifically Butler acknowledges post-structuralism and psycho-analytic theory as their tools. They draw on, and criticise, the work of the French thinkers Lévi-Strauss (nothing to do with jeans!), Foucault (nothing to do with pendulums), Lacan, Kristeva and Wittig.The style of thinking applied by Butler and their sources does not so much contradict the scientific approach as simply ignore it. A reader must decide for themselves if this is valid. Freud’s psycho-analytic theories are based on little more than anecdotes and research on his notes and other sources has shown that even his reports were “adjusted” to fit his pre-conceived theories. Anything drawing on this as a basis requires significant justification. The post-structuralist approach by contrast is unconcerned with the kind of evidence that a physical or social scientist would require to support any theory. Instead of facts and data what the reader gets from Butler, and their sources, are unsupported assertions on which is built an edifice of theory that can neither be proved nor falsified. The only validity can be in the self explanatory nature of the premises and the validity of the arguments which are built on them.Butler takes on the science at one point by discussing a piece of work by David Page on the genetics of XX Males. This was an early study published in 1987 over a decade before the human genome project even started. It had been superseded before the publication of Gender Trouble in 1990 and subsequent work has developed a good understanding of the subject. By 1999 when the revised edition was published Butler left the argument in place without updating it. Butler's discussion around the subject demonstrates a fundamental failure to understand how science works which is not uncommon among people, however intelligent or well educated in other areas, who have limited education in the sciences (either physical or social).Whether the reader accepts or rejects Butler’s thesis probably depends more than anything on the reader’s own background. Anyone educated in a science based discipline would read the book searching in vain for something that looked like evidence and would be likely to dismiss it as vapidity concealed by verbosity. A person steeped in what we might loosely term post-modernism and its offspring might well find their approach convincing. Butler makes it clear that in their view gender is performative it is not a real attribute of a person indeed personal identity comes from the performance, the performance makes the performer and not vice-versa. They claim that biological sex is itself a construct and synonymous with gender. For this they present no evidence other than the kind of cherry-picking much beloved of tobacco apologists, climate-change deniers and anti-vaxxers. In fact the work by David Page and others has continued over the last 30 years. With the vastly improved ability to analyse genetic material, a wide range of variations in sexual development has been studied. The incidence of significant variation is extremely low and all of these variants fall clearly into the category of male or female – it’s not a spectrum.It is not unreasonable to conclude that something as nebulous as Butler’s concept of gender cannot possibly be used to inform public policy. Whether we have to decide on participation in sports or incarcerations in prisons something that is a performance with no fundamental reality can hardly be the deciding factor when set beside the objective facts of biology.For those who are unfamiliar with the way that science really works I have a couple of recommendations:“Vaxxers” by Catherine Green and Sarah Gilbert (the development of the Oxford vaccine)“The Code Breaker” by Walter Isaacson (Janet Doudna and the story of CRISPR)

Non produit

THE book to read before delving into gender theory.Of course Showalter, Wittig and Irigaray should be read first, at least partially, but Gender Trouble is certainly the book right after them.This is an academic work and those who bemoan the lack of easily understandable writing style should keep this in mind. It was written for an academic environment.I'm not saying that it's an impossible reading otherwise, certain passages are more straightforward than others, but keeping its origin in mind, in my opinion, can help with some of the more scholarly ponderings.