HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity'' is a 1990 book by the
post-structuralist Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...
gender theorist and philosopher
Judith Butler Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American feminist philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. In ...
in which the author argues that
gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
is performative, meaning that it is maintained, created or perpetuated by iterative repetitions when speaking and interacting with each other.


Summary

Butler criticizes one of the central assumptions of
feminist theory Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or Philosophy, philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's Gender role, social roles, experiences, intere ...
, that there exists an identity and a subject that requires representation in politics and language. For Butler, "
men A man is an adult male human. Before adulthood, a male child or adolescent is referred to as a boy. Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the fa ...
" and "
women A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functional u ...
" are categories complicated by factors such as
class Class, Classes, or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used d ...
,
ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...
, and
sexuality Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied ...
. Moreover, the universality presumed by these terms parallels the assumed universality of the
patriarchy Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of authority are primarily held by men. The term ''patriarchy'' is used both in anthropology to describe a family or clan controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males, and in fem ...
and erases the particularity of
oppression Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment of, or exercise of power over, a group of individuals, often in the form of governmental authority. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced. No universally accepted model ...
in distinct times and places. Butler thus eschews
identity politics Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, Race (human categorization), race, nationality, religion, Religious denomination, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, Socioeconomic status, social background ...
in favor of a new, coalitional
feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
that critiques the basis of identity and
gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
. They challenge assumptions about the distinction often made between sex and gender, according to which sex is
biological Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of ...
while gender is culturally constructed. Butler argues that this false distinction introduces a split into the supposedly unified subject of feminism. Sexed bodies cannot signify without gender, and the apparent existence of sex prior to
discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. F ...
and cultural imposition is only an effect of the functioning of gender. Sex and gender are both constructed. Examining the work of the philosophers
Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she ...
and
Luce Irigaray Luce Irigaray (; born 3 May 1930) is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist who examines the uses and misuses of language in relation to women. Irigaray's first and most ...
, Butler explores the relationship between power and categories of sex and gender. For de Beauvoir, women constitute a lack against which men establish their identity; for Irigaray, this
dialectic Dialectic (; ), also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. Dialectic resembles debate, but the ...
belongs to a "signifying economy" that excludes the representation of women altogether because it employs phallocentric language. Both assume that there exists a female "self-identical being" in need of representation, and their arguments hide the impossibility of "being" a gender at all. Butler argues instead that gender is performative: no identity exists behind the acts that supposedly "express" gender, and these acts constitute, rather than express, the illusion of the stable gender identity. If the appearance of “being” a gender is thus an effect of culturally influenced acts, then there exists no solid, universal gender: constituted through the practice of performance, the gender "woman" (like the gender "man") remains contingent and open to interpretation and "resignification". In this way, Butler provides an opening for subversive action. They call for people to trouble the categories of gender through performance. Discussing the patriarchy, Butler notes that feminists have frequently made recourse to the supposed pre-patriarchal state of culture as a model upon which to base a new, non-oppressive society. For this reason, accounts of the original transformation of sex into gender by means of the incest taboo have proven particularly useful to feminists. Butler revisits three of the most popular: the anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss ( ; ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a Belgian-born French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair o ...
's anthropological
structuralism Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns t ...
, in which the
incest taboo Incest ( ) is sex between close relatives, for example a brother, sister, or parent. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by lineage. It is condemned and con ...
necessitates a kinship structure governed by the exchange of women; Joan Riviere's psychoanalytic description of "womanliness as a masquerade" that hides masculine identification and therefore also conceals a desire for another woman; and
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
's psychoanalytic explanation of mourning and melancholia, in which loss prompts the ego to incorporate attributes of the lost loved one, in which
cathexis In psychoanalysis, cathexis (or emotional investment) is defined as the process of allocation of mental or emotional energy to a person, object, or idea. Origin of term The Greek term ''cathexis'' (κάθεξις) was chosen by James Strach ...
becomes identification. Butler extends these accounts of gender identification in order to emphasize the productive or performative aspects of gender. With Lévi-Strauss, they suggest that incest is "a pervasive cultural fantasy" and that the presence of the taboo generates these desires; with Riviere, they state that
mimicry In evolutionary biology, mimicry is an evolved resemblance between an organism and another object, often an organism of another species. Mimicry may evolve between different species, or between individuals of the same species. In the simples ...
and masquerade form the "essence" of gender; with Freud, they assert that "gender identification is a kind of melancholia in which the sex of the prohibited object is internalized as a prohibition", and therefore that "same-sexed gender identification" depends on an unresolved (but simultaneously forgotten) homosexual cathexis (with the father, not the mother, of the Oedipal myth). For Butler, "heterosexual melancholy is culturally instituted as the price of stable gender identities", and for heterosexuality to remain stable, it demands the notion of homosexuality, which remains prohibited but necessarily within the bounds of culture. Finally, they point again to the productivity of the incest taboo, a law which generates and regulates approved heterosexuality and subversive homosexuality, neither of which exists before the law. In response to the work of the psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, ; ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Sigmund Freud, Freud", Lacan gave The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, year ...
that posited a paternal Symbolic order and a repression of the "feminine" required for language and culture,
Julia Kristeva Julia Kristeva (; ; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, ; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and novelist who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She has taught at Colum ...
added women back into the narrative by claiming that poetic language—the "
semiotic Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of semiosis, sign processes and the communication of Meaning (semiotics), meaning. In semiotics, a Sign (semiotics), sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feel ...
"—was a surfacing of the maternal body in writing, uncontrolled by the paternal
logos ''Logos'' (, ; ) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric, as well as religion (notably Logos (Christianity), Christianity); among its connotations is that of a rationality, rational form of discourse that relies on inducti ...
. For Kristeva, poetic writing and maternity are the sole culturally permissible ways for women to return to the maternal body that bore them, and female homosexuality is an impossibility, a near
psychosis In psychopathology, psychosis is a condition in which a person is unable to distinguish, in their experience of life, between what is and is not real. Examples of psychotic symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized or inco ...
. Butler criticizes Kristeva, claiming that her insistence on a "maternal" that precedes culture and on poetry as a return to the maternal body is essentialist: "Kristeva conceptualizes this maternal instinct as having an
ontological Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...
status prior to the paternal law, but she fails to consider the way in which that very law might well be the cause of the very desire it is said to repress.". Butler argues the notion of "maternity" as the long-lost haven for females is a social construction, and invokes
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...
's arguments in ''
The History of Sexuality ''The History of Sexuality'' () is a four-volume study of sexuality in the Western world by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, in which the author examines the emergence of "sexuality" as a discursive object and separate spher ...
'' (1976) to posit that the notion that maternity precedes or defines women is itself a product of discourse. Butler dismantles part of Foucault's critical introduction to the journals he published of Herculine Barbin, an
intersex Intersex people are those born with any of several sex characteristics, including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binar ...
person who lived in France during the 19th century and eventually committed suicide when she was forced to live as a man by the authorities. In his introduction to the journals, Foucault writes of Barbin's early days, when she was able to live her gender or "sex" as she saw fit as a "happy limbo of nonidentity." Butler accuses Foucault of
romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...
, claiming that his proclamation of a blissful identity "prior" to cultural inscription contradicts his work in ''The History of Sexuality'', in which he posits that the idea of a "real" or "true" or "originary" sexual identity is an illusion, in other words that "sex" is not the solution to the repressive system of power but part of that system itself. Butler instead places Barbin's early days not in a "happy limbo" but along a larger trajectory, always part of a larger network of social control. They suggest finally that Foucault's surprising deviation from his ideas on repression in the introduction might be a sort of "confessional moment", or vindication of Foucault's own homosexuality of which he rarely spoke and on which he permitted himself only once to be interviewed. Butler traces the feminist theorist Monique Wittig's thinking about
lesbianism A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homo ...
as the one recourse to the constructed notion of sex. The notion of "sex" is always coded as female, according to Wittig, a way to designate the non-male through an absence. Women, thus reduced to "sex", cannot escape carrying sex as a burden. Wittig argues that even naming body parts as sexual creates a fictitious limitation of what body parts can be considered erogenous, socially constructing the features themselves and fragmenting what was really once "whole". Language, repeated over time, "produces reality-effects that are eventually misperceived as 'facts'. Butler questions the notion that "the body" itself is a natural entity that "admits no genealogy", a usual given without explanation: "How are the contours of the body clearly marked as the taken-for-granted ground or surface upon which gender signification are inscribed, a mere facticity devoid of value, prior to significance?." Building on the thinking of the anthropologist Mary Douglas, outlined in her '' Purity and Danger'' (1966), Butler claims that the boundaries of the body have been drawn to instate certain taboos about limits and possibilities of exchange. Thus the hegemonic and homophobic press has read the pollution of the body that
AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...
brings about as corresponding to the pollution of the homosexual's sexual activity, in particular his crossing the forbidden bodily boundary of the
perineum The perineum (: perineums or perinea) in placentalia, placental mammals is the space between the anus and the genitals. The human perineum is between the anus and scrotum in the male or between the anus and vulva in the female. The perineum is ...
. In other words, Butler's claim is that "the body is itself a consequence of taboos that render that body discrete by virtue of its stable boundaries." Butler proposes the practice of drag as a way to destabilize the exteriority/interiority binary, finally to poke fun at the notion that there is an "original" gender, and to demonstrate playfully to the audience, through an exaggeration, that all gender is in fact scripted, rehearsed, and performed. Butler attempts to construct a feminism (via the politics of jurido- discursive power) from which the gendered pronoun has been removed or not presumed to be a reasonable category. They claim that even the binary of subject/object, which forms the basic assumption for feminist practices—"we, 'women,' must become subjects and not objects"—is a hegemonic and artificial division. The notion of a subject is for them formed through repetition, through a "practice of signification." Butler offers parody (for example, the practice of drag) as a way to destabilize and make apparent the invisible assumptions about gender identity and the inhabitability of such "ontological locales" as gender. By redeploying those practices of identity and exposing as always failed the attempts to "become" one's gender, they believe that a positive, transformative politics can emerge.


Publication history

Routledge first published ''Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity'' in 1990; other Routledge publications occurred in 1999, 2006 (Routledge Classics) and 2007.


Reception

''Gender Trouble'' was reviewed by Shane Phelan in '' Women & Politics''. The work has enjoyed widespread popularity outside of traditional academic circles, even inspiring a fanzine, ''Judy!'' Butler, in a preface to the second edition of the book, writes that they were surprised by the size of the book's audience and its eventual status as a founding text of queer theory. Anthony Elliott writes that with the publication of ''Gender Trouble'', Butler established themself at the forefront of feminism, women's studies, lesbian and gay studies, and queer theory. According to Elliott, the core idea expounded in ''Gender Trouble'', that "gender is a kind of improvised performance, a form of theatricality that constitutes a sense of identity", came to be seen as "foundational to the project of queer theory and the advancing of dissident sexual practices during the 1990s." On November 23, 2018, the playwright Jordan Tannahill read the entirety of ''Gender Trouble'' outside the
Hungarian Parliament Building The Hungarian Parliament Building ( , ), also known as the Parliament of Budapest after its location, is the seat of the National Assembly of Hungary, a notable landmark of Hungary, and a popular tourist destination in Budapest. It is situated o ...
in protest of Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orbán Viktor Mihály Orbán (; born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian lawyer and politician who has been the 56th prime minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has also led the Fidesz political party since 200 ...
's decision to revoke accreditation and funding for gender studies programs in the country.


See also

*
Feminist philosophy Feminist philosophy is an approach to philosophy from a feminist perspective and also the employment of philosophical methods to feminist topics and questions. Feminist philosophy involves both reinterpreting philosophical texts and methods in ...
*
Poststructuralism Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of power. Although diffe ...
*
Third-wave feminism Third-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth-wave feminism, fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second-wave feminism, second wave, Generation X, Gen X ...
* '' Undoing Gender''


Notes


Citations


References

* * . * * * * * * * *


Further reading

* Judith Butler (1993). ''Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex''. New York. Routledge. * Vicki Kirby (2006), ''Judith Butler: Live Theory'', Continuum. {{Social philosophy 1990s LGBTQ literature 1990 non-fiction books American non-fiction books Books by Judith Butler Criticism of identity politics English-language non-fiction books Feminism and psychoanalysis Feminist books Gender studies books Intersex non-fiction LGBTQ literature in the United States LGBTQ non-fiction books Queer theory Postmodern feminism Routledge books