Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

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Routledge, 1990 - Psychology - 172 pages
Since its publication in 1990, "Gender Trouble" has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. As Judith Butler writes in the major essay that stands as preface to the new edition, one point of "Gender Trouble" was 'not to prescribe a new gendered way of life, but to open of the field of possibility for gender.' Widely taught, and widely debated, "Gender Trouble" continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world. Judith Butler's new preface situates "Gender Trouble" within the past decade of work on gender, and counters some common misconceptions about the book and its aims.

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Contents

Subjects of SexGenderDesire
1
Identity Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance
16
Prohibition Psychoanalysis and the Production of
35
Copyright

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About the author (1990)

Judith Butler was born in 1956. She is nationally known for her writings on gender and sexuality. She argues that men and women are not dissimilar and that the notion they are is cultural not biological in books such as Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of "Sex" (1993), Excitable Speech: Contemporary Scenes Of Politics (1996), and The Psychic Life Of Power: Theories In Subjection (1997). In Gender Trouble (1990), the title a play on John Waters' camp classic Female Trouble (1975), Butler claims that both gender and drag are a kind of imitation for which there is no original. A professor of philosophy at University of California at Berkeley, Butler attended Yale, receiving a B.A. in 1978 and a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1984.

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