The Judith Butler Reader

Judith Butler, Sara Salih

Wiley, Mar 5, 2004 - Social Science - 374 pages

Judith Butler’s work has challenged and changed the frames of reference within which people speak, think, and live categories of identity. Her innovative and politically far-reaching insight that gender is performative and that identity is a scene of construction continues to exert a crucial impact in numerous critical-theoretical fields, including politics, philosophy, feminist and queer theory, literary and cultural studies. Behind Butler’s radical theorizations of gender, sex, sexuality, power, and “race” lies the urgent normative inquiry into the differential way the human is produced and effaced within the field of contemporary power. The Judith Butler Reader is a collaborative effort by Sara Salih and Judith Butler to bring together writings that span Butler’s impressive career as a critical philosopher, including selections from both well-known and lesser-known works. Salih’s introduction emphasizes the political and ethical importance of Butler’s ideas, and she supplies editorial material that will assist students in their readings of theories that stand at the forefront of contemporary theoretical and political debates.

What people are saying

Review: The Judith Butler Reader

User Review  - Sandy - Goodreads

The essay "Imitation and Gender Insubordination" is the essay to explain Butler's theories on gender. It is better than her book "Gender Trouble". Butler has a complex and interesting theory but it is ...

Review: The Judith Butler Reader

User Review  - Litro - Goodreads

A collection of central passages from Butler's eminent works on gender and sexuality. Difficulty to read and digest, unless one has some familiarity with Hegel and and a grasp of Foucault. A must read for those studying gender and sexuality from any perspective or paradigm.

About the author

Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She has published widely in the fields of continental philosophy, literary theory, feminist and queer theory, and cultural politics. Her books include Precarious Life: Powers of Mourning and Violence (Verso, 2003) and Undoing Gender (Routledge, 2004).Sara Salih is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto. She is editor of The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (2000) and author of Judith Butler (2002).

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Judith Butler Reader
• Editors: Judith Butler, Sara Salih
• Contributor: Judith Butler
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Wiley, 2004
• ISBN: 0631225943, 9780631225942
• Length: 374 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / History & Surveys / Modern; Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory; Social Science / Gay Studies; Social Science / Gender Studies; Social Science / Media Studies