Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex

by Butler; Judith

• ISBN13: 9780415610155
• ISBN10: 041561015X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-05-13
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In Bodies That Matter, renowned theorist and philosopher Judith Butler argues that theories of gender need to return to the most "material" dimension of sex and sexuality: the body. Butler offers a brilliant reworking of the body, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender.Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex" from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She offers a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in Gender Trouble and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory.

Author Biography

Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature and the Co-director of the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. She is presently the recipient of the Andrew Mellon Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in the Humanities.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vi
Preface	p. viii
Introduction	p. xi
	p. 1
Bodies That Matter	p. 3
The lesbian Phallus and the Morphological imaginary	p. 28
Phantasmatic Identification and the Assumption of Sex	p. 58
Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion	p. 81
	p. 99
"Dangerous Crossing": Willa Cather's Masculine Names	p. 101
Passing, Queering: Nella Larsen's Psychoanalytic Challenge	p. 122
Arguing with the Real	p. 139
Critically Queer	p. 169
Notes	p. 186
Index	p. 217
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