About this title: One of the classic works in feminist theory, originally published in 1990. Judith P. Butler critiques what she calls "heteronormativity" and argues for new ways of looking at gender and sexuality.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: 1st edition
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: ROUTLEDGE CHAPMAN HALL
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780415389556ISBN:0415389550
Description: New. As celebrated as it is controversial, "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. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Routledge
Date Published: 2006-05-01
ISBN-13:9780415389556ISBN:0415389550
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780415389556. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Routledge
Date Published: 1989-11-15
ISBN-13:9780415900430ISBN:0415900433
Description: Good. Excellent customer service. May ship from alternate location depending on your zip code and availability. Satisfaction guaranteed! ! read more
"It took me a long time to read this book because I read it in the midst of doing a bunch of other things I would rather not do (work, take classes), and I had to return it to the library because I had exceeded my renewal limit, and so I checked it out again, and I will admit to only having read this book because of Zizek's (op?)position vis a vis Judith Butler. But considering I struggled to find the time to read it (or perhaps because of this(?)), and admittedly reading it for perhaps less than noble reasons, I can't say enough good things about Gender Trouble.
Butler presents her sophisticated argument without obfuscation or resorting to the esoteric. In Butler, we see that Foucault is still not only relevant but vital. Here Butler also takes on many of the heavyweights of (French?) feminism (along with Freud and Lacan (though in the case of these two, not to the extent of, Irigaray)), and she is clearly up to the task.
Just to let Butler's prose speak for itself and save me from having to summarize an otherwise complicated argument, "That gender reality is created through sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a true or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part of the strategy that conceals gender's performative character and the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality." Can't stand a lot of of this Foucaultianist constructions? You might not like this book? For me, it made me want to read Foucault again.
So, yes, after having read this, I am planning on re-reading Foucault's "History of Sexuality Vol. I" and I also have some Monique Wittig on reserve at the library, both of which are something of a detour of the books I had planned on reading (albeit, everything I was planning on reading could be categorized within something of a narrow field). And, if, perhaps, the best that can be said of a book was that it was good enough to make one stop wanting to read the books one had planned on reading in order to read others related to it, then truly this is an excellent work."
"from the 1st paragraph of the preface: "To make trouble was, within the reigning discourse of my childhood, something one should never do precisely because that would get one IN trouble. The rebellion and its reprimand seemed to be caught up in the same terms, a phenomenon that gave rise to my first critical insight into the subtle ruse of power: The prevailing law threatened one with trouble, even put one in trouble, all to keep one out of trouble. Hence, I concluded that trouble is inevitable and the task, how best to make it, what best way to be in it."
Think of this book as Foucault brought into the present day and with a lot of current science included.
Not easy, it makes the point in as many ways as possible and over and over that we make a mistake to believe that gender is anything other than a cultural construct. I can never 'be' 7 foot tall, but I can live as male a life as I want to create. Or more to the point for me, I can live as much or as little of a feminine live as I care to.
from the library computer: PREFACE (1999) vii PREFACE (1990) xxix 1 Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire 1 (46) I "Women" as the subject of feminism 2 (6) II The compulsory order of sex/gender/desire 8 (2) III Gender: the circular ruins of contemporary debate 10 (8) IV Theorizing the binary, the unitary, and beyond 18 (4) V Identity, sex, and the metaphysics of substance 22 (12) VI Language, power, and the strategies of displacement 34 (13) 2 Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix 47 (60) I Structuralism's critical exchange 52 (7) II Lacan, Riviere, and the strategies of masquerade 59 (19) III Freud and the melancholia of gender 78 (11) IV Gender complexity and the limits of identification 89 (8) V Reformulating prohibition as power 97 (10) 3 Subversive Bodily Acts 107 (87) I The body politics of Julia Kristeva II Foucault, Herculine, and the politics of sexual discontinuity III Monique Wittig: bodily disintegration and fictive sex IV Bodily inscriptions, performative subversions Conclusion: From Parody to Politics NOTES INDEX"
By Ellie,
Henley-On-Thames, OXON, The United Kingdom
"Although this is rather dense at first, I think its definately a work of brilliance!
The main thrust of Butler's argument is that the coherence of the categories of sex, gender, and sexuality is culturally constructed through the repetition of stylized acts in time. Or in plain English, that we are socially conditioned from an early age to behave in ways that are according to our social ideas of our gender.
Thus girls will be seen as, and therefore start to behave in a "girly" way.
It is worth reading, and will give you great food for thought, but it might be better to start with a book about it, or with an edition that comes with a large amount of footnote from an editor!"
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