Judith Butler

Judith Butler (b. 1956) is the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She also has a professorial appointment at the European Graduate School.

Butler is a post-feminist philosopher, probably the most widely-read American post-feminist today. Her book Gender Trouble sold over 100,000 copies, making Butler a star in the world of theory, and breaking ground for what later came to be known as queer theory. Butler's work even inspired a fanzine, Judy!, that poked fun at her academic celebrity status. One of Butler's most significant contributions to critical theory is her performative model of gender, in which the categories "male" and "female" are understood as a repetition of acts instead of natural or inevitable absolutes. Butler also argued that the feminist movement cannot use or rely on a specific immutable definition of woman, and that to do so is imperialistic and counterproductive in that it perpetuates sexism. She also examines the ways that race, gender, sexual orientation, and other identities conflict and support each other.

Bibliography of Major Works

• 2000: Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (with Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek)
• 2000: Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death
• 1997: The Psychic Life of Power
• 1993: Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex'
• 1990: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
• 1987: Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France

External links

• Berkeley Faculty Biography - Judith Butler
• European Graduate School Faculty Website - Judith Butler
• theory.org.uk - Judith Butler Resources
• A comprehensive Judith Butler bibliography
• A criticism of Butler's thought

See also: Judith Butler, 1956, Biography, European Graduate School, Feminist, Gender Trouble, Gender role, Imperialism