| Title | : | Undoing Gender |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0415969239 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780415969239 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2004 |
Undoing Gender Reviews
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Anyone who has read Judy Butler has had to contend with philosophical mind-benders of astonishing brilliance and tortured diction, such as: "What happens to the subject and to the stability of gender categories when the epistemic regime of presumptive heterosexuality is unmasked as that which produces and reifies these ostensible categories of ontology?" Which makes it all the more surprising to run into the same brilliance, the same incisiveness, but this time with a kind of heartrending poetry that absolutely cuts to the quick. Like from the first chapter:
"Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite one's best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel."
Make of that what you will. That paragraph has been haunting me for days. -
Before I read Judith Butler, I would have identified myself as a woman. But she says I'm wrong. At the most basic level I'm not necessarily a woman.
Butler sees gender as performance. Butler says anatomy has cultural framing. It is Performance, not an essence. Gender is performed without ones being conscious of it.
"Terms that make up ones own gender are outside oneself, beyond oneself in a sociality that has no author." Anatomy and sex have cultural framing. They are not natural, not essential, not pre-cultural.
You could have fooled me!
She says all this in incomprehensible jargon. I guess that's why she's a philosophy professor.
Believe it or not, her philosophy has caught on, in college campuses all across the country. Well. I just thought you should know. It was news to me.
On the subject of social norms Butler writes "The task of all these movements seems to me to be about distinguishing among the norms and conventions that permit people to breathe, to desire, to love, and to live, and those norms and conventions that restrict or eviscerate the conditions of life itself" and later she says "What is most important is to cease legislating for all lives what is livable only for some, and similarly, to refrain from prescribing for all lives what is unlivable for some." This, at least, makes sense. -
This one-star rating is probably unfair. Butler certainly made statements I agreed with, and is a widely respected feminist scholar who seems to be very important intellectually. But this book was a flaming heap as far as I'm concerned. In no essay did I ever figure out what she was actually trying to say, because she just rambles all over the place saying random things (using the biggest words possible) and never seems to have a point at all. The assertions I did understand seem actively unhelpful, like an effort to get everyone to disassociate themselves from their attributes.
The book is also almost completely devoid of examples. Maybe this is typical for psychoanalysis and/or philosophy, but I am a historian, so it calls her whole shtick into question for me. I don't buy an argument with no evidence, and what's more, I don't UNDERSTAND an argument with no evidence because there's no real-world situation to hang it onto, no question or problem to which she's proposing a solution. (While I can totally get behind some literary analysis, in fact I am a committed advocate for using fiction and pop culture more in history and other disciplines, an example from a play or a movie DOES NOT COUNT as evidence for the motivations of real people unless you specifically make that link. Just because it happened in a play doesn't mean it represents the whole of humanity.)
The whole thing just came off as pretentious. The Joan Scott book I read recently was dense, jargon-heavy, and challenging, but ultimately rewarding because it was written as simply as possible given the subject matter and she chose the specific words she needed. Butler just sounded like she was making stuff up to sound smart, but again, not actually saying anything. -
In her introduction to this collection of essays theorist and philosopher Judith Butler states why an ongoing critique of gender norms in not only necessary but vital: "Not so much to celebrate difference as such but to establish more inclusive conditions for sheltering and maintaining life that resists models of assimilation" (pg 4). She calls for trans, intersex and gender nonconforming people "to be treated with the presumption that their lives are and will be not only livable, but also occasions for flourishing" (pg 4). "The critique of gender norms must be situated within the context of lives as they are lived and must be guided by the question of what maximizes the possibilities for a livable life, and minimizes the possibility of unbearable life or, indeed, social or literal death" (pg 8).
I have no background in philosophy and was unfamiliar with most of the texts and thinkers Butler referenced, as well as some of the academic terms. I still found this a very readable and exciting book. I bought a physical copy so that I could mark it up as I went along, and I anticipate reading it in part or in full again in the future, applying new insights and gaining new meaning. -
Some people manage to convince the world of their intelligence by writing long, confusing sentences full of polysyllables about an emotionally charged subject. Their claims don't need to be testable, commonsensical or even intelligible. If they're intelligent-sounding, their opacity seems to actually work in the author's favour, perhaps because the reader assumes that their inability to understand is evidence of the author's sophistication.
If you'd like to spend some hours under a firehose of nonsense, I can't recommend this book enough. -
I'd heard this was the "accessible" Butler text, which is sorta true, but just remember--it's still Butler. I think perhaps the reason many people find this to be a more engaging text is that Butler's concerns, though densely theoretical, have more immediate 'real life' applications than, say, in Gender Trouble or Bodies that Matter. It seems Butler's become increasingly interested in what it might mean to be an ethical, incoherent/post-modern (ha) subject, and as such, her interests in regulatory regimes of gender, sexuality, & co. have shifted to concerns about reconstituting the notion of 'the human' as a way of encountering the other in an ethical way. Secondly, the book is more accessible because the essays included are essentially stand-alone essays--which isn't entirely different to some other texts (Bodies that Matter, in particular), but that the essays are also fairly distinct from one another. So there's a piece on intersexuality; one on the heterosexuality--in question for Butler, obvs.--of kinship systems; one concerning representations of incest, following in light of recent trauma theory; so on and so forth. I was most interested, I think, in Butler's rethinking of the human, and what makes for an unlivable life--this seems particularly resonant, because it navigates the line between theory (she's clearly working through Kristeva's idea of the abject--as well as her own earlier work on abjection in Bodies that Matter) and experience--why is it that some people quite literally are regarded, even if only implicitly, as subhuman? As less worthy of rights, dignity, respect? Butler's challenges have direct impact and the comparatively lucid style on display in this text makes it an often emotionally engaging read. Many people have quoted the "Let's fact it. We are all undone..." passage, and I think rightfully so. If Butler ever had dreams of creative stardom, they're probably most on display in this text--the writing is exciting and sometimes strangely beautiful.
Also, there's another great Butler joke about her exhaustion with the phallus, as well as some great "accounts of the self" scattered throughout--I believe in the last chapter, we're offered a picture of Butler as a tweenager; as might be expected, she's not brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack or swooning over the latest Teen Beat sweethearts, but rather, is reading Hegel and Spinoza, and generally being everything I imagined a mini-Butler might be.
It's a fabulous text--if you like Butler, grab it. If you hate her, grab it. If you've yet to check Butler out, I tend to agree with many--this is a good starting place. -
I often see people warning potential readers to stay away from Judith Butler due to the 'incomprehensibility' or 'difficulty' of the material. Should the style in which something is written decrease the value? Should all works be written to the same style and standard in order that they are acceptable?
Is comprehensibility a so-called valid outcome?
Butler addresses the issue of style in the new foreword to Gender Trouble: "It is no doubt strange, and madden-ing to some, to find a book that is not easily consumed to be “popular” according to academic standards. The surprise over this is perhaps attributable to the way we underestimate the reading public, its capacity and desire for reading complicated and challenging texts, when the complication is not gratuitous, when the challenge is in the service of calling taken-for-granted truths into question, when the taken for grantedness of those truths is, indeed, oppressive."
I would argue that easy answers are harmful. Can complex ideas truly be encapsulated in 'straightforward' writing or a simple diagram? Does the reduction of the idea to digestible simplicity remove the nuance? Finally, does simplicity of presentation argue an answer, rather than a question?
We claim to have answers to many concepts, and present them as fact, framework, acknowledged truths. Time, space, gender, history, sex. These ideas are often presented in summaries, as answers, as truths - and one would do well to interrogate the cultures and societies that bring forth these truths, these understood facts. Life is a question - a perpetual conversation.
Undoing Gender is a conversation. Butler never attempts to answer the complexity of gender; rather she asks question upon question, changing her approach and focus, pulling in new concepts and theories as the book progresses. Butler challenges the legitimacy of recognition of the diversity of being - who recognises? Who regulates? Is recognition harmful or helpful? In recognition, are we reduced to answers, rather than questions? We 'do' ourselves as we do 'gender' - perpetually, over and over, rewriting the self and the understanding of the self. We learn to present ourselves in a discourse that "denies the language [we] might want to use to describe who [we] are, how [we] got here, and what [we] want from this life."
Language limits us. Structure is dictated by power. When we 'do' gender, and categorise it using understood norms, do the understood norms apply or are they categories differently interpreted by the individual? When one 'does' woman, as another 'does' woman, is the category 'woman' a convenience and understood norm? If we 'do' woman differently, what is 'woman'?
This books gifts us with questions - I have a lifetime of questions. I will 'do' myself and overwrite myself as I live and the world lives alongside me. Will we reach a point when the multiplicity of genders that are done - a multitude, an infinity of genders - will be admitted into the terms that govern reality? Will we develop "a new legitimating lexicon for the gender complexity that we have always been living?" -
some sloppy opinions.
Butler asks a lot of questions, but barely ever appears too doubtful. Most of the time she isn't interested in providing her answers and opinions - which is what I read other people for. Questions aren't that hard to find alone. A book should provide clearly stated opinions, attempts at answers, rather than end every chapter with more extra issues than before. I can't help thinking she doesn't always want the reader to answer her questions and uses them for the sake of rhetorics; that this problem is a stylistic issue she can't help. She seems to avoid concrete judgements; I've just read her book and I know what questions she asks herself, what books she reads and what films she watches, but what does Judith Butler think ?
I wasn't particularly interested in the parts dealing with psychoanalysis or her accounts of transgendered people (something I think she could have said much more interesting things on). I loved the fragments on norms, probably because I hadn't read much about the subject before. After reading Undoing Gender, I'd like to know more about Butler's ideas on "being human", something I've never thought about the way she has. I wish she elaborated on the subject, providing some ethical or generally philosophical background. I thought there'd be more about how gender affects one as a person in the social sphere. Perhaps I'll find it in a different text of hers.
Some of her points seem obvious, and she's willing to go over and over them in simple language. At other times, she comes out with long and complicated sentences or vague references the reader is expected to understand - and I really don't know who this book is aimed at. I don't think she does herself. Some things I find simple fillers, and others, in chapter 2, I don't understand on the first reading. The chapters are too autonomical in the questions they want (and often don't want) answered, their language, their references. I know varied ways of looking at subjects are often the best, but here it was a little ill-fitting. Every chapter is for someone else, and the last one came out of the blue. It was interesting but I don't think it needed to be there. If she said anything about why she thinks the problems she deals with are philosophically valid, there'd be a point in talking about the two philosophies. I think these problems with unifying make the book hard to be enjoyable to anyone in full.
I will be returning to Butler, but I'm certainly critical of her method of writing and of which subjects she chooses to elaborate on. -
This is another philosophy book on the same lines of the
Michel Foucault we just read for class as well. And once again, what she is saying is very important but most of what is said is unattainable by the average reader. After discussing the concepts in class I would have given this book five stars, but I think that if someone picked up this book without that avenue for discussion much of the main concepts and theories would be lost.
I think that most of the book was not to get the reader to subscribe to a certain moral or ideal, but more to get the reader to think in a way that they have not before (example: legalization of gay marriage may work as a legitimization of those relationships, but in the end could ostracize other members of the community who were never looking for that type of legitimacy, the real answer maybe something other then marriage for everyone no matter your sexual preference - rather then defining something newly legitimized by something already considered a recognized norm maybe we need to look at the language we currently have). I believe that in the end she is trying to open up new conversation to address old arguments.
But if you chose to pick it up, please try chapters 3 and 4. They are very worth the work. -
More of a 3.5 rounded up, becomes a little too vague and circular. She asks exceptional questions but sometimes I got lost reading through her thought process.
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(writing a sincere review as if i didn't read this to further clarify something my good friend marysia mentioned in passing several months ago... straying away from discourse street i just want to accessibly immortalize my thoughts and opinions)
gender has become one of the philosophical questions of our current age; what is gender, does gender truly exist, is gender established or instituted, can gender be neutralized, etc.
"Undoing Gender" is an elegant and lengthy composite series of essays, most if not all text referential to each other, intended for those interested in and/or having foundational knowledge in philosophy (reoccurring references to Foucault's "history of sexuality" and Hegel's concept of desire, namely the desire for recognition), psychology and cultural feminism/feminist history and theory. the essays themselves are to a degree accessible without prior academic knowledge, theories are non-complex and presented in straightforward, easy-to-follow writing- though one would benefit from autodidactic research before and throughout the text. if the literary accessibility wasn't up for question, i would say this is essential queer reading. one could also "cherry-pick" essays based on interest.
many interpret Butler's ideology as ejective and dismissive of "male" and "female", the presented argument being that "male" and "female" are roles that we act out and perform, and the implication of gender as a performance would mean that there is an infinite quantity of possible performances rather than just two- the diminutive concept of two genders is embedded in political, legal and contemporary social discourse as it is bound with power and normativity, and this affects the livelihood of those that exist outside of the institution of the gender binary (Butler illustrates several excellent examples of this). Butler argues that "male" and "female" are parodies of their preexisting meanings, or rather, devoid of their meaning entirely (adding my own personal reference to baudrillard's theory of hyperreality and locke's value of semiotics: we are making meaning).
as a gender abolitionist, i agree with Butler's theoretical perspective offering an account of how the binary of masculine and feminine comes to exhaust the semantic field of gender ("To assume that gender always and exclusively means the matrix of the “masculine” and “feminine” is precisely to miss the critical point that the production of that coherent binary is contingent, that it comes at a cost..."). while my personal belief is that we are limited by language thus creating a question of developing a new legal, political, medical, social and literary lexicon theory for legitimating gender complexity (beyond the limiting singularity of the "two genders")- Butler elegantly organizes their theories on gender in short essay-format; their lived experiences as a caucasian non-binary lesbian, a long-standing community activist and university professor in the state of California being woven into their thought and taking into account the experiences of other groups. i enjoyed how they also openly assessed a critique from French philosopher Sylviane Agacinski on their own work in previous gender and queer theory, responding to bioessentialist comments and a strained homophobic remark with humour, and Butler can be quoted in another essay "I'm no great fan of the phallus." i laughed, love a comedic edge to a lengthy, serious read.
i have 26 pages of notes- this took me almost five months of casual, on-and-off reading from my living room to the downtown coffee shop hungover on a couple of hours of sleep. while i began autodidactic research on gender complexity online as a teenager and studied sexuality and gender theory as a young adult in university, coming to identify as a gender non-conforming lesbian in between, "Undoing Gender" has not given nor has it radicalized my scope of preexisting thought on the subject. instead, i would say it has echoed experiences and further organized philosophical inquisitions on gender- developing my aforementioned lexicon on gender complexity. like if Butler and i took a long walk together and i, having to take a longer route home, was left with a widened lens and a few literary references as a treat. something to enjoy and think about. i want to avoid the discourse. i am not walking down that street.
i enjoyed a couple of essays in particular; On Limits of Sexual Autonomy (how gender reduces us to the politics of our bodies), Natural/Cultural/State Law (how Western politics govern gender and sexuality), Longing for Recognition (references to the Hegelian rubric of the desire for recognition), the End of Sexual Difference (gender politics and postulation of identity), Butch Desire (comprehension of lesbian masculinity), and "Gender Trouble" & the Question of Survival (Butler's personal commentary addressing their previous text on queer theory, dated 14 years prior, and their lived experiences since publishing this text- i particularly enjoyed their involvement in activism as well as their lens on drag as a gender performance through the angle of a masculine lesbian. my favourite quote from the series in general is "one could describe me as a bar dyke who spent her days reading Hegel and her evenings, well, at the gay bar, which occasionally became a
drag bar." as this illustrated a familiarity and connected the little distance that exists between Butler and i.
there is a redoubling in a sense as i had previously mentioned i spent my teenage years reading some queer theory then studying some queer theory in university (i point to an emphasis on some). it's possible, this text being dated 2004, that Butler was always forming my foundational concepts on gender complexity and nonconformity. Butler can be quoted in their ending note as having written both "Gender Trouble" and "Undoing Gender" to expose a pervasive heterosexism in feminist theory and try to imagine a world in which those who live at some distance from gender norms, who live in the confusion of gender norms, might still understand themselves not only as living livable lives, but as deserving a certain kind of recognition. since the publication of this text, the question of social transformation and politics changed in the interim- the way we, even i having come-of-age within the many ideologies of gender in the current era, have seen significant widespread change, though not completely and not always positive, Butler having initially conceptualized a foundation for gender complexity and gender theory through the philosophical and political framework is what makes "Undoing Gender" not only essential queer reading, but should be ostensibly recognized as laying the groundwork for answering the current philosophical question of our generation- what is gender?
anyway i have a library fee to pay... (i actually don't) -
As we expect from Butler, an evocative and provocative book. This is a crucial book in understanding the history of gender in the last twenty years. To understand the history of Karens and 'terfs,' trajectories and pathways are found here.
But there is a subtlety in the monograph that has been lost in many of the recent debates about gender. Butler is prepared to make the argument - and take the time to offer subtleties and ambiguties - rather than assume the argument.
This is a well written book. While scholars may disagree with some of the arguments, they are arguments that are well made. , -
I do not understand this book. It feels like the ratio of verbosity to content approaches unfathomable heights. I'm used to being told that I should express myself more simply and I usually respond that there's a reason for my choice of complexity of expression. Here, I find myself on the other side of that fence.
I imagine that a large part of my inability to comprehend comes from my complete ignorance of a large part of the terminology and the concepts that Butler builds upon. However, perhaps self-indulgently, I also claim that her language is not wired the same way I am, it's not meant to be completely precise so that it is understood even by people who express themselves differently than it: on the contrary, it is quirky, highly stylized and is very much a performance, besides essays on its subject matter, which is gender.
I cannot make that distinction myself, not before I read some of the book's sources, especially Foucault, who is mentioned a lot in the first fifth.
However, I don't see myself finishing it. Not now, at any rate. -
"If queer theory is understood, by definition, to oppose all identity claims, including stable sex assignment, queer theory's claim to be opposed to the unwanted legislation of identity".
"Many people think that grief is privatizing, that it returns us to a solitary situation, but I think it exposes the constitutive sociality of the self, a basis for thinking a political community of a complex order".
"Gender is the apparatus by which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal, psychic, and performative that gender assumes".
"Every time I try to write about the body, the writing ends up being about language".
"What is the value of the "common"?" -
I think my difficulties with this book stem from two areas: 1. We had a week to read this for my class, in addition to several other articles. Judith Butler has never been cited as easy to read, and a read through in one day is certainly not enough time to unpack many of her thought-provoking statements. 2. I kept thinking of LDS church leaders saying that "the family is under attack", and realizing that if that is the case, Judith Butler is on the frontlines of the anti-traditional family side. Her social agenda seems to be to de-centralize the importance of marriage and families with fathers and mothers, something that I cannot agree with.
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A brilliant but somewhat uneven collection of essays. Your mileage may vary as to what resonates and what's skippable: for me the critiques of Lacanian psychoanalysis definitely fell into the latter category. I'd thought that the Oedipal complex had about the scientific currency of phlogiston; it was astonishing to see that Freud and Lacan arent' dead yet, but beyond that, not a great investment of my time. The remaining essays, however, are sheer gold.
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Brilliant writing. The essay format is great because once I'm bored with 1 topic she's onto the next. She puts her personality into it despite the "dryness" of the content.
I wouldn't read this without a background in French theory. These 2 books provide a good basis:
-Irigaray & Deleuze: Experiments in Visceral Philosophy
-Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction
Hegel's important but I have zero exposure. Recommendations? -
I didn't read the last essay as I had to return the book to the library.
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It's a fabulous text--if you like Butler, grab it. If you hate her, grab it. If you've yet to check Butler out, I tend to agree with many--this is a good starting place.
In her introduction to this collection of essays theorist and philosopher, Judith Butler states why an ongoing critique of gender norms in not only necessary but vital: "Not so much to celebrate difference as such but to establish more inclusive conditions for sheltering and maintaining a life that resists models of assimilation" (pg 4). She calls for trans, intersex and gender-nonconforming people "to be treated with the presumption that their lives are and will be not only livable but also occasions for flourishing" (pg 4). "The critique of gender norms must be situated within the context of lives as they are lived and must be guided by the question of what maximizes the possibilities for a livable life, and minimizes the possibility of unbearable life or, indeed, social or literal death" (pg 8).
It seems Butler's become increasingly interested in what it might mean to be an ethical, incoherent/post-modern (ha) subject, and as such, her interests in regulatory regimes of gender, sexuality, & co. have shifted to concerns about reconstituting the notion of 'the human' as a way of encountering the other in an ethical way. Secondly, the book is more accessible because the essays included are essentially stand-alone essays--which isn't entirely different to some other texts (Bodies that Matter, in particular), but that the essays are also fairly distinct from one another. So there's a piece on intersexuality; one on heterosexuality--in question for Butler, obvs.--of kinship systems; one concerning representations of incest, following in light of recent trauma theory; so on and so forth. I was most interested, I think, in Butler's rethinking of the human, and what makes for an unlivable life--this seems particularly resonant because it navigates the line between theory Butler's challenges have a direct impact and the comparatively lucid style on display in this text makes it an often emotionally engaging read. Many people have quoted the "Let's face it. We are all undone..." passage, and I think rightfully so. If Butler ever had dreams of creative stardom, they're probably most on display in this text--the writing is exciting and sometimes strangely beautiful.
Also, there's another great Butler joke about her exhaustion with the phallus, as well as some great "accounts of the self" scattered throughout--I believe in the last chapter, we're offered a picture of Butler as a teenager; as might be expected, she's not brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack or swooning over the latest Teen Beat sweethearts, but rather, is reading Hegel and Spinoza, and generally being everything I imagined a mini-Butler might be.
I often see people warning potential readers to stay away from Judith Butler due to the 'incomprehensibility' or 'difficulty' of the material. Should the style in which something is written decrease the value? Should all works be written to the same style and standard in order that they are acceptable?
Undoing Gender is a conversation. Butler never attempts to answer the complexity of gender; rather she asks question upon question, changing her approach and focus, pulling in new concepts and theories as the book progresses. Butler challenges the legitimacy of recognition of the diversity of being - who recognises? Who regulates? Is recognition harmful or helpful? In recognition, are we reduced to answers, rather than questions? We 'do' ourselves as we do 'gender' - perpetually, over and over, rewriting the self and the understanding of the self. We learn to present ourselves in a discourse that "denies the language [we] might want to use to describe who [we] are, how [we] got here, and what [we] want from this life."
Butler also addresses the issue of style in the new foreword to Gender Trouble: "It is no doubt strange, and maddening to some, to find a book that is not easily consumed to be “popular” according to academic standards. The surprise over this is perhaps attributable to the way we underestimate the reading public, its capacity and desire for reading complicated and challenging texts, when the complication is not gratuitous when the challenge is in the service of calling taken-for-granted truths into question when the taken for the grandness of those truths is, indeed, oppressive."
I would argue that easy answers are harmful. Can complex ideas truly be encapsulated in 'straightforward' writing or a simple diagram? Does the reduction of the idea to digestible simplicity remove the nuance? Finally, does the simplicity of presentation argue an answer, rather than a question?
We claim to have answers to many concepts, and present them as fact, framework, acknowledged truths. Time, space, gender, history, sex. These ideas are often presented in summaries, as answers, as truths - and one would do well to interrogate the cultures and societies that bring forth these truths, these understood facts. Life is a question - a perpetual conversation. Language limits us. The structure is dictated by power. When we 'do' gender, and categorise it using understood norms, do the understood norms apply or are they categories differently interpreted by the individual? When one 'does' woman, as another 'does' woman, is the category 'woman' a convenience and understood norm? If we 'do' women differently, what is 'woman'?
This book gifts us with questions - I have a lifetime of questions. I will 'do' myself and overwrite myself as I live and the world lives alongside me. Will we reach a point when the multiplicity of genders that are done - a multitude, an infinity of genders - will be admitted into the terms that govern reality? Will we develop "a new legitimating lexicon for the gender complexity that we have always been living?" -
Felsefe ve feminizme ilgi duyuyorsanız, bu kitabı çok seveceksiniz. İnsanı karşısındakine söylediği sözden yaptıklarına kadar düşünmeye davet eden kitap Barış Engin Aksoy çevirisiyle MonoKL Kitap'ta!
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In this, Butler establishes herself as one devout Hegelian - Foucaldian scholar and in the course of making her arguments, she critiques other similar thinkers and their works.
She begins this book with a pivotal question as to ‘what kind of lives is livable? What kind of lives is grievable?’, wherein she establishes that in the moment of recognition , we are always undone i.e. we do not continue to stay our previous selves and are thus negated. For Butler, this negation is the very locus of our recognition and thereafter she extensively studies this experience of becoming ‘undone’ in the context of gender which is simultaneously done to us and done by us.
Before the book delves into gender, per say, Butler examines into forms and embodiment of desire, sexuality, sexual difference,fantasy,kinship , psychoanalysis, the prevalent diagnostic practices and has several interesting insights to offer therein. At often times, she also appears abstruse for her complex style of writing and the lose arguments that she makes like for instance, her views on the ‘incest taboo’.
The book is not a seminal text on queer theory but she does challenge the heteronormative culture that shapes identity, desire and kinship. Queer theory, for her, opposes the unwanted legislation of identity. Identity, which for her, has been made into one congealed entity , constrained by the enormous machinery of ‘mainstream’ at work...the very mainstream that assumes ‘reality’, ‘truth’ and thus holds power.
She denounces upholding marriage for ‘non binary’ togetherness (which invariably every campaign that advocates queer rights does ) because marriage makes a model for social legitimacy and this constrains the sociality of body. Further , marriage, is a heteronormative construct and even when non binary folks undergo the praxis of marriage, they are invariably reduced to a typical heterosexist coupling. Marriage being ‘lawful’ reaps several benefits like parenting, considerable acceptance and thus is instrumental in one’s safer manoeuvring in the socio-cultural framework while for people who are in other arrangements like non-marriage, polyamory etc are stripped of recognition. Its hence imperative to expand the notions of kinship beyond heterosexual frames and she seeks an expansion of Freedom and Justice which for her should also embrace what it couldn’t contain before. For her, the human rights campaign should always uphold the spirit of rearticulation and renegotiation so that a greater diversity could be recognised without being reduced to a heteronormative rhetoric.
Butler has a very interesting insight on ‘fantasy’, which according to her, is an articulation of the possible , an extension of the real and thus the foreclosure of fantasy, puts a constraint on the possibility of reality. This foreclosure of fantasy prepares grounds for social death. Thus, people embodying their fantasies are received as ‘unreal’, they are stripped off their subjectivity and are thus illegible and apolitical.
She says that the non violent response to the non normative or the Other is to live with its unknowingness and to not strive forming ties of ‘commonality’ with it because ‘commonality’ erases the possibility in the Other and thus forecloses it with our normative knowledge. She upholds ‘cultural translation’ which makes our most fundamental categories vulnerable and brittle in the face of a new episteme and thus rearticulates itself.
She takes up the David / Brenda case study to establish the fluidity of gender , the pathologization of a different embodiment and its correction. Butler says that the humannness of David Reimer emerges from the ‘not fully recognisable/disposable/ categorisable’ in him i.e, from the part of his self which is beyond discourse.
She critiques ‘diagnosis’ which, on one hand, gives will to the non conforming while on the other, it breaks their will by trying to pathologize their condition and thus reinforcing the very gender norms.
She urges for a reevaluation even of the usual binaries saying that there are middle grounds, unintelligible blind spots in them which are ineffable. These are sites of uncertain ontology. For her, sexual difference is not reducible to biology, culture , psyche or societal factors. It is an ontologically indeterminable category which is neither fully given nor fully constructed. Thus, for her, sexual difference offers a high potential site of rearticulation and reaffirmation.
The chapters in this book are independent essays. Some are personal. For example , the last essay ‘Can the Other of Philosophy speak?’ Is Butler tracing her evolution as a thinker and how she sees philosophy enriching itself through its Other , an interdisciplinary approach. How philosophy in its institutional form shall always stay confined. However, I dont find its relevance with the other essays.
On certain occasions, the book appears repetitive , possibly because these are independent essays revolving around the same arguments and yet quite disjointed. On others, it appears like a needless intellectual gymnastics. While some arguments are radical , others simply dont make any sense even if they may apparently be radical. She also appears to be romanticising the ‘drag culture’ which i feel is both an exploration into one’s fantasies, sexuality , desires , modes of recognition and thus constitutes a political field but it also reinforces the same heteronormative dyad. It required a more careful dissection on her part. Similarly, a few more portions felt half baked.
Above all,the ambiguity is worth an indulgence, though. -
El libro parte del presupuesto de corregir alguna delas posiciones de Butler en obras anteriores, pero va mucho más allá de matizar y ampliar nuevas posturas. No he leído todos los capítulos (he pasado de los del incesto y el parentesco porque la antropología es para pringados), pero todos tienen en común el acercamiento hegeliano a la identidad tan típico en Butler y otros académicos de su época más cercanos a una concepción liberal/progresista (Taylor, por ejemplo) según el cual la identidad solo es posible a través del reconocimiento del Otro.
Y es este nexo común entre todos los ensayos lo que hace que el libro de Butler sea mucho más político que otros trabajos anteriores (pienso en El género en disputa, que releeré a la luz de este, pero también en Cuerpos que importan) , entendiendo lo político como lo entiende Butler: como ese campo casi arendtiano en el que lo social y lo individual se separan pero a la vez se unen, lo que encaja con su concepción performativa del género (que en esta obra mantiene, si bien enfatiza el papel de la materialidad del cuerpo y replantea, de forma cuanto menos interesante, el papel del diagnóstico y su relevancia a la hora de afirmar una identidad propia).
Si tuviese que quedarme con uno de los ensayitos, el de La cuestión de la transformación social me parece que es el que vertebra (si bien vertebrar puede que no sea la palabra, se asemeja más a un hilo conductor oculto que solo se explicita en ese capítulo) toda la obra. Además de confrontar directamente sus tesis actuales (bueno, de 2004) con las que defiende en El género en disputa y de abrir un interesantísimo debate con Braidotti, plantea una distinción que creo que la teoría social y política debería tener más en cuenta, sobre todo al referirse a la identidad de personas LGTB: la que existe entre mera opresión e irrealidad. Ser llamado disímil, una copia que no se ajusta al esquema, no es solo una forma de opresión, es una forma de negación de la propia identidad al situar al sujeto en ese afuera constitutivo (Derrida no aparece apenas en el libro, pero su sombra inunda toda la obra), en ese "como si" que incluye dentro de la norma social por su exclusión: "ser irreal es [...] hallarse en la situación de hablar siempre como si se fuera humano pero con la sensación de que no se es humano" (p. 308)
En resumen, una revisión de El género en disputa que no se queda en mera revisión, sino que expande los puentes que su obra iniciática había construido mientras se sumerge en cuestiones que, dejadas de lado en sus trabajos anteriores, aquí se replantean como axiales. -
Butler es brillante. La lectura es desafiante, difícil, pero una vez que cala, remueve.
Me resultó particularmente interesante su concepción del cuerpo como el lugar en el que se inscribe la red normativa de la cual se deduce, no solamente la distinción entre lo correcto y esperable frente a lo incorrecto e inaceptable, sino también la inteligibilidad del sujeto.
Otro de los puntos que me fascinó fue el del deseo del sujeto como deseo de reconocimiento en su calidad de tal, de agente y actor político que fuerza un camino transversal a la norma, pero que se redobla a sí mismo porque no puede escapar de ella: necesita de dicha transversalidad porque se define en relación a ella.
¿Cómo escapar, cómo salirnos de la normatividad obligatoria cuando es precisamente en virtud de ella que los sujetos somos inteligibles?
«Afrontémoslo. Nos deshacemos unos a otros. Y si no, nos estamos perdiendo de algo. Si esto se ve tan claro en el caso del duelo, es tan solo porque este ya es el caso del deseo. No siempre nos quedamos intactos. Puede ser que lo queramos, o que lo estemos, pero también puede ser que, a pesar de nuestros mejores esfuerzos, seamos deshechos frente al otro, por el tacto, por el olor, por el sentir, por la esperanza del contacto, por el recuerdo del sentir. Así, cuando hablamos de mi sexualidad o de mi género (...) queremos decir algo complicado. Ni mi sexualidad ni mi género son precisamente una posesión, sino que ambos deben ser entendidos como maneras de ser desposeído, maneras de ser para otro, o de hecho, en virtud de otro.» (pág. 38) -
First of all, I wanna point out how confusing it was to me, that even though some pats of the book are completely intelligible, some are weighed down by how liberal she is with using rare, obscure, anglicised Latin words, etc. It's not that she uses technical terms, which is fine, but rather also makes simple thoughts needlessly convoluted. The first thing they tell you at a BA-level English department thesis writing seminar is to write clearly and only use special/rare words when you have to for technical terms and accuracy. A suprisingly novice attitude, in my eyes.
However, I understood and felt some other thoughts, like being undone by not being recognised in the first few chapters (like lesbians not being punished by law or the public, since their existence was not even acknowledged at certain times in European/American cultures).
I also very much appreciated her point that non-hetero, non-man-on-woman sexual harassment reinforces sexual and gender norms, having been in that situation and suffering from this issue. Her chapter about intersex bodies and about Antigone were also more fun and understandable (although the part about Antigone connected to gender a bit too vaguely for me). The chapter called "Bodily Confessions" was interesting, but nothing too life-changing, new, grandiose. -
Butler’s prose in this book is much clearer than in most works of theory, even with frequent reference to Foucault, Irigaray, Deleuze, Hegel, and many such thinkers. Still, the concepts she discusses make my brain hurt, and I think she would be happy with that, contending that the questions are more valuable than any approximation of answers. Underlying most of the chapters, many of which were published or presented in earlier versions, is the perception that undoing gender requires social transformation. When social norms allow people to view certain others as not quite human and therefore not worthy of human rights, grief, or even life itself, the society needs to change: “The point is to try to imagine a world in which individuals with mixed gender attributes might be accepted and loved without having to transform them into a more socially coherent or normative version of gender.” She suggests that continuing to ask the questions from many different disciplinary perspectives could be a way toward that world. Instead of naming new genders, she says, “It is a question of developing, within law, within psychiatry, within social and literary theory, a new legitimating lexicon for the gender complexity that we have always been living.” Much to think about.
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I'm very mixed on this one. There are a lot of Butler haters out there and I kind of get what they mean when they say she is unnecessarily obtuse and verbose, but you just described some of the most read and studied philosophers in the Western Canon. I find her over-reliance on Lacanian psychoanalysis to be tiring and how unsystematic she is in her arguments can be pretty frustrating. Some philosophers can pull off the "postmodern" style but it usually involves either a dose of Nietzsche's antagonism or Kierkegaard's method of indirect communication. (Butler talks about admiring Kierkegaard and she should take some cues from his techniques.)
But there are also a ton of things Butler gets at in this collection of essays that is not only great but indispensable. She questions the hetero-normative basis of contemporary feminist theory. She contextualizes transgender identity and intersex issues in bold and interesting ways. She even wonders about the state of contemporary philosophy. Butler's views challenge those of radical feminists, liberal feminists and socialist and Marxist feminists alike to look at the limitations of their own systems.
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The Question of Social Transformation
p.214 – Let me continue, then, by offering a few propositions to consider:
A. What operates at the level of cultural fantasy is not finally dissociable from the ways in which material life is organized.
B. When one performance of gender is considered real and another false, or when one presentation of gender is considered authentic, and another fake, then we can conclude that a certain ontology of gender is conditioning these judgments, an ontology (an account of what gender is) that is also put into crisis by the performance of gender in such a way that these judgments are undermined or become impossible to make.
C. The point to emphasize here is not that drag is subversive of gender norms, but that we live, more or less implicitly, with received notions of reality, implicit accounts of ontology, which determine what kinds of bodies and sexualities will be considered real and true, and which kind will not.
p.218 – If gender is performative, then it follows that the reality of gender is itself produced as an effect of the performance. -
Tengo que admitir que me costó bastante leerlo, más del que ya había leído. Pensando en que se enfocaría mucho más en la historia y en como vamos aprendiendo a deshacer lo binario del genero, pero es un libro mucho más político y como siempre muy filosófico.
Todo lo que toca y explica en el libro es muy necesario para entender porque hoy en día lo binario esta tan impregnado en todxs, pero me falto un poco del como esto se va deshaciendo y entender que hay diversos géneros y cuerpos.
Aún así es un libro interesante y donde dice que el feminismo incluye todas las “minorías” que no somos minorías y que no puedes ser feminista si no estas con les trans, queers, gays, etc.
