“Judith Butler”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Butler is best known for her books Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (1993), in which she challenges conventional notions of gender and develops her theory of gender performativity. This theory has had a major influence on feminist and queer scholarship.^[6] Her works are often studied in film studies courses emphasizing gender studies and performativity in discourse.

Butler has supported lesbian and gay rights movements and has spoken out on many contemporary political issues.^[7] In particular, she is a vocal critic of Zionism, Israeli politics,^[8] and its effect on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, emphasizing that Israel does not and should not be taken to represent all Jews or Jewish opinion.^[9]

Early life and education

Judith Butler was born on February 24, 1956, in Cleveland, Ohio,^[2] to a family of Hungarian-Jewish and Russian-Jewish descent.^[10] Most of her maternal grandmother's family perished in the Holocaust.^[11] As a child and teenager, she attended both Hebrew school and special classes on Jewish ethics, where she received her "first training in philosophy". Butler stated in a 2010 interview with Haaretz that she began the ethics classes at the age of 14 and that they were created as a form of punishment by her Hebrew school's Rabbi because she was "too talkative in class".^[11] Butler also stated that she was "thrilled" by the idea of these tutorials, and when asked what she wanted to study in these special sessions, she responded with three questions preoccupying her at the time: "Why was Spinoza excommunicated from the synagogue? Could German Idealism be held accountable for Nazism? And how was one to understand existential theology, including the work of Martin Buber?"^[12]

Butler attended Bennington College before transferring to Yale University, where she studied philosophy, receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978 and her Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1984.^[13] She spent one academic year at Heidelberg University as a Fulbright Scholar.^[14] She taught at Wesleyan University, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins University before joining University of California, Berkeley, in 1993.^[17] In 2002 she held the Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam.^[15] In addition, she joined the department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University as Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Visiting Professor of the Humanities in the spring semesters of 2012, 2013 and 2014 with the option of remaining as full-time faculty.^[16]^[17]^[18]^[19]

Butler serves on the editorial board or advisory board of several academic journals, including JAC: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Politics and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.^[20]^[21]

Overview of major works

Performative Acts and Gender Constitution (1988)

In the essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution", Judith Butler proposes that gender is a performance. She draws on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir, noting that both thinkers ground their theories in "lived experience" and view the sexual body as a historical idea or situation.^[22] Butler distinguishes "between sex, as biological facticity, and gender, as the cultural interpretation or signification of that facticity."^[22]

Butler argues that gender is best perceived as a performance, which suggests that it has a social audience. For Butler, the "script" of gender performance is effortlessly transmitted generation to generation in the form of socially established "meanings": She states, "gender is not a radical choice ... [nor is it] imposed or inscribed upon the individual".^[22] Given the social nature of human beings, most actions are witnessed, reproduced, and internalized and thus take on a performative or theatric quality. According to Butler's theory, gender is essentially a performative repetition of acts associated with the male or female. Currently, the actions appropriate for men and women have been transmitted to produce a social atmosphere that both maintains and legitimizes a seemingly natural gender binary.^[22] Consistently with her acceptance of the body as a historical idea, she suggests that our concept of gender is seen as natural or innate because the body "becomes its gender through a series of acts which are renewed, revised, and consolidated through time".^[22]

Butler argues that the performance of gender itself creates gender. Additionally, she compares the performativity of gender to the performance of the theater. She brings many similarities, including the idea of each individual functioning as an actor of their gender. However, she also brings to light a critical difference between gender performance in reality and theater performances. She explains how the theater is much less threatening and does not produce the same fear that gender performances often encounter because of the fact that there is a clear distinction from reality within the theater.

Butler uses Sigmund Freud's notion of how a person's identity is modeled in terms of the normal. She revises Freud's notion of this concept's applicability to lesbianism, where Freud says that lesbians are modeling their behavior on men, the perceived normal or ideal. She instead says that all gender works in this way of performativity and a representing of an internalized notion of gender norms.^[23]

Gender Trouble (1990)

The crux of Butler's argument in Gender Trouble is that the coherence of the categories of sex, gender, and sexuality—the natural-seeming coherence, for example, of masculine gender and heterosexual desire in male bodies—is culturally constructed through the repetition of stylized acts in time. Although the repeated, stylized bodily acts establish the appearance of an essential, ontological "core" gender, Butler understands gender, along with sex and sexuality, to be performative. Butler explicitly challenges biological accounts of binary sex.^[27] The performance of gender is not voluntary, in Butler's opinion, and she believes the gendered, sexed, desiring subject must be constructed within what she calls, borrowing from Foucault's Discipline and Punish, "regulative discourses." These, also called "frameworks of intelligibility" or "disciplinary regimes," determine in advance what possibilities of sex, gender, and sexuality are socially permitted to appear as coherent or "natural".{{Citation needed|date=March 2010}} Regulative discourse includes disciplinary techniques that coerce the stylized actions and thereby maintain the appearance of "core" gender, sex and sexuality.^[28]

The supposed obviousness of sex as a natural fact attests to how deeply its production in discourse is concealed. The sexed body, once established as a natural fact, is the alibi for constructions of gender and sexuality, which then purport to be the just-as-natural expressions or consequences of sex. In Butler's account, it is on the basis of the construction of natural binary sex that binary gender and heterosexuality are likewise constructed as natural.^[29] Butler claims that without a critique of sex as produced by discourse, the sex/gender distinction as a feminist strategy for contesting constructions of binary asymmetric gender and compulsory heterosexuality will be ineffective.^[30]

Butler offers a critique of the terms gender and sex as they have been used by feminists.^[31] Butler argues that feminism made a mistake in trying to make "women" a discrete, ahistorical group with common characteristics. Butler writes that this approach reinforces the binary view of gender relations. Butler believes that feminists should not try to define "women" and she also believes that feminists should "focus on providing an account of how power functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in the society at large but also within the feminist movement."^[32] Finally, Butler aims to break the supposed links between sex and gender so that gender and desire can be "flexible, free floating and not caused by other stable factors". The idea of identity as free and flexible and gender as a performance, not an essence, is one of the foundations of queer theory.

Imitation and Gender Insubordination (1990)

Judith Butler explores the production of identities such as homosexual and heterosexual and the limiting nature of identity categories. An identity category for her is a result of certain exclusions and concealments, and thus a site of regulation. Butler acknowledges, however, that categorized identities are important for political action at the present time. Butler believes that identity forms through repetition or imitation and is not original. Imitation fosters the illusion of continuity. Heterosexual identity, which is set up as an ideal, requires constant, compulsive repetition if it is to be safeguarded.^[33]

Bodies That Matter (1993)

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" seeks to clear up readings and supposed misreadings of performativity that view the enactment of sex/gender as a daily choice.^[34] Butler emphasizes the role of repetition in performativity, making use of Derrida's theory of iterability, which is a form of citationality:

This concept is linked to Butler's discussion of performativity. Iterability, in its endless undeterminedness as to-be-determinedness, is thus precisely that aspect of performativity that makes the production of the "natural" sexed, gendered, heterosexual subject possible, while also and at the same time opening that subject up to the possibility of its incoherence and contestation.{{Technical statement|date=July 2011}}

Excitable Speech (1997)

In Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, Butler surveys the problems of hate speech and censorship. She argues that censorship is difficult to evaluate, and that in some cases it may be useful or even necessary, while in others it may be worse than tolerance.^[36]

Butler argues that hate speech exists retrospectively, only after being declared such by state authorities. In this way, the state reserves for itself the power to define hate speech and, conversely, the limits of acceptable discourse. In this connection, Butler criticizes feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon's argument against pornography for its unquestioning acceptance of the state's power to censor.^[37]

Deploying Foucault's argument from the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Butler claims that any attempt at censorship, legal or otherwise, necessarily propagates the very language it seeks to forbid.^[38] As Foucault argues, for example, the strict sexual mores of 19th-century Western Europe did nothing but amplify the discourse of sexuality they sought to control.^[39] Extending this argument using Derrida and Lacan, Butler claims that censorship is primitive to language, and that the linguistic I is a mere effect of an originary censorship. In this way, Butler questions the possibility of any genuinely oppositional discourse; "If speech depends upon censorship, then the principle that one might seek to oppose is at once the formative principle of oppositional speech".^[40]

Undoing Gender (2004)

Undoing Gender collects Butler's reflections on gender, sex, sexuality, psychoanalysis and the medical treatment of intersex people for a more general readership than many of her other books. Butler revisits and refines her notion of performativity and focuses on the question of undoing "restrictively normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life".

Butler discusses how gender is performed without one being conscious of it, but says that it does not mean this performativity is "automatic or mechanical". She argues that we have desires that do not originate from our personhood, but rather, from social norms. The writer also debates our notions of "human" and "less-than-human" and how these culturally imposed ideas can keep one from having a "viable life" as the biggest concerns are usually about whether a person will be accepted if his or her desires differ from normality. She states that one may feel the need of being recognized in order to live, but that at the same time, the conditions to be recognized make life "unlivable". The writer proposes an interrogation of such conditions so that people who resist them may have more possibilities of living.^[41]

In her discussion of intersex, Butler addresses the case of David Reimer, a person whose sex was medically "reassigned" from male to female after a botched circumcision at eight months of age. Reimer was "made" female by doctors, but later in life identified as "really" male, married and became a stepfather to his wife's three children, and went on to tell his story in As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, which he wrote with John Colapinto. Reimer committed suicide in 2004.^[42]

Giving an Account of Oneself (2005)

In Giving an Account of Oneself, Butler develops an ethics based on the opacity of the subject to itself; in other words, the limits of self-knowledge. Primarily borrowing from Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Laplanche, Adriana Cavarero and Emmanuel Levinas, Butler develops a theory of the formation of the subject. She theorizes the subject in relation to the social – a community of others and their norms – which is beyond the control of the subject it forms, as precisely the very condition of that subject's formation, the resources by which the subject becomes recognizably human, a grammatical "I", in the first place.

Butler accepts the claim that if the subject is opaque to itself the limitations of its free ethical responsibility and obligations are due to the limits of narrative, presuppositions of language and projection.

Instead she argues for an ethics based precisely on the limits of self-knowledge as the limits of responsibility itself. Any concept of responsibility which demands the full transparency of the self to itself, an entirely accountable self, necessarily does violence to the opacity which marks the constitution of the self it addresses. The scene of address by which responsibility is enabled is always already a relation between subjects who are variably opaque to themselves and to each other. The ethics that Butler envisions is therefore one in which the responsible self knows the limits of its knowing, recognizes the limits of its capacity to give an account of itself to others, and respects those limits as symptomatically human. To take seriously one's opacity to oneself in ethical deliberation means then to critically interrogate the social world in which one comes to be human in the first place and which remains precisely that which one cannot know about oneself. In this way, Butler locates social and political critique at the core of ethical practice.^[43]^[44]

Reception

Butler's work has been influential in feminist and queer theory, cultural studies, and continental philosophy.^[45] Yet her contribution to a range of other disciplines—such as psychoanalysis, literary, film, and performance studies as well as visual arts—has also been significant.^[4] Her theory of gender performativity as well as her conception of "critically queer" have not only transformed understandings of gender and queer identity in the academic world, but have shaped and mobilized various kinds of political activism, particularly queer activism, across the globe.^[45]^[46]^[47]^[48] Butler's work has also entered into contemporary debates on the teaching of gender, gay parenting, and the depathologization of transgender people.^[49] Before election to the papacy, Pope Benedict XVI wrote several pages challenging Butler's arguments on gender.^[50] In several countries, Butler became the symbol of the destruction of traditional gender roles for reactionary movements. This was particularly the case in France during the anti-gay marriage protests. Bruno Perreau has shown that Butler was literally depicted as an "antichrist", both because of her gender and her Jewish identity, the fear of minority politics and critical studies being expressed through fantasies of a corrupted body.^[51]

Some academics and political activists maintain that Butler's radical departure from the sex/gender dichotomy and her non-essentialist conception of gender—along with her insistence that power helps form the subject—revolutionized feminist and queer praxis, thought, and studies.^[52] Darin Barney of McGill University writes that:

Other scholars have been more critical. In 1998, Denis Dutton's journal Philosophy and Literature awarded Butler first prize in its fourth annual "Bad Writing Competition", which set out to "celebrate bad writing from the most stylistically lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles."^[54] Her unwitting entry, which ran in a 1997 issue of the scholarly journal Diacritics, ran thus:

Some critics have accused Butler of elitism due to her difficult prose style, while others claim that she reduces gender to "discourse" or promotes a form of gender voluntarism. Susan Bordo, for example, has argued that Butler reduces gender to language and has contended that the body is a major part of gender, in opposition to Butler's conception of gender as performance.^[55] A particularly vocal critic has been feminist Martha Nussbaum, who has argued that Butler misreads J. L. Austin's idea of performative utterance, makes erroneous legal claims, forecloses an essential site of resistance by repudiating pre-cultural agency, and provides no normative ethical theory to direct the subversive performances that Butler endorses.^[56] Finally, Nancy Fraser's critique of Butler was part of a famous exchange between the two theorists. Fraser has suggested that Butler's focus on performativity distances her from "everyday ways of talking and thinking about ourselves. ... Why should we use such a self-distancing idiom?"^[57]

Butler responded to criticisms of her prose in the preface to her 1999 book, Gender Trouble.^[58]

More recently, several critics—most prominently, Viviane Namaste^[59]—have criticised Judith Butler's Undoing Gender for under-emphasizing the intersectional aspects of gender-based violence. For example, Timothy Laurie notes that Butler's use of phrases like "gender politics" and "gender violence" in relation to assaults on transgender individuals in the United States can "[scour] a landscape filled with class and labour relations, racialised urban stratification, and complex interactions between sexual identity, sexual practices and sex work", and produce instead "a clean surface on which struggles over 'the human' are imagined to play out".^[60] Nevertheless, both Namaste and Laurie acknowledge the enduring importance of Butler's critical contributions to the study of gender identities.{{citation needed|date=August 2017}}

German feminist Alice Schwarzer speaks of Butler's "radical intellectual games" that would not change how society classifies and treats a woman; thus, by eliminating female and male identity Butler would have abolished the discourse about sexism in the queer community. Schwarzer also accuses Butler of remaining silent about the oppression of women and homosexuals in the Islamic world, while readily exercising her right to same-sex-marriage in the United States; instead, Butler would sweepingly defend Islam, including Islamism, from critics.^[61]

Political activism

Much of Butler's early political activism centered around queer and feminist issues, and she served, for a period of time, as the chair of the board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Over the years, she has been particularly active in the gay and lesbian rights, feminist, and anti-war movements.^[7] She has also written and spoken out on issues ranging from affirmative action and gay marriage to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay. More recently, she has been active in the Occupy movement and has publicly expressed support for a version of the 2005 BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel.

On September 7, 2006, Butler participated in a faculty-organized teach-in against the 2006 Lebanon War at the University of California, Berkeley.^[62] Another widely publicized moment occurred in June 2010, when Butler refused the Civil Courage Award (Zivilcouragepreis) of the Christopher Street Day (CSD) Parade in Berlin, Germany at the award ceremony. She cited racist comments on the part of organizers and a general failure of CSD organizations to distance themselves from racism in general and from anti-Muslim excuses for war more specifically. Criticizing the event's commercialism, she went on to name several groups that she commended as stronger opponents of "homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, and militarism".^[63]

In October 2011, Butler attended Occupy Wall Street and, in reference to calls for clarification of the protesters' demands, she said:

She is currently an executive member of FFIPP - Educational Network for Human Rights in Israel/Palestine.^[76] She is also a member of the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.^[76]

Adorno Prize affair

When Butler received the 2012 Adorno Prize, the prize committee came under attack from Israel's Ambassador to Germany Yakov Hadas-Handelsman; the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, Efraim Zuroff;^[65] and the German Central Council of Jews. They were upset at Butler's selection because of her remarks about Israel and specifically her "calls for a boycott against Israel".^[66] Butler responded saying that "she did not take attacks from German Jewish leaders personally".^[67] Rather, she wrote, the attacks are "directed against everyone who is critical against Israel and its current policies".^[68]

In a letter to the Mondoweiss website, Butler asserted that she developed strong ethical views on the basis of Jewish philosophical thought and that it is "blatantly untrue, absurd, and painful for anyone to argue that those who formulate a criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitic or, if Jewish, self-hating".^[69]

Comments on Hamas and Hezbollah

Butler was criticized for statements she had made about Hamas and Hezbollah. She had described them as "social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left".^[70] She was accused of defending "Hezbollah and Hamas as progressive organizations" and supporting their tactics.^[71]^[72]

Butler responded to these criticisms by stating that her remarks on Hamas and Hezbollah were taken completely out of context and, in so doing, her established views on non-violence were contradicted and misrepresented.

Butler describes the origin of her remarks on Hamas and Hezbollah in the following way:

Comments on Black Lives Matter

In a January 2015 interview with George Yancy of The New York Times, Butler discussed the Black Lives Matter movement. She said:

The dialogue draws heavily on her 2004 book Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence.^[73]

Avital Ronell sexual harassment case

On May 11, 2018, Butler led a group of scholars in writing a letter to New York University following the sexual harassment suit filed by a former NYU graduate student against his advisor Avital Ronell. The signatories acknowledged not having had access to the confidential findings of the investigation that followed the Title IX complaint against Ronell. Nonetheless, they accused the complainant of waging a "malicious campaign" against Ronell. The signatories also wrote that the presumed "malicious intention has animated and sustained this legal nightmare" for a highly regarded scholar. "If she were to be terminated or relieved of her duties, the injustice would be widely recognized and opposed."^[74] Butler, the chief signatory, invoked her title as President Elect of the Modern Language Association. James J. Marino, a professor at Cleveland State University and a member of the MLA, started a petition to demand Butler's resignation or removal from her post. He argued that "Protesting against one instance of punishment is only a means to the larger end of preserving senior faculty's privilege of impunity. ... [Butler] was standing up for an old, corrupt, and long-standing way of doing business. The time for doing business that way is over. We should never look back."^[75] Some three months later, Butler apologized to the MLA for the letter. "I acknowledged that I should not have allowed the MLA affiliation to go forward with my name," she wrote to the Chronicle of Higher Education. "I expressed regret to the MLA officers and staff, and my colleagues accepted my apology. I extend that same apology to MLA members."^[76]

Personal life

Selected honors and awards

Butler has had a visiting appointment at Birkbeck, University of London (2009–).^[78]

Publications

All of Butler's books have been translated into numerous languages; Gender Trouble, alone, has been translated into twenty-seven different languages. In addition, she has co-authored and edited over a dozen volumes—the most recent of which is Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (2013), coauthored with Athena Athanasiou. Over the years she has also published many influential essays, interviews, and public presentations. Butler is considered by many as "one of the most influential voices in contemporary political theory,"^[89] and as the most widely read and influential gender theorist in the world.^[90]

See also

References

1. ^{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/arts/music/pussy-riot-was-carefully-calibrated-for-protest.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha28_20120823 |title=Pussy Riot Was Carefully Calibrated for Protest |last=Ryzik |first=Melena |date=22 August 2012 |work=The New York Times |accessdate=23 August 2012}}
2. ^¹{{cite encyclopedia |last=Duignan |first=Brian |year=2018 |title=Judith Butler |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Judith-Butler |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |access-date=November 2, 2018}}
3. ^{{cite web|last=Halberstam|first=Jack|title=An audio overview of queer theory in English and Turkish by Jack Halberstam|url=https://archive.org/details/HalberstamQueerTheory-AnkaraTurkey|accessdate=29 May 2014|date=2014-05-16}}
4. ^¹{{cite journal |last=Kearns |first=Gerry |title=The Butler affair and the geopolitics of identity |journal=Environment and Planning D: Society and Space |year=2013 |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=191–207 |doi=10.1068/d1713|url=http://eprints.maynoothuniversity.ie/7638/1/GK_Butler.pdf }}
5. ^{{cite web|title=Judith Butler, European Graduate School |url=http://egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler|accessdate=14 July 2015}}
6. ^{{cite news |last=Thulin |first=Lesley |title=Feminist theorist Judith Butler rethinks kinship |url=http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2012/04/19/feminist-theorist-judith-butler-rethinks-kinship |accessdate=9 October 2013 |newspaper=Columbia Spectator |date=19 April 2012}}
7. ^¹{{cite web |title=Judith Butler |url=http://publications.mcgill.ca/reporter/2013/05/judith-butler/ |work=McGill Reporter |publisher=McGill |accessdate=9 October 2013}}
8. ^{{cite journal|title=Review of Judith Butler's "Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism" |url=http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/36335-parting-ways-jewishness-and-the-critique-of-zionism/ |last=Gans |first=Chaim |journal=Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews |date=December 13, 2013 |accessdate=September 23, 2013}}
9. ^{{cite news |url=http://derstandard.at/1347492636246/US-Philosophin-Butler-Israel-vertritt-mich-nicht |title=US-Philosophin Butler: Israel vertritt mich nicht |author= |newspaper=Der Standard |date=15 September 2012 |accessdate=15 September 2012}}
10. ^{{cite web | url=http://www.lolapress.org/elec2/artenglish/butl_e.htm | title=Interview with Judith Butler| author=Regina Michalik | work=Lola Press | date= May 2001 | accessdate=March 1, 2010}}
11. ^¹{{cite journal|last=Udi|first=Aloni|title=Judith Butler: As a Jew, I was taught it was ethically imperative to speak up|journal=Haaretz|date=24 February 2010|url=http://www.haaretz.com/news/judith-butler-as-a-jew-i-was-taught-it-was-ethically-imperative-to-speak-up-1.266243|accessdate=9 October 2013}}
12. ^{{cite web|title=Judith Butler and Michael Roth: A Conversation at Wesleyan University's Center for Humanities|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf4px4KyqbY|publisher=Wesleyan University}}
13. ^{{cite web | url=http://grad.berkeley.edu/tanner/0405.shtml| title=Tanner Lecture on Human Values: 2004–2005 Lecture Series| work=UC Berkeley | date= March 2005| accessdate=March 1, 2010}}
14. ^Eva von Redecker: Zur Aktualität von Judith Butler. Einleitung in ihr Werk. Wiesbaden 2011, S. 22.
15. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.uva.nl/en/disciplines/philosophy/home/components-centrecolumn/the-spinoza-chair.html|title=The Spinoza Chair - Philosophy - University of Amsterdam|first=Universiteit van|last=Amsterdam|website=Uva.nl|accessdate=December 4, 2017}}
16. ^{{cite web |url=http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/judith-butler-plans-to-move-from-berkeley-to-columbia-u/28217 |title=Judith Butler to Join Columbia U. as a Visiting Professor. |publisher=Chronicle of Higher Education |language=|date=October 20, 2010 |accessdate=February 1, 2011}}
17. ^{{cite web |url=http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2010/11/760690/professor-trouble-post-structuralist-star-judith-butler-headed-columb |title=Professor trouble! Post-structuralist star Judith Butler headed to Columbia. |publisher=Capital New York |author=Woolfe, Zachary |location=New York, New York |date=October 10, 2010 |accessdate=February 1, 2011}}
18. ^{{cite web |url=http://columbialion.com/blog/two-hours-in-the-shadow-of-judith-butler/ |title=Archived copy |accessdate=2014-09-20 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://archive.is/20140920064137/http://columbialion.com/blog/two-hours-in-the-shadow-of-judith-butler/ |archivedate=September 20, 2014 |df=mdy-all }}
19. ^{{cite web|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121221031510/http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/people/judith-butler|title=Judith Butler - Center for the Study of Social Difference|date=December 21, 2012|publisher=}}
20. ^{{Cite web|url=http://www.jaconlinejournal.com/editorialstaff.html|title=JAC Online {{!}} Editorial Staff|website=Jaconlinejournal.com|access-date=2017-08-31}}
21. ^{{Cite news|url=http://signsjournal.org/about-signs/masthead/|title=Masthead|date=2012-08-22|work=Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society|access-date=2017-08-31|language=en-US}}
22. ^¹²³⁴{{Cite journal|url = |title = Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory|last = Butler|first = Judith|date = 1988 |journal = Theatre Journal |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=519–531|doi = 10.2307/3207893|jstor = 3207893}}
23. ^Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.
24. ^{{cite book |last1=Loizidou |first1=Elena |title=Judith Butler: Ethics, Law, Politics |date=2007 |publisher=Routledge |page=1 }}
25. ^{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |authorlink=Judith Butler |title=Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity |origyear=1990 |year=1999 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |pages=xxviii–xxix |nopp=true |isbn=978-84-493-2030-9}}
26. ^Larissa MacFarquhar, "Putting the Camp Back into Campus," Lingua Franca (September/October 1993); see also Judith Butler, "Decamping," Lingua Franca (November–December 1993). Reprinted in Quick Studies: The Best of Lingua Franca, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2002, pp. 71–74.
27. ^For Butler's critique of biological accounts of sexual difference as a ruse for the cultural construction of "natural" sex, see {{cite book|title=Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity|last=Butler|first=Judith|publisher=Routledge|year=1999|isbn=978-84-493-2030-9|location=New York|pages=135–41|chapter=Concluding Unscientific Postscript|authorlink=Judith Butler|origyear=1990}}
28. ^Butler explicitly formulates her theory of performativity in the final pages of Gender Trouble, specifically in the final section of her chapter "Subversive Bodily Acts" entitled "Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions" and elaborates performativity in relation to the question of political agency in her conclusion, "From Parody to Politics." See {{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |authorlink=Judith Butler |title=Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity |origyear=1990 |year=1999 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |pages=171–90 |isbn=978-84-493-2030-9}}
29. ^For Butler's discussion of the performative co-construction of sex and gender see {{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |authorlink=Judith Butler |title=Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity |origyear=1990 |year=1999 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | pages=163–71, 177–8 |isbn=978-84-493-2030-9}} The signification of sex is also addressed in connection with Monique Wittig in the section "Monique Wittig: Bodily Disintegrations and Fictive Sex," pp. 141–63
30. ^For Butler's problematization of the sex/gender distinction see {{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |authorlink=Judith Butler |title=Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity |origyear=1990 |year=1999 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | pages=9–11, 45–9 |isbn=978-84-493-2030-9}}
31. ^{{cite book|title=Judith Butler|url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?entry=t306.e100&srn=1&ssid=460269119#FIRSTHIT|publisher=Oxford reference Online Premium|isbn=9780199532919|date=January 2010}}
32. ^{{cite book|title=Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/|publisher=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|year=2017}}
33. ^Butler, Judith. "Imitation and Gender Insubordination1." Cultural theory and popular culture: A reader 1 (2006): 255.
34. ^For example, {{Cite journal | last=Jeffreys | first=Sheila | authorlink=Sheila Jeffreys | title = The queer disappearance of lesbians: Sexuality in the academy | journal = Women's Studies International Forum | volume = 17 | issue = 5 | pages = 459–472 | doi = 10.1016/0277-5395(94)00051-4 | date = September–October 1994 | ref = harv }}
35. ^{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |authorlink=Judith Butler |title=Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" |year=1993 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |page=95 |isbn=978-0-415-90365-3}}
36. ^{{cite book |last=Jagger|first=Gill |title=Judith Butler: Sexual politics, social change and the power of the performative |year=2008 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | pages=115–8 |isbn=978-0-415-21975-4}}
37. ^{{Cite book|title=Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative|last=Butler|first=Judith|publisher=Routledge|year=1997|isbn=978-0-415-91588-5|location=New York|pages=22|quote="Similarly, MacKinnon's appeal to the state to construe pornogra- phy as performative speech and, hence, as the injurious conduct ofrep- resentation, does not settle the theoretical question of the relation between representation and conduct, but collapses the distinction in order to enhance the power of state intervention over graphic sexual representation."|via=}}
38. ^{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |authorlink=Judith Butler |title=Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative |year=1997 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | pages=129–33 |isbn=978-0-415-91588-5}}
39. ^For example, {{cite book |last=Foucault |first=Michel |authorlink=Michel Foucault |others=Trans. Robert Hurley |title=The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol 1. |origyear=1976 |year=1990 |publisher=Vintage |location=New York | page=23 |quote=A censorship of sex? There was installed [since the 17th century] rather an apparatus for producing an ever greater quantity of discourse about sex, capable of functioning and taking effect in its very economy.}}
40. ^{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |authorlink=Judith Butler |title=Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative |year=1997 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | page=140 |isbn=978-0-415-91588-5}}
41. ^Butler, Judith (2004). Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge
42. ^{{cite news | url = http://slate.com/id/2101678/ | title = Gender Gap: What were the real reasons behind David Reimer's suicide?| last = Colapinto | first = J | authorlink = John Colapinto | publisher = Slate | date = June 3, 2004 | accessdate = February 13, 2009 }}
43. ^{{Cite journal|last=Butler|first=Judith|date=2001|title=Giving an Account of Oneself|journal=Diacritics|volume=31|issue=4|pages=22–40|jstor=1566427|doi=10.1353/dia.2004.0002}}
44. ^{{Cite news|url=https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823225040/giving-an-account-of-oneself/|title=Giving an Account of Oneself|work=Fordham University Press|access-date=2018-10-17|language=en-US}}
45. ^¹{{cite journal|last=Aránguiz|first=Francisco|author2=Carmen Luz Fuentes-Vásquez|author3=Manuela Mercado|author4=Allison Ramay|author5=Juan Pablo Vilches|title=Meaningful "Protests" in the Kitchen: An Interview with Judith Butler|journal=White Rabbit: English Studies in Latin America|date=June 2011|volume=1|url=http://www.whiterabbitesla.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Interview-with-Judith-Butler1.pdf|accessdate=9 October 2013|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150403131535/http://www.whiterabbitesla.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Interview-with-Judith-Butler1.pdf|archivedate=April 3, 2015|df=mdy-all}}
46. ^{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Judith Butler's Statement on the Queer Palestinian Activists Tour|url=http://www.alqaws.org/q/en/content/judith-butlers-statement-queer-palestinian-activists-tour-0|publisher=alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society|accessdate=9 October 2013|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131023060728/http://www.alqaws.org/q/en/content/judith-butlers-statement-queer-palestinian-activists-tour-0|archivedate=October 23, 2013|df=mdy-all}}
47. ^{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street|url=http://www.eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en|publisher=European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp)|accessdate=9 October 2013|date=September 2011}}
48. ^{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Queer Alliance and Anti-War Politics|url=http://www.wri-irg.org/node/12105|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140808062548/http://wri-irg.org/node/12105|dead-url=yes|archive-date=2014-08-08|publisher=War Resisters' International (WRI)|accessdate=9 October 2013|date=May 2010}}
49. ^{{cite journal|last=Saar|first=Tsafi|title=Fifty Shades of Gay: Amalia Ziv Explains Why Her Son Calls Her 'Dad'|journal=Haaretz|date=21 February 2013}}
50. ^{{cite journal|last=McRobbie|first=Angela|title=The pope doth protest|journal=The Guardian|date=18 January 2009|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/jan/18/pope-benedict-xvi-catholicism|accessdate=9 October 2013}}
51. ^Bruno Perreau, Queer Theory: The French Response, Stanford University Press, 2016, p. 58-59 and 75-81.
52. ^{{cite web|last=Rottenberg|first=Catherine|title=Judith Butler|url=http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5173|publisher=The Literary Encyclopedia|accessdate=9 October 2013|date=27 August 2003}}
53. ^{{cite news|last=Barney|first=Darin|title=In Defense of Judith Butler|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/darin-barney/in-defense-of-judith-butler-mcgill_b_3346589.html|publisher=Huffington Post|accessdate=9 October 2013}}
54. ^¹{{cite web| url=http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm| first=Denis| last=Dutton| authorlink=Denis Dutton| year=1998| title=Bad Writing Contest}}
55. ^Hekman, Susan (1998). "Material Bodies." Body and Flesh: a Philosophical Reader ed. by Donn Welton. Blackwell Publishing. pp. 61–70.
56. ^{{cite news |last=Nussbaum |first=Martha |date=February 22, 1999 |title=The Professor of Parody |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody |work=The New Republic |location= |access-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070803112258/http://www.akad.se/Nussbaum.pdf |archive-date=August 3, 2007}}
57. ^Fraser, Nancy (1995). "False Antitheses." In Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Nancy Fraser (eds.), Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange. Routledge. p. 67.
58. ^Margaret Soenser Breen 2 and Warren J. Blumenfeld,3 4 with Susanna Baer, Robert Alan Brookey, Lynda Hall, Vicky Kirby, Diane Helene Miller, Robert Shail, and Natalie Wilson. [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A1010133821926?no-access=true "There is A Person Here"1 : An Interview with Judith Butler] International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies. Vol. 6, No. 1/2, 2001.
59. ^Namaste, Viviane. 2009. "Undoing Theory: The "Transgender Question" and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory." Hypatia 24 (3):pp. 11-32.
60. ^{{Citation | title= The Ethics of Nobody I Know: Gender and the Politics of Description | first= Timothy | last= Laurie | journal=Qualitative Research Journal | volume= 14 | issue= 1 | page= 72 | year= 2014 | url= https://www.academia.edu/6262250| doi= 10.1108/QRJ-03-2014-0011 }}
61. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.aliceschwarzer.de/artikel/eine-antwort-auf-butler-334719|title=Weiberzank - oder politische Kontroverse? {{!}} ALICE SCHWARZER|website=Alice Schwarzer|language=de|access-date=2017-12-04}}
62. ^{{cite web| title=Coming attractions for fall 2006| url=http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/09/06_eventspreview2.shtml|publisher=UC Berkeley| accessdate=6 September 2015}}
63. ^Butler, Judith. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV9dd6r361k I must distance myself from this complicity with racism (Video)] Christopher Street Day 'Civil Courage Prize' Day Refusal Speech. June 19, 2010.
64. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.salon.com/2011/10/24/judith_butler_at_occupy_wall_street/|title=Judith Butler at Occupy Wall Street|date=October 24, 2011|website=Salon.com|accessdate=December 4, 2017}}
65. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=282921|title=Diaspora - Jewish people world news - The Jerusalem Post|website=Jpost.com|accessdate=December 4, 2017}}
66. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4274289,00.html|title=German Jews oppose award for US philosopher|date=August 29, 2012|website=Ynetnews.com|accessdate=December 4, 2017}}
67. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/frankfurt-ripped-for-honoring-jewish-american-scholar-who-backs-israel-boycott-1.463424|title=Frankfurt Ripped for Honoring Jewish-American Scholar Who Backs Israel Boycott|date=September 7, 2012|website=Haaretz.com|accessdate=December 4, 2017|via=Haaretz}}
68. ^{{cite journal|last=JTA|title=Frankfurt ripped for honoring Jewish-American scholar who backs Israel boycott|journal=Haaretz|date=7 September 2012|url=http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/frankfurt-ripped-for-honoring-jewish-american-scholar-who-backs-israel-boycott-1.463424|accessdate=9 October 2013}}
69. ^¹²³{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Judith Butler responds to attack: 'I affirm a Judaism that is not associated with state violence'|url=http://mondoweiss.net/2012/08/judith-butler-responds-to-attack-i-affirm-a-judaism-that-is-not-associated-with-state-violence.html|publisher=Mondoweiss|accessdate=9 October 2013|date=27 August 2012}}
70. ^Petra Marquardt-Bigman, "Defending Judith Butler in The Ivory Tower", The Algemeiner Journal, September 7, 2012.
71. ^{{cite journal|last=Weinthal|first=Benjamin|title=Frankfurt to award US advocate of Israel boycott|journal=The Jerusalem Post|date=26 August 2012|url=http://www.jpost.com/International/Frankfurt-to-award-US-advocate-of-Israel-boycott|accessdate=9 October 2013}}
72. ^{{cite journal|last=Illouz|first=Eva|title=Judith Butler gets a taste of her own politics|journal=Haaretz|date=20 September 2012|url=http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/judith-butler-gets-a-taste-of-her-own-politics-1.465861|accessdate=9 October 2013}}
73. ^{{cite news|last1=Yancy|first1=George|last2=Butler|first2=Judith|title=What's Wrong With 'All Lives Matter'?|url=http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/whats-wrong-with-all-lives-matter/?_r=0|accessdate=7 March 2015|work=New York Times|publisher=New York Times|date=12 January 2015}}
74. ^{{cite journal|url=https://www.chronicle.com/article/Battle-Over-Alleged-Harassment/244295|title=Battle Over Alleged Harassment Escalates as Former Graduate Student Sues Professor and NYU|journal=The Chronicle of Higher Education|date=August 16, 2018}}
75. ^{{cite web|url=https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/20/some-say-particulars-ronell-harassment-case-are-moot-it-all-comes-down-power|title=Some say the particulars of the Ronell harassment case are moot, in that it all comes down to power|publisher=}}
76. ^{{cite web|url=https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/letters/judith-butler-explains-letter-in-support-of-avital-ronell/|title=Judith Butler Explains Letter in Support of Avital Ronell – Letters - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education|website=www.chronicle.com|date=2018-08-20}}
77. ^{{cite web|url=http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/06/judith-butler-c-v-r.html|title=Think Gender Is Performance? You Have Judith Butler to Thank for That.|date=June 21, 2016|website=Nymag.com|accessdate=December 4, 2017}}
78. ^{{cite web|title=Birkbeck, Department of Psychosocial Studies|url=http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychosocial/our-staff/visiting-academics|work=Visiting Academics|accessdate=12 February 2014}}
79. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.britac.ac.uk/news/british-academy-fellowship-reaches-1000-42-new-uk-fellows-are-welcomed|title=British Academy Fellowship reaches 1,000 as 42 new UK Fellows are welcomed|last=|first=|date=16 Jul 2015|website=|access-date=}}
80. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/12/16/pinknews-top-11-jewish-gay-and-lesbian-icons/|title=PinkNews' top 11 Jewish gay and lesbian icons|website=Pinknews.co.uk|accessdate=December 4, 2017}}
81. ^{{cite web|title=Judith Butler honorary causa from University of Belgrade|url=http://www.autonomija.info/dzudit-batler-pocasna-doktorka-beogradskog-univerziteta.html|website=autonomija.info|accessdate=July 22, 2018}}
82. ^{{cite web|title=La philosophe américaine Judith Butler honorée à Fribourg|url=https://www.laliberte.ch/news-agence/detail/la-philosophe-americaine-judith-butler-honoree-a-fribourg/263626#.VGoywJCG8e0|website=laliberte.ch|publisher=La Liberté|accessdate=2014-11-17}}
83. ^{{cite web|title=HONORANDS FROM 2007-2014|url=https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/student-services/documents/Honorands%20from%202007-2014.pdf|publisher=University of St Andrews|accessdate=18 November 2014|deadurl=yes|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129045443/https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/student-services/documents/Honorands%20from%202007-2014.pdf|archivedate=November 29, 2014|df=mdy-all}}
84. ^{{cite web|last=McGill Reporter|title=Judith Butler, Doctor of Letters, honoris causa BA, MA MPhil, PhD (Yale University) Faculty of Arts, May 30|url=http://publications.mcgill.ca/reporter/2013/05/judith-butler/|publisher=McGill Reporter|accessdate=2 June 2013}}
85. ^{{cite web |title = Judith Butler wins Theodor Adorno Prize despite opponents |last = Smith |first = Amelia |publisher = Middle East Monitor |date = August 28, 2012 |url = http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/blogs/culture/4222-judith-butler-wins-theodor-adorno-prize-despite-opponents |deadurl = yes |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20120901010507/http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/blogs/culture/4222-judith-butler-wins-theodor-adorno-prize-despite-opponents |archivedate = September 1, 2012 |df = mdy-all }}
86. ^{{cite web|title=Judith Butler: War Empathizer|url=http://www.utne.com/Politics/Utne-Reader-Visionaries-Judith-Butler-Abu-Ghraib-Torture.aspx|accessdate=October 19, 2010}}
87. ^{{Cite web|url=http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/03/19_butler.shtml|title=03.19.2009 - Judith Butler wins Mellon Award|website=Berkeley.edu|language=en-US|access-date=2017-07-20}}
88. ^¹{{cite web | url=http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/03/19_butler.shtml| title=Judith Butler wins Mellon Award |author=Maclay, Kathleen |publisher=UC Berkeley News. Media Relations |language=|date=March 19, 2009| accessdate=March 1, 2010}}
89. ^{{citation | last = Barker | first = Derek W.M. | contribution = Judith Butler's postmodern antigone | editor-last = Barker | editor-first = Derek W.M. | title = Tragedy and citizenship conflict, reconciliation, and democracy from Haemon to Hegel | page = 119 | publisher = State University of New York Press | location = Albany | year = 2009 | isbn = 9780791477403 | ref = harv | postscript = .}}
90. ^{{cite book|last=Ian|first=Buchanan|title=A Dictionary of Critical Theory|year=2010|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780191726590|chapter-url=http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199532919.001.0001/acref-9780199532919-e-100|authorlink=Judith Butler|accessdate=9 October 2013|doi=10.1093/acref/9780199532919.001.0001|chapter=Butler, Judith}}
91. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.psychosozial-verlag.de/7444|title=The Queer Intersectional in Contemporary Germany (PDF-E-Book). Essays on Racism, Capitalism and Sexual Politics|website=Psychosozial-Verlag|language=de-DE|access-date=2018-09-22}}

Early life and education

Overview of major works

Performative Acts and Gender Constitution (1988)

Gender Trouble (1990)

Imitation and Gender Insubordination (1990)

Bodies That Matter (1993)

Excitable Speech (1997)

Undoing Gender (2004)

Giving an Account of Oneself (2005)