Description
Book SynopsisJudith Butler''s work on gender, sexuality, identity, and the body has proved massively influential across a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Yet it is also notoriously difficult to access.
This key book provides a comprehensive introduction to Butler''s work, plus a critical examination of it and its precursors, both feminist (including Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray), and non-feminist (including Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida). The volume covers such topics as:
- gender as performance and performativity
- sociological notions of performance
- the materiality of the body and the role of biology
- power, identity and social regulation
- subjectivity, agency and feminist political practice.
A comprehensive introduction to Butler's work, this book also covers melancholia and gender identity, hate speech,
Table of Contents
Introduction 1. Gender as Performance and Performative 2. Body Matters: From Construction to Materialization 3. Performativity, Subjection and the Possibility of Agency 4. The Politics of the Performative: Hate Speech, Pornography and ‘Race’ 5. Beyond Identity Politics: Gender, Transgender and Sexual Difference. Conclusion
