Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics)

Some here have said that Butler has 'boldly' delved into theories of 'performance gender.' Have these people ever read Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Nigth?' The man wrote about such things 400 years ago. Such ideas have been addressed since the Greeks and are -- sorry if you disagree, but it is true -- unworthy of the expenditure of time it takes for serious study. Such study does nothing to advance knowledge of self; such study weakens scholarship and allows one to dawdle in one's own head.

We've got an academy full of philosophy professors, but no philosophers. Buildings stuffed full of literature majors, but no novel readers. Universities packed with English PhD.'s, but cities overflowing with illiterate adults. It is easy to live in the Butler world of half-baked pretentious 'theory.' But oh, how difficult to live in the world of today.


Intellectual Pretension   December 30, 1999
36 out of 94 found this review helpful

This book only has one useful function, and that is to demonstrate how NOT to construct a solid, sound, logicical argument. The problem is that everything dissolves basically into Butler's bizarre form of "logic" and "thinking": "IF this is so, then..." Read this book and check out how often she employs this way of writing. Well...the IFS multiply and multiply, and could be thoroughly challenged and critiqued at every single stage. However, she needs these extremely thin "IFs" to construct the bogus positions she wants to "deconstruct." Her reading of Lacan--which she then goes on to "challenge"-- is a total fantasy, specious, and wrong. How can we seriously consider anything she says when her mode of writing is so untenable to begin with? Do not be blinded by Butler's pretensions to being a deep thinker, she is not, she is merely a person with decided OPINIONS, and that's all this book is, someone mouthing off about their opinion. But it is not a real work of thought.


ten years later, still state-of-art   December 12, 1999
s taylor (Boulder Colorado)
31 out of 42 found this review helpful

Gender Trouble is simply the best available survey and critique of the philosophical work of the leading theorists of French intellectual feminism from Beauvoir on down to Irigaray, Wittig, and Kristeva. Her work owes a significant debt to Michel Foucault's work on discourses of power, a debt which is chiefly acknowledged in the simple fact that everyone except Foucault takes a serious bashing. Beyond the pleasures of intellectual fireworks, the book is politically important for two reasons. First, it shows where many feminist positions fall into the traps of categories which reproduce the conditions they seek to evade; second, she addresses the question of action. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron warned twenty five years ago that real feminism needs two parts: a theory of women's oppression and a plan of action. Butler, unlike many feminist intellectuals, proposes a plan of action. The book is ideal as a cap to a course of readings in feminist theory. One final note: recent attacks on Judith for her obscure language are unfair and misguided. Would you attack cancer researchers for their obscure language? What about the engineers whose obscure calculations enable us to drive the highways or take an elevator with relative safety? Judith is a specialist who has mastered the language of her field. She is simply the best we have. The book requires patience, but the rewards of thoughtful reading and re-reading are great. Thanks, Ms B.


Nonsense masquerading as substance   December 21, 1999
larry
31 out of 77 found this review helpful

Terribly written, illogically 'explained,' totally uninspired. I was forced to read this during my graduate studies. Oy vey. This text offers nothing new, nothing fresh, nothing appealing. I defy anyone to email me and present to me an original topic that this woman tackles. As for the reviewer here who wrote 'Would you attack cancer researchers for their obscure language?' No, because cancer researchers are attempting to break down complex chemical and biological processes to their simplest explanations. They strive for clarity. They attempt to explain. I know cancer researchers. I have read their textbooks. Ms. Butler is no cancer researcher. Readers and not engineers, literature is not a science. Literature is the study of the human experience and the human soul, and the pretentious Ms. Butler has shown us her soul--and we find it empty.


A Preface to a Critique on Gender   July 10, 2001
tamiii (San Juan Capistrano, Ca. United States)
28 out of 33 found this review helpful

I'm no expert but I'm reminded of what a friend once confessed to me: it's hard talking about gender without it turning into a freak show. To her credit, Judith Butler speaks sincerely, with great subtlety, about a very touchy subject. Nevertheless, when you consider that words like "sex," "heterosexual," and "homosexual" are hardly a century old, you have to ask why do they seem so certain, so meaningful, so permanent and timeless? Why is it so hard to consider these words as concealing rather than revealing? In the tradition of Marx and Foucault, Butler begins to demystify their credibility and reveals how gender is something which is 'performative'. By this, she does not mean like a role which is donned (though those who don reveal) but rather as a repetitive, cultural activity from which identity is derived. This work is thought to be the beginning of 'queer theory.'