Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble has been one of
the most cited and influential texts in gender studies since its publication in
1990. Butler introduces problems resulting from the identification of gender
with the biological difference between men and women, analyses the power
relations in the basis of the concept of gender, describes methods of controls
and suggests that deconstruction can lead to change.
According to the scholar, gender-based
classification is constructed by discourse with the objective of recreating
hegemonic paradigms and perpetuating current power relations. Former feminists
have noted the importance of exposing the interests behind conventions. Butler
goes further: defining Women and Men as universal categories disguises the
interest it serves.
She writes, “Signification is not a founding
act, but rather a regulated process of repetition that both conceals
itself and enforces
its rules precisely
through the production
of substantializing effects” (185). She states that analysis (or
deconstruction) provides tools for the socially oppressed to fight against the
existing social order.
In the
author’s view, the category of Women from which the feminist struggle arises is
different from the political, hierarchical myth based on biology. The
assumption that there is a pre-discursive body with a pre-determined sexuality
and gender sustains oppression against subjugated and marginalized subjects.
Disconnected from the body, she suggests, gender can include more than two
versions.
In the first chapter, titled
“Subjects of Sex, Gender, Desire”, Butler introduces woman as a subject of
feminism and distinguishes between sex and gender. In the second she discusses
heterosexuality within psychoanalytical and structuralist theories. Lastly,
“Subversive bodily acts” deals with the category of biological sex and ends
with Butler’s theory of gender-related performance and performativity.
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