Judith Butler
Judith Butler: A Theorist of Power and Identity
Full Name and Common Aliases
Judith Butler is a renowned American philosopher and gender theorist, commonly known for her work on feminist theory, queer theory, and critical theory. She is often referred to as one of the most influential thinkers of our time.
Birth and Death Dates
Judith Butler was born on February 24, 1956, in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She is still active in academia and continues to contribute to various fields.
Nationality and Profession(s)
Butler holds American citizenship and identifies as a philosopher, feminist theorist, and cultural critic. Her areas of expertise include gender studies, queer theory, and critical philosophy.
Early Life and Background
Growing up in Cleveland, Butler developed an interest in philosophy at a young age. She was particularly drawn to the works of Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, which laid the groundwork for her future academic pursuits. After completing high school, Butler went on to attend Vassar College, where she earned her Bachelor's degree in English. She later pursued graduate studies at Yale University and Harvard University before eventually earning her Ph.D. from Yale in 1984.
Major Accomplishments
Butler has made significant contributions to various fields of study throughout her career. Some of her most notable accomplishments include:
Developing the concept of performativity, which posits that identity is a performance rather than an inherent characteristic.
Introducing the idea of "giving an account," which challenges traditional notions of self and subjecthood.
Influencing queer theory through her work on the performative nature of gender.Notable Works or Actions
Some of Butler's most notable works include:
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) - a seminal text that redefined feminist theory and challenged traditional notions of identity.
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex' (1993) - a work that further explores the relationship between power, identity, and language.
Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004) - a book that examines the impact of violence on individuals and communities.
Impact and Legacy
Judith Butler's work has had far-reaching implications for various fields of study. Her theories have been applied in:
Feminist theory, challenging traditional notions of identity and power.
Queer theory, providing new perspectives on non-binary identities.
Critical philosophy, offering insights into the relationship between language, power, and subjecthood.Why They Are Widely Quoted or Remembered
Judith Butler is widely quoted and remembered for her:
Innovative thinking: Her concepts of performativity and giving an account have revolutionized our understanding of identity and subjecthood.
Impact on social justice: Her work has been instrumental in shaping feminist, queer, and critical theories that challenge oppressive systems.
Continued relevance: Her ideas remain relevant today, offering new perspectives on issues such as power, identity, and language.
Quotes by Judith Butler
Judith Butler's insights on:
We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it's a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start.
Those who commit acts of violence are surely responsible for them; they are not dupes or mechanisms of an impersonal social force, but agents with responsibility. On the other hand, these individuals are formed, and we would be making a mistake if we reduced their actions to purely self-generated acts of will or symptoms of individual pathology of ‘evil’.
Irigaray remarks in such a vein that “the masquerade... is what women do... in order to participate in man’s desire, but at the cost of giving up their own”.
Obama’s failure to close Guantanamo is yet another instance where the rhetoric of democratic and constitutional rights proved not useful for his international relations, relations which are always pursued in ways that continue to link and fortify securitarian power with the opening of new markets.
We can understand this conclusion to be the necessary result of a heterosexualized and masculine observational point of view that takes lesbian sexuality to be a refusal of sexuality per se only because sexuality is presumed to be heterosexual, and the observer, here constructed as the heterosexual male, is clearly being refused.
Wittig appears to take issue with genitally organized sexuality per se and to call for an alternative economy of pleasures which would both contest the construction of female subjectivity marked by women’s supposedly distinctive reproductive function.
If there is something right in Beauvoir’s claim that one is born, but rather becomes a woman, it follows that woman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end. As an ongoing discursive practice, it is open to intervention and resignification.
I’m no great fan of the phallus, and have made my own views known on this subject before, so I do not propose a return to a notion of the phallus as the third term in any and all relations of desire.
The exclusion of those who fail to conform to unspoken normative requirements of the subject.