Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "sex"In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in Gender Trouble, Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex" from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She offers a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in Gender Trouble and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory. |
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Ántonia appears argues becomes bodily ego body castration catachresis Cather citation claim Clare constitutive construction contingency cultural desire differentiation discourse displacement domain drag effect erotogenic essay exclusion extent fantasy feminine feminism feminist fiction figure Foucault Freud function gender hegemony hence heterosexual homosexuality ideal identification identificatory identity ideological imaginary Insofar interpellation Irene Irigaray Irigaray's Jacques Lacan kind Lacan Lacanian Laclau language Larsen's lesbian lesbian phallus Luce Irigaray masculine materiality matter mime Mirror Stage narcissism norms notion object operates Paris Is Burning patronym penis performative phallic phallogocentric phallus phantasmatic Plato political signifiers possibility poststructuralism precisely prior produced prohibition psychic psychoanalytic queer question racial radical rearticulation referent regulatory reiteration relation repetition repudiation resignification rigid designation sense sexed positions sexual difference Slavoj Žižek social specular status structure symbolic synecdochal theory threat tion Tommy understood University Press Willa Willa Cather woman women Žižek