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Title: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics)
ISBN: 0415389550
Author:
Judith Butler
Publicate Date: 2006-05-12
Publish: 2006-05-12
List Price: $21.95
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $13.70
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $14.57
Amazon Merchant Price: $14.93
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Come on Kindle! Clean it up.
Of course Butler's books on gender are breathtaking classics and receive 5 stars from me in their print editions. I assign them all the time in my Gender Studies class. But this Kindle edition is messy. This is the problem I keep finding with the Kindle editions. It's insulting of Amazon to assume that Kindle readers don't care about clean editing and formatting. As a PhD student in Literature I am looking for a better tool for amassing my huge reading list. Students in every field would be ecstatic with a Kindle that actually served our needs. I also think Kindle is underestimating the common reader who also appreciates careful editting and presentation. We need to know more information about the Kindle editions--i.e. who edits and Introduces the volumes and whether they are exact replicas of their print editions. We also need to be able to cite actual page numbers from known editions for quotes, essays, papers and dissertations. I hope Kindle fixes this in the next generation. At the moment I'm making due with the messiness because of the convenience of carrying 300 volumes in one light device. But I'd be out shouting Kindle's praises in the streets (and to the classrooms full of college undergrads I teach) if Kindle would just pay attention to these few details. The search tool can be so helpful as to be heavenly. The dictionary tool should be expanded to include philosophical and theoretical terms also! Come on Kindle!
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2: Thick, Yet Important
Butler's gender critique has been a helpful resource for me in my own work. In this book Butler challenges varying constructions of gender and how such constructions are constituted. She defends all variations of sexual expression and breaks down patriarchal forms of discourse through the application of a variety of feminist critiques. Her writing is dense, complicated, and sometimes difficult to follow, but the careful reader will find her contribution challenging and worthy of spirited dialogue.
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3: Challenging, but Worth It
Judith Butler is one of the most prominent feminist theorists of our times, and her work should be read by anyone who seriously wants to grapple with issues of genderism, bi-genderism, trans-genderism, inter-genderism, and post-genderism. Her challenging writing style is necessary to really let you break out of the binaries that are both constructive and obstructive to our thinking. Butler's central thesis - "that, in a way we are all transvestites" - challenges popularly held views of tranvestite-ism, and destabilizes traditional modes of constructing gender identity. Most people think that they're not transvestites because they do not go out wearing the clothing of the opposite sex. These people need to read this book!
The most subversive thing that one can do in a gendered sociality is to redefine themselves, and hence redefine others, by crossing genderly bound, genderly bounded, and genderly constructed mediations. The mediations both keep us from ourselves and keep us from one another, and in becoming other we transgress and transform these mediations in a constant struggle and constant negotiation for self, society, and bi-individuality.
This book is necessary for anyone living in today's world.
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4: Critiquing Gender
Butler, Judith. "Gender Trouble", Routledge, 2007.
Critiquing Gender
Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
When I first started studying gender issues, I discovered Judith Butler and she has been a hero of mine ever since. She challenges you with her theories of sex, gender and sexuality. Her book "Gender Trouble" has been deemed a classic by those who follow her theoretical approach.
"Gender Trouble" has been very important in shaping modern queer theory with its premise that it is time for us to rethink how we understand gender issues and sexual orientation and preference. Butler gives us a classist approach to understand gender but the problem here seems to be that her study concentrates on modern white upper class academia. Some of her ideas could quite naturally apply to all of us if we throw the class ideas out. To destabilize gender from its binary classification would indeed be a liberating experience but Butler has not challenged all of society or the entire social order. Because writing is engaging in political activity, Butler challenges the existing patriarchy found in many places of the world today. Because of this the book may read as more of an elitist manifesto than a handbook that we all can use. To me it was easy enough to take her ideas and formulate my own theory of how we should look at gender and sexuality and regardless of her elitism, there is a g great deal of valuable information to be found in her book.
Butler poses the idea of nature versus nurture as important to the idea of gender and this is challenging in itself. But even more interesting is our approach to labeling. When we look at the labels we use today--male/female, masculine/feminine, man/woman--we see a distinct binary. Looking further at the issue of sexuality, we get sexuality/sexual orientation. There seems to be nothing that falls in between.
Butler has truly allowed me to see how I regard the world and how so many others look at society. Gender is not an easy topic to discuss and Butter does so with great agility and knowledge on a very touchy issue. We ask ourselves what we think of when we use the words "heterosexual", "homosexual" and just plain "sexual". What is it about these words that give them permanency and meaning? Better yet, why do these words conceal thought rather reveal it? Gender is "performative" in the words of Michel Foucault, the French existentialist. Is it indeed a role worn on occasion or is it a cultural activity that often repeats itself?
Many complain that it is difficult to understand the language that Butter uses. I do not agree. To understand Butler, you must put yourself into the frame of mind that you want to understand what she has to say. She says a lot and to read her is to get a better understanding of what the gender issue is all about.
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5: Fascinating Ideas, Infuriating Writing Style
Readers who are willing to tolerate labyrinthine sentences and brain-cramping scholarly vocabulary and who already have a working understanding of Freud, Lacan, Foucault, and deconstruction will find in Butler a challenging, highly stimulating theorist of sex, gender, and sexuality.
Readers looking for a breezy and accessible discussion of gender roles in modern society should definitely look elsewhere.
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