In "Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of
"sex""(1993) notable feminist thinker Judith Butler picks up on
her famous book "Gender Trouble" and her famous concept of perfomartivity. The notion that gender is a type
of performance, something that some does rather than is, leads
Butler to argue in "bodies that Matter" that bodies and gender are
two separate thing. Divorcing discourse and social norms from biology, Butler deconstructs
the thought that gender is something one is born with rather than acquired (like
Simon De Beauvoir's "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" in
The Second Sex,
1949).
Gender perfomativity, for Butler, is nonetheless not something any one
particular person acts out but rather a ritualized socially constructed norm
that one follows. In being a man you actually act out the socially sanctioned
form a masculinity,
the performance is ever replayed. Alas,
there isn't one singular "act" of masculinity that one can perform in
order to be the ultimate male. Gender is a form of discourse is something fluid
and ever breaking down and reestablished , gender is not only done but is also constantly
remade. Though constantly negotiated gender for Butler pretends to be
"natural" and linking it to biology aids the gender discourse in
doing so. Opposing and deconstructing gender rules and engaging is a subversive
tactic aimed at exposing gender's artificiality and undermine its claims to
being "natural" (like the example of drag queens discussed in "Gender Trouble". Gender, to
conclude "Bodies that Matter", is just a norm and opposing is it
serves to expose it as it really is, breaking it down and making it incoherent
thus freeing the body from the constraints of discourse.
Some more classic Judith Butler and Feminist thought summaries:
Judith Butler / Performative Acts and Gender Constitution
Judith Butler / Critically Queer
Judith Butler / Performative Acts and Gender Constitution
Judith Butler / Critically Queer
Additional books by Butler to check out:
