Judith Butler

The effect of its work

In 1990, the glare of Gender Trouble on the scene became an instantaneous blow, being sold more than 100.000 specimens internationally and in various languages. The book, published in French in 2005 (under the title Disorder in the kind), critical work of Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, and, in a more significant way, Michel Foucault. At the same time, the major part of the work of Butler, its writing is regarded per many readers as unnecessarily complex and dense. The book became rather popular and it even inspired a intellectual Fanzine, Judy! , which gave him a university statute of celebrity.

The part of its theory most largely read (and often badly read) is its redeployment of the reading by Derrida of (1) the performatif report/ratio of the theory of John Langshaw Austin and (2) of the history of Franz Kafka, the Lawsuit ; both in convergence with the readings of Butler on " To supervise and punish " of Michel Foucault and " History of Sexuality, volume 1 ". This convergence is the crucible of the theory on the famous performance of sexual Genre of Butler, where the " genre" is a social performance learned, repeated, and carried out (from where its reading of Foucault appears). Establishment of an execution of performance " obligatoire" Femininity and the Masculinité produces the imaginary fiction of a " naturel" kind; as well as the distinction enters the Sexe external and biological and " the kind intérieur." Paradoxically, that is at the origin of the fiction which an individual has a stable kind. And this imaginary fiction crucially produces an also fictitious distinction between a " interior of the body " and a " outside of the corps." For better hustling the kind like " a voluntary and daily choice, " Butler reinforces its theory of the Performativité of kind in its following works with more precise readings.

Principal work

In English language

Giving year Account off Oneself. With Criticism off Ethical Violence , Fordham University Near, 2005.
Undoing Gender , Routledge, 2004.
Precarious Life: The Powers off Mourning and Violence , Back, 2004.
The Judith Butler Reader , Sara Salih and Judith Butler (ED.), Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogs one the Left (with Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek), Back, 2000.
Antigone' S Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death , 2000.
The Psychic Life off Power , Routledge, 1997.
Excitable Speech: In Politics off the Performative , Routledge, 1997.
Bodies That Matter: One the Discursive Limits off “Sex” , Routledge, 1993.
Turbid Gender: Feminism and the Subversion off Identity , 1990, Routledge.
Subjects off Desired: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France , 1987.

French translations

In addition to the articles published in reviews ( the ordinary Passer by , Street Descartes , the Man and the Company , To include/understand , Din , etc), often extracted from books, one will find:

psychic Life of the capacity. Constraint in theories , foreword of Catherine Malabou, translation of Brice Matthieussent, Leo Scheer, Paris, 2002.

Analyzes on the processes of subjectivation anchored in readings of Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Althusser…

Gone with the sex , EPEL, Paris, 2002 (with Gayle S. Rubin)

Antigone. The Relationship between life and dead , translation of Guy Gaufey, EPEL, Paris, 2003.

Very beautiful analysis of the part of Sophocle, which is the occasion of a critical dialog with Hegel, Lacan and Lévi-Strauss. Setting in question of the theses of Lévi-Strauss on the relationship. How Antigone takes again the words of the capacity to turn over them against him.

Capacity of the words. Policy of performatif the , foreword of Charlotte Nordmann and Jerome Vidal, translation of Charlotte Nordmann with the collaboration of Jerome Vidal, Editions Amsterdam, Paris, 2004.

On the speeches of hatred ( haste speech ) homophobes, racists or sexists, the pornography and the censure. Propose the broad outlines of a theory of the power to act linguistic ( linguistic agency ) and of a policy of the resignification, and critical the attempts at police force of the speeches. This book returns proclamation the centrality in the work of Judith Butler of the reflection on the agency (" the agence" individual or collective, in other words the " capacity of agir" (translation of Cynthia Kraus) or the " power of agir" (translation of Charlotte Nordmann and Jerome Vidal, inspired by the potentia agendi spinozist) or even " the agentivité" (translation of the term agency that one can find in texts of linguistics, psychology cognitive and theory of the action, and taken again by Maxime Cervulle in his translation of Undoing Gender ).

precarious Life. Capacities of mourning and violence after September 11th, 2001 , translation of Jerome Rosavallon and Jerome Vidal, Editions Amsterdam, Paris, 2005.

Reflections on the transformations of sovereignty and the conditions of the maintenance of a public sphere criticizes after the September 11th, 2001. Development of the work of Judith Butler which will divert certainEs, but which is registered undoubtedly, with saying even auteure, in the right wire of the concerns which animate its work since Trouble in the kind: the question of the vulnerability and the vivability of the life, the normative definition of human, mourning and melancholy like constitutive of the subjects.

Human, Inhuman. Work criticizes standards. Talks , translation of Jerome Vidal and Christine Vivier, Editions Amsterdam, Paris, 2005.

Judith Butler by Judith Butler. This new collection of talks is an excellent synthesis which covers the whole of the work of Judith Butler until our days. A good way of entering this demanding work, of seizing its central intuitions, of following its developments and of initiating themselves with the debates which it causes. Also allows to avoid outrageous interpretations and the coarse mésinterprétations which still too often circulate in connection with Judith Butler (Judith Butler would be unaware of the materiality of the body; all would be for it only language; she would deny the violence and even the reality of the male domination; the kind would be only one play, a role or a theatrical performance which one could change as one changes shirt…).

Disorder in the kind. For a feminism of subversion , foreword of Eric Fassin, translation of Cynthia Kraus, the Discovery, Paris, 2005.

The book which made known Judith Butler and in which she proposed for the first time her famous (but often badly included/understood) analyzes of the performatif character of the kind. Like all the large books, it is the subject of interpretations and various réappropriations, even contradictory. Judith Butler itself took again her analyzes in Bodies that Matter , in particular for raising certain ambiguities (voluntarist interpretation of its theory of the performativity of the kind) and answering criticisms addressed to Trouble in the kind.

To demolish the kind, translation of Maxime Cervulle, Editions Amsterdam, Paris, 2006.

The last opus of Judith Butler: as demanding as its preceding books, but more immediately anchored in the topicality (in particular French: debates on PACS and the aforementioned Homosexual marriage) of the policies of the kind and sexuality that Disorder in the kind or Bodies that Matter . Double prospect, theoretical and practical: déconstruire the kind (to make the genesis of its production) and to demolish the influence of the violent forms of standardization of which it is the vector. Proclamation a sharp concern in the way in which the fights to reach the recognition and to obtain a statute legitimates are likely to contribute to the invisibilisation and other than certainEs.

to be appeared: Bodies that Matter. One the Discursive Limits off “Sex” (French title not yet communicated), Editions Amsterdam, Paris, at the beginning of 2008.

The other chief of work of Judith Butler. Recovery criticizes theses of Trouble in the kind. Vigorous and original analyzes on the materiality of the body from the point of view constructivist. Outline reflections which will lead to the Capacity of the words . CertainEs activists queer consider that this book is in withdrawal compared to Trouble in the kind.

Studies

Stephan Haber, Critical of the antinaturalism: studies on Foucault, Butler, Habermas , Paris, PUF, coll Practical theoretical, 2006
Sara Saiah, Judith Butler , London and New York, Routledge, coll Critical Thinkers, 2002
Jerome Vidal, " Judith Butler in France: Disorder in the réception" in Movements , Paris, the Discovery, n°47-48, September 2006.

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

Judith Butler - Profesora in European Graduate School

“To make and demolish the kind” Conference of May 25th, 2004

Presentation of '' psychic Life of the capacity '' by Pierre Macherey

Presentation of '' Capacity of the words. Policy of performatif the '' by Pierre Macherey

Presentations and broad extracts of the books of Judith Butler published in the Editions Amsterdam

Extraits from a remarkable maintenance (in English) of 1993, published in the review '' Radical Philosophy '' (the entirety of maintenance is available in French in '' Humain, Inhumain '' (Amsterdam Editions, Paris, 2005)