Judith Butler
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Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American philosopher born in 1956. Butler received her Ph.D in philosophy from Yale University in 1984. She is known for her writings on philosophy, politics and ethics but mainly because of her studies on sex and gender in relation to feminism. Although Butler herself is a philosopher instead of a geographer, her ideas about performativity have been very influential for a critical geography (Mahtani, 2011). In her more recent work she has studied war, terrorism and violence.
Questioning of sex/gender binaries
In her most influential work, Gender Trouble, Butler examines the ‘naturalness’ of sex/gender binaries. She challenges the assumption that masculine and feminine gender identities correspond with male and female bodies. Butler argues that gender is in fact a social construction. According to Butler, any identity is the product of binaries within language. She theorises identity as performative, gender is formed and acknowledged by repetition.
- Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble.
- Butler, J. (1993) Bodies That Matter.
- Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender.
References
- Gregory, Derek ., Johnston, R.J., Pratt, Geraldine, Watts, Michael (eds.), (2009), The Dictionary of Human Geography, 5th edition, Blackwell, USA
- Mahtani, M. (2011) Judith Butler. Chapter 23, in Phil Hubbard & Rob Kitchen; Key Thinkers on Space and Place, 2011.
Contributors
- Published by Pieter-Jan Schut --Pieter-Jan Schut 20:46, 25 October 2011 (CEST)
