Search Images Maps Play YouTube News Gmail Drive More »
My library | Help | Advanced Book Search | Web History | Sign in

Books

Bodies That Matter:

On the Discursive Limits of "Sex
Front Cover
34 Reviews
Routledge Chapman & Hall, 1993 - Philosophy - 288 pages
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.

What people are saying - Write a review

User ratings

5 stars
12
4 stars
13
3 stars
7
2 stars
1
1 star
1

Review: Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"

User Review  - Daphne Shaed - Goodreads

Butler always has some insightful work and I definitely build my own thoughts on her discourses. It is a hard read and requires time to digest and deconstruct her writing. Butler's work maybe ... Read full review

Review: Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"

User Review  - Benjamin - Goodreads

This is the second Judith Butler book I've read (the other being Gender Trouble), and I found it as interesting and enlightening as the first. As a cis male, I would originally be thought of as an ... Read full review

All 29 reviews »

Related books

Undoing Gender
Undoing Gender
Judith Butler
No preview available - 2004
Gender Trouble: Tenth Anniversary Edition
Gender Trouble: Tenth Anniversary Edition
Judith Butler
No preview available - 1999
Excitable speech: a politics of the performative
Excitable speech: a politics of the performative
Judith Butler
No preview available - 1997
All related books »

Other editions - View all

Bodies That Matter
Bodies That Matter
Judith Butler
Limited preview - 2011
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"
Judith Butler
Snippet view - 1993
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"
Judith Butler
No preview available - 2011

References to this book

From other books

Formations of Class & Gender: Becoming Respectable
Formations of Class & Gender: Becoming Respectable
Beverley Skeggs
No preview available - 1997
Consumption and Identity at Work
Consumption and Identity at Work
Paul du Gay
No preview available - 1995
All Book Search results »

From Google Scholar

Coloring Epistemologies: Are Our Research Epistemologies Racially ...
JAMES JOSEPH SCHEURICH MICHELLE D YOUNG - Educational Researcher
The Social Model of Disability and the Disappearing Body: towards ...
BILL HUGHES, KEVIN PATERSON - 1997 - Disability & Society
Queer Theory
Annamarie Jagose
Gender, Habitus and the Field
Lois McNay - Theory, Culture & Society
All Scholar search results »

References from web pages

JSTOR: Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex."
Book Reviews Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." By Judith Butler. New York: Routledge, 1993, 288 pp., $49.95 (cloth), $15.95 (paper). ...
links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0891-2432(199510)9%3A5%3C632%3ABTMOTD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4

Judith Butler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex". New York: Routledge, 95. ^ Butler, Judith (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. ...
en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Judith_Butler

Butler Introduction to Bodies That Matter
Butler, Introduction to Bodies That Matter. Constructivism vs. essentialism: After a highly condensed summary of the whole book (1-4), Butler introduces the ...
faculty.oxy.edu/ tobin/ wsgs254/ classes/ butlerintro.html

citeulike: Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex
TY - BOOK ID - citeulike:611089 TI - Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex PB - Routledge SN - 0415903661 N2 - {In Bodies That Matter, ...
www.citeulike.org/ user/ cannedAir/ article/ 611089

Bodies that matter : on the discursive limits of "sex" by Judith P ...
All about Bodies that matter : on the discursive limits of
www.librarything.com/ work/ 58880

Victoria Royds, exhibition Metro Arts, Thursday Plantation, East ...
Butler, JP 1993, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex', Routledge, New York. Gatens, M 1996, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power, ...
www.bedervale.com/ mainFrame.htm

Flirting with the Unintelligible
How do we come to know the space of the body? Perhaps this question is taken for granted if the experience of the body is taken as immediate, ...
muse.jhu.edu/ journals/ postmodern_culture/ v008/ pmspacing/ spacing/ butler.htm

Texts by Judith Butler, 1993
Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex". New York &London:Routledge, 1993. Contents: Part One 1 Bodies that Matter:27-55 ...
sun3.lib.uci.edu/ ~scctr/ Wellek/ butler/ 1993.html

Bodies that Matter: on the discursive limits of 'sex' (Butler ...
Bodies that Matter: on the discursive limits of 'sex' (Butler, Judith) -- Bibliography (issues) Online by the Union of International Associations (UIA), ...
www.diversitas.org/ db/ x.php?dbcode=re& subject=0093& go=e& id=13511410

Interdisciplinary Applications: Providing a Past for “Bodies That ...
Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex.” New York: Routledge. Claassen, C. (1992). Questioning gender: An introduction. In C. Claassen (Ed.), ...
www.springerlink.com/ index/ H024L7172V6V46M1.pdf

About the author (1993)

Judith Butler was born in 1956. She is nationally known for her writings on gender and sexuality. She argues that men and women are not dissimilar and that the notion they are is cultural not biological in books such as Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of "Sex" (1993), Excitable Speech: Contemporary Scenes Of Politics (1996), and The Psychic Life Of Power: Theories In Subjection (1997). In Gender Trouble (1990), the title a play on John Waters' camp classic Female Trouble (1975), Butler claims that both gender and drag are a kind of imitation for which there is no original. A professor of philosophy at University of California at Berkeley, Butler attended Yale, receiving a B.A. in 1978 and a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1984.

Bibliographic information

QR code for Bodies That Matter
TitleBodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex
AuthorJudith Butler
PublisherRoutledge Chapman & Hall, 1993
ISBN0415903661, 9780415903660
Length288 pages
Subjects › 

Philosophy / General
Social Science / Gender Studies
  
Export CitationBiBTeX EndNote RefMan