Gender in Real Time: Power and Transience in a Visual Age

After decades of innovative scholarship that galvanized a field and shattered a world of preconceptions, the study of gender now appears to languish. It has been a long while since the publication of a provocative and influential text like Judith Butler's Gender Trouble. Kath Weston argues that the problem is one of time. For too long gender studies has been preoccupied with the visual, with ample attention given to issues of performativity and embodiment, all at the expense of time.
Gender in Real Time makes a provocative and important new argument that will revolutionize the field of gender studies. Introducing temporality into the equation and examining the ways gender exists, Weston uses the tools of political economy, the history of mathematics, Darwinian evolution, and a bit of physics to propel gender studies toward the future. Startling new concepts like "zero gender" and the meaning of time claims are introduced. Moreover, the impact of our time-sensitive society, with its ever-increasing need for speed and accelerated development, is explored for its effect on the production of gender. With chapter titles including, Unsexed, The Ghosts of Gender Past, and The Global Economy Next Time, this book offers a pioneering addition to the field that will forever change our notion of gender.

Arlene Stein

Provocative...mines a vast array of different literatures...a unique interdisciplinary and theoretical sweep.

Kath Weston is the Director of the Women's Studies program at Harvard University and is the author of Render Me, Gender Me, Long Slow Burn (Routledge, 1998) and Families We Chose, which won the Ruth Benedict Prize in Anthropology.