Gender Trouble

Sandra Lee Bartky

The most authoritative attack to date on the naturalness of gender. This is a brilliant and innovative book.
— Lingua Franca

Library Journal

Radical feminist Butler investigates the theoretical roots of an ontology of gender identity to show their political parameters. She questions traditional and feminist sex/gender distinctions, arguing that the basic concepts in this discourse are themselves produced by relations of power. The result is a subversive and sometimes original work drawing on Foucault, Lacan, Sartre, etc. Unfortunately, Butler's style is often difficult and unreadable, like the French philosophers who've influenced her, and her controversial ideas will try the patience of all but the most sympathetic scholars. Too bad. Her numerous critics would have had a field day with this variation of gender-is-culture argument, based on De Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Yet Butler is not as convincing as De Beauvoir, despite 19 pages of footnotes. For specialists only.-- Mark P. Maller, Cicero P.L., Ill.

Booknews

Since its original publication in 1990, this work has been translated in 9 languages and has become one the key works of contemporary feminist theory. It offers a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world. Material is in sections on subjects of sex/gender/desire; prohibition, psychoanalysis, and the production of the heterosexual matrix; and subversive bodily acts. This edition contains a new preface by the author, situating the work within the past decade of passionate debates on gender and sexuality, and countering some common misconceptions about the book and its aims. The author is professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at UC-Berkeley. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Village Voice

...as a philosopher of gender Judith Butler is unparalleled.