[PEN-L:3926] Why Read Butler?

[Dennis R Redmond <dredmond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Barkley -- I know you asked for the lowdown on Butler, I can't speak on
her newest stuff, not having access to the texts (the library here has
ordered them), but here're some brief pointers:

"Gender Trouble" (1990) Does the tour through Beauvoir and structuralism
through psychoanalysis and Foucault, Kristeva and Wittig; best part is pp.
128-141, where she talks about bodily inscriptions being subverted by the
performative. She's starting to ask the right questions here, but doesn't
get very far.

"Bodies That Matter" (1993) Goes through post-structuralism in some
detail, and is pretty critical of the thing; check out pp. 124-140, which
deal with "Paris is Burning", an interesting documentary on gay African
American streetgangs and their fight for their own cultural identity. The
conclusion, pp. 223-242 is also intriguing, she starts to theorize the
whole "queer theory" movement.

It's all interesting stuff, at least to me (but then, I'm into the
literary thing). She's asking some important, powerful questions about
our assumptions about gender, bodies, history etc. Her main problem is
that she never really gets into the problem of class identity; but she
*does* acknowledge the thing, especially in her analysis of "Paris" and
her insistence that the documentary is indeed limited by the class
perspective of the filmmaker (who is a white, educated lesbian
professional, like Butler herself).

-- Dennis