Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of Sex [Hardcover]

In Bodies That Matter, renowned theorist and philosopher Judith Butler argues that theories of gender need to return to the most material dimension of sex and sexuality: the body. Butler offers a brilliant reworking of the body, 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 clarifies the notion of performativity introduced in Gender Trouble and via bold readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud explores the meaning of a citational politics. She also draws on documentary and literature with compelling interpretations of the film Paris is Burning, Nella Larsen's Passing, and short stories by Willa Cather.

Preface  Acknowledgements  Part 1:  1. Bodies that Matter  2. The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary  3. Phantasmatic Identification and the Assumption of Sex  4. Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion  Part 2:  5. 'Dangerous Crossing': Willa Cather's Masculine Names  6. Queering, Passing: Nella Larsen Rewrites Psychoanalysis  7. Arguing with the Real  8. Critically Queer.  Notes.  Index

As a philosopher of gender [Judith Butler] is unparalleled.  Village Voice

Butler gives us a new way to think about the materiality of the body in the discursive performity operative in the materialization of sex. Following a common move in postmodern feminism, Butler sets out to demolish the sex/gender distinction that has formed the mainstay of the de Beauvorian and radical feminism's notion that gender, as a cultural construction, could be critiqued and politicized against the givenness of the body'sl£+