The Judith Butler Reader

Description

Judith Butlers work has challenged and changed the frames of reference within which people speak, think, and live categories of identity. Her innovative and politically far-reaching insight that gender is performative and that identity is a scene of construction continues to exert a crucial impact in numerous critical-theoretical fields, including politics, philosophy, feminist and queer theory, literary and cultural studies. Behind Butlers radical theorizations of gender, sex, sexuality, power, and race lies the urgent normative inquiry into the differential way the human is produced and effaced within the field of contemporary power.The Judith Butler Reader is a collaborative effort by Sara Salih and Judith Butler to bring together writings that span Butlers impressive career as a critical philosopher, including selections from both well-known and lesser-known works. Salihs introduction emphasizes the political and ethical importance of Butlers ideas, and she supplies editorial material that will assist students in their readings of theories that stand at the forefront of contemporary theoretical and political debates. The Judith Butler Reader is a collection of writings that span her impressive career and trace her intellectual history. * Judith Butler, author of influential books such as Gender Trouble, has built her international reputation as a theorist of power, gender, sexuality and identity * Organized in active collaboration between Judith Butler and Sara Salih * Collects together writings that span Butler’s impressive career as a critical philosopher, including selections from both well-known and lesser-known works * Includes an introduction and editorial material to assist students in their readings of theories that stand at the forefront of contemporary theoretical and political debates