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Summary: an outstanding theoretical text...
Review: after reviewing what other customers thought of gender trouble, i decided that it was time someone spoke in pain english.butler's feminist text is a brilliant critical examination of gender, a must for any reader interested in feminist or queer theory. the language is difficult, yet richly rewarding...go slow, let your mind explore the many avenues butler leads her reader down. after reading gender trouble, you may like the text, you may dislike it, but there is NO way that you won't learn a great deal and be introduced to a variety of original and provocative thoughts on feminism and gender studies. there is a reason why butler's gender trouble is widely considered one the revolutionary texts on feminist theory...so i encourage you to endure the "difficult" writing and broaden your horizons.
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Summary: essential reading
Review: Although many ideas in Gender Trouble are not entirely new or anything (please do read the first 30 pages of Teresa de Lauretis 'Technologies of Gender', which contains in more accessible prose many of the arguments put forward in Gender Trouble), this book seems to have appeared at just the right time; over the last 10 years it has had a major influence on thinking about gender in a wide variety of scholarship, and for this reason alone it is worth reading. Don't be disencouraged by all the stuff on Freud and Lacan in the second chapter, just read on: it's worth the effort. Butler's reading of Kristeva, however, seems somewhat unfair, one-sided if you will; don't be fooled in thinking Kristeva is not worth reading. But in all, Gender Trouble
is a must read for anyone interested in gender/queer theory, feminism, or politics in general!
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Summary: Read Sokal over Butler
Review: Didn't the Sokal Hoax put to rest foolishness such as this?
Rating:
Summary: Important read
Review: Difficult to read for the first time, but ultimately rewarding. Butler draws on Wittig, Foucault, and Lacan to question our assumptions about sex and gender, and ultimately, identity itself.
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Summary: ten years later, still state-of-art
Review: Gender Trouble is simply the best available survey and critique of the philosophical work of the leading theorists of French intellectual feminism from Beauvoir on down to Irigaray, Wittig, and Kristeva. Her work owes a significant debt to Michel Foucault's work on discourses of power, a debt which is chiefly acknowledged in the simple fact that everyone except Foucault takes a serious bashing. Beyond the pleasures of intellectual fireworks, the book is politically important for two reasons. First, it shows where many feminist positions fall into the traps of categories which reproduce the conditions they seek to evade; second, she addresses the question of action. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron warned twenty five years ago that real feminism needs two parts: a theory of women's oppression and a plan of action. Butler, unlike many feminist intellectuals, proposes a plan of action. The book is ideal as a cap to a course of readings in feminist theory. One final note: recent attacks on Judith for her obscure language are unfair and misguided. Would you attack cancer researchers for their obscure language? What about the engineers whose obscure calculations enable us to drive the highways or take an elevator with relative safety? Judith is a specialist who has mastered the language of her field. She is simply the best we have. The book requires patience, but the rewards of thoughtful reading and re-reading are great. Thanks, Ms B.
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Summary: The queen has no clothes
Review: I had planned to write this review in Judith-speak, but realized that no one would understand what I was writing. Folks, this book is a testament to the fact that Postmodernism says nothing that hasn't been said 2500 years ago. Clarity, brevity and explanation are sacrificed in the name of obscurity and pomposity. To paraphrase the fantastic article on Butler in the New Republic (which all literature lovers should read, as well as Sokal's fantastic experiment on postmodernist 'thought'), whereas past feminist writers tried to help women overcome their problems, 'feminists' like Butler have never helped a single woman leave an abusive husband or taught a poor girl how to read. In fact, Butler does the opposite, helping to confuse and exasperate those in the most need. Graduate students should read this book as an example of theory at its worst: take a somewhat interesting idea and wrap it in 75,000 words, effectively throwing the theory into a muddy mess. Reject this text in favor of skeptical--and truly radical--inquiry.
Rating:
Summary: a mind bender
Review: I read this book when I was taking a class with Judith Butler at Johns Hopkins years ago, and it opened my mind and changed the way I think about the world. Butler's writing is dense, but her ideas are crystalline. She is a brilliant person, and, after taking several of her classes, I consider myself a devoted acolyte.
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Summary: A Preface to a Critique on Gender
Review: I'm no expert but I'm reminded of what a friend once confessed to me: it's hard talking about gender without it turning into a freak show. To her credit, Judith Butler speaks sincerely, with great subtlety, about a very touchy subject. Nevertheless, when you consider that words like "sex," "heterosexual," and "homosexual" are hardly a century old, you have to ask why do they seem so certain, so meaningful, so permanent and timeless? Why is it so hard to consider these words as concealing rather than revealing? In the tradition of Marx and Foucault, Butler begins to demystify their credibility and reveals how gender is something which is 'performative'. By this, she does not mean like a role which is donned (though those who don reveal) but rather as a repetitive, cultural activity from which identity is derived. This work is thought to be the beginning of 'queer theory.'
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Moving
Review: I've found Gender Trouble to be incredibly clear and honest in its argument. Butler provides a thoroughly groundbreaking geneaology of gender representations (if we should call them such), and successfully manages to combine many difficult theories and influences. In response to the previous reviewer, it seems twice as pretentious to disregard this phenomenal work due to so-called lack of clarity and coherence as to accept it for what it is: one of the most thoughtful and important critiques of feminism and gender in this century. Anyway, read it yourself and decide. In my opinion, it's well worth it.
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Summary: Imagine Honduran Women makes Clothes in a Sweatshop...
Review: ing clothes....think of the Butlerian strategy of it all!
Are they undoing gender? Wow! And on pennies a day, too!
Think of the androgynous gay boy who might wear the same clothes as his bestest girlfriend. Think of the subversiveness of it all!
Consider the fact that maybe the slave woman in Honduras made those clothes!
How Butlerian, indeed!
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