Judith Butler
American philosopher whose Gender Trouble proposed that gender is not a natural given but a performance that is repeatedly enacted. The book launched queer theory as an academic field. Her concepts of performativity and the heterosexual matrix have been enormously influential across the humanities and social sciences.
Works
- Gender TroubleFoundational queer theory arguing gender as performed identity rather than essential category
- Bodies That MatterExploration of how bodies are constituted through iterative performance of norms
- Precarious LifeEssays on vulnerability, grievability, and human precarity in conditions of war
- Frames of WarAnalysis of how visual frames determine what lives are seen and grievable in war
- Notes Toward a Performative Theory of AssemblyEssays theorizing assembly and political action through bodily and collective performance
- The Psychic Life of PowerExamination of subjection and subjectivity formed through internalization of power