Judith Butler (b. 1956) is the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She also has a professorial appointment at the European Graduate School.

Butler is a post-feminist philosopher, probably the most widely-read and celebrated American post-feminist and continental philosopher today. Her book Gender Trouble sold over 100,000 copies, making Butler a star in the world of theory, and breaking ground for what later came to be known as queer theory (Butler is a lesbian). One of Butler's most significant contributions to critical theory is her performative model of gender, in which the categories "male" and "female" are understood as a repetition of acts instead of natural or inevitable absolutes. Butler also argued that the feminist movement cannot use or rely on a specific immutable definition of woman, and that to do so is imperialistic and counterproductive in that it perpetuates sexism. She also examines the ways that race, gender, sexual orientation, and other identities conflict and support each other.

Bibliography of Major Works

• 1997: The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection
• 1997: Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative.
• 1993: Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex'
• 1990: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

External links

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Judith Butler

• Berkeley Faculty Biography - Judith Butler (http://rhetoric.berkeley.edu/faculty_bios/judith_butler.html)
• European Graduate School Faculty Website - Judith Butler (http://www.egs.edu/faculty/judithbutler.html)
• theory.org.uk - Judith Butler Resources (http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm)

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