Book

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"

Judith Butler · 1993

A landmark work in gender and queer theory that examines the performative construction of sex and gender through discourse and ritualized repetition, extending Butler's earlier theoretical framework from Gender Trouble while addressing the materiality of bodies and the possibilities for critical agency within normative constraints.

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Context1993research_analysis

What this book knows

Bodies become 'sexed' through repeated citational performances of normative power — matter itself is discursively produced, not pre-given.

Sex: Primary
Work: Absent
Learning: Present
Religion: Absent

embodimenterotic-as-powerself-and-identity

embodiment

What are the constraints by which bodies are materialized as 'sexed,' and how are we to understand the 'matter' of sex?
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The addition of 'Judy' was an effort to recall me to a bodily life that could not be theorized away.
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erotic-as-power

What qualifies as bodies that matter, ways of living that count as 'life,' lives worth protecting, lives worth grieving?
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The law might not only be refused, but it might also be ruptured, forced into disarticulating the power of punishment from the power of recognition.
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self-and-identity

Identifications are multiple and contestatory; we are not in the position of either identifying with a given sex or desiring someone else.
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What is unveiled is precisely the repudiated desire, that which is abjected by heterosexist logic and defensively foreclosed.
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Illuminates

6 published passages · book excerpt · research analysis

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