1956–
American philosopher who developed the theory of gender performativity in Gender Trouble
In Gender Trouble (1990) they set out a theory of gender as performative, made up of acts repeated through time rather than a fixed identity, and criticised feminism for treating "women" as one group with common characteristics.
An American philosopher born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a family of Hungarian-Jewish and Russian-Jewish descent. Butler studied philosophy at Yale, taking a PhD in 1984 with a dissertation on Hegel and French thought, taught at Wesleyan, George Washington and Johns Hopkins, and joined the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter (1993) set out the theory of gender performativity that shaped feminist and queer theory. "Merely Cultural" (New Left Review, 1998) took up the Marxist objection that dismissed new social movements as "merely" cultural and drew a reply from Nancy Fraser. Butler has also written on war, mourning, non-violence and Palestine.
Activities and affiliations
- 1993–
From Hegel to gender performativity
Butler was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on 24 February 1956, to a family of Hungarian-Jewish and Russian-Jewish descent; most of their maternal grandmother's family was murdered in the Holocaust. Hebrew school and special classes in Jewish ethics gave Butler a "first training in philosophy". After Bennington College, Butler studied philosophy at Yale, taking a BA in 1978 and a PhD in 1984 with a dissertation on desire in Hegel, Kojève, Hyppolite and Sartre, revised as the first book, Subjects of Desire (1987).
The 1988 essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution" proposed that gender is not a static identity or role but a set of acts that can change over time. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) argued that feminism had erred in trying to make "women" a discrete, ahistorical group with common characteristics, which reinforced the binary view of gender relations. It engaged Beauvoir, Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray, Wittig, Derrida and Foucault, and its idea of identity as performance rather than essence became a foundation of queer theory.
Bodies That Matter (1993) set out to correct readings of performativity as a daily choice: Butler wrote that performativity is a regularised and constrained repetition of norms, and that this repetition is not performed by a subject but is what enables a subject. Later books include Excitable Speech (1997), The Psychic Life of Power (1997), Antigone's Claim (2000) and Undoing Gender (2004).
"Merely Cultural" and political engagement
Butler joined the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993, became Maxine Elliot Professor in 1998 and co-founded its Program in Critical Theory in 2007. "Merely Cultural", published in New Left Review in January–February 1998, took up two kinds of claims: an explicitly Marxist objection to the reduction of Marxist scholarship and activism to the study of culture, and the tendency to relegate new social movements to the sphere of the cultural, dismissing them as preoccupied with the "merely" cultural and as factionalising and identitarian. Butler said the essay aimed at overcoming unnecessary divisions on the Left.
In the March–April issue Nancy Fraser replied with "Heterosexism, Misrecognition and Capitalism: A Response to Judith Butler". Fraser welcomed Butler's commitment to retrieving the valuable aspects of Marxism and 1970s socialist feminism, but said the two held divergent views of Marxism's legacy, of socialist feminism's insights and of contemporary capitalism, and rejected being grouped with "neoconservative Marxists" who dismissed the oppression of gays and lesbians as "merely cultural".
Butler's early activism centred on queer and feminist causes, including a period as chair of the board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and the anti-war movement. Butler attended Occupy Wall Street in October 2011, sits on the Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace and has written on the Palestinian struggles and the limits of Zionism. The 2012 Theodor W. Adorno Award drew objections over Butler's criticism of Israel. Before a 2017 democracy conference in Brazil, Butler was burnt in effigy, an attack that prompted Who's Afraid of Gender? (2024).