Introduction to judith butler, module on gender and sex. In her essay performative acts and gender constitution. For example, john searles speech acts, those verbal assurances and promises which seem not only to. An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory 1988 philosophers rarely think about acting in the theatrical sense, but they do h ave a discourse of acts that maintains associative semantic meanings with theories of performance and acting.
Performativity, precarity and sexual politics judith. An important theme within postmodem feminism is that essentialist notions of women and. Judith butlers essay, performative acts and gender constitution. Butler states, in this sense, gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceede. Judith butler is an assistant professor of philosophy at george washington university. For butler, one is not born a man or a woman, one simply acts as a man or a woman act. The repetition of various acts, postures, and gestures, in butlers 1990 view are not expressive of a gender identity that is somehow psychologically contained within the individual. Butler performative acts r chapter 46 judith butler. The materiality of the body is used to show its performativity, or its ability to transform the acts that get soldered.
Butler does not deny the existence of material dimensions of the body, but argues that to describe the gendered body a phenomenological theory of constitution must understand acts to mean both that which constitutes meaning and that through which meaning is performed or enacted. Review of performative acts and gender constitution. Butler, performative acts and gender constitution butler, performative acts and gender constitution section navigation. Judith butlers theory of performativity, introduced in her 1990 book gender trouble. Performative acts and gender constitution 1988 in the essay performative acts and gender constitution, judith butler proposes that gender is performative.
Jeanluc petit 2003 phenomenology and the cognitive sciences 2 4. Her essay deals with the conceptual presence of gender within society that functions as the primary element in expected behavioral roles. Review of gilles deleuze and claire parnets dialogues. To understand what butler means by performativity you have to understand first what a performative utterance is.
Butler, subjectivity, sexgender, and a postmodern theory. Butler argued that gender is not internal but is a repeated performance of acts. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory draws on phenomenological and theatrical theories of acts in order to show how feminist theory needs to provide a radical critique of gender constitution in order to take full account of the way in which oppression structures the ontological categories through. An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory, argues that gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo 520. Austin argues there are certain kinds of speech acts or ways of speaking that are special. Classroom participation as a performative act of language. Butler, who has written on this concept famously and extensively, contrasts an expressive understanding of gender, as a core or identity. Performative citizenship in the civil rights and immigrant. As butler puts is, gender is more or less a consolidation of a number of socially constituted acts on a sexed body through repetition. Feministphenomenological views binary genders and heterosexual contract feminist theory. In this case, gender is constituted in the mundane acts of the body.
An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory, theatre journal 404. Abstract gender performativity is one of the core concepts in judith butlers work. Judith butler performative acts and gender constitution. The basic idea is that gender is created by the very words and actions that appear, superficially, to be simply describing it.
Four key claims judith butler makes in performative acts and gender constitution. Its against this background that butler provides her definition in gender trouble 1990. Drawing chiefly upon judith butlers theory of gender performativity, this article. Performative acts and gender constitution counterargument.
Finally, the phenomenological theory of acts, espoused by edmund husserl, maurice merleauponty. A discussion of the idea of gender as performative and learned, not biologically engrained. A politics of the performative judith butler with the same intellectual courage with which she addressed issues of gender, judith butler turns her attention to speech and conduct in contemporary political life, looking at several efforts to target speech as conduct that has become subject to political debate and regulation. Article information, pdf download for performativity trouble. An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory by judith butler, 1990 slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising.
Butler thus offers what she herself calls a more radical use of the doctrine of constitution that takes the social agent as an object rather than the subject of constitutive acts performative 270. Butler, judith 1988 performative acts and gender constitution. Judith butlers text performative acts and gender constitution. By performative, she means that an act is an act by the very fact of it happening, such as the act of promising by saying. Many people define gender a dichotomy between male and female, but it becomes more complex with theory. This paper provides a summary and critique of judith butlers article performative acts and gender constitution. In judith butlers performative acts and gender constitution, she claims that a gender is an act that is repeated, reenacted and reexperienced p 906. Judith butlers theory of performativity, introduced in her 1990 book gender. In other words, butler questions the extent to which we can assume that a given individual can be said to constitute him. Gender, in other words, is constituted through performance and it is perfomativity that governs gender division. Article summary performative acts and gender constitution october 31, 20 luciaebrown leave a comment so i got a bunch of books from the library about and by judith butler, like the judith butler reader and bodies that matter but obviously its impossible to summarize 300 page collections of pieces by butler. That is, through repeating acts, behaviors, or desires that challenge. Are zuni ways of reflecting upon gender as described by roscoe a better match for butlers theory than what is often taken as common sense biological differences between men and women in. Explanation of judith butlers performative acts and.
It is commonly used for a persons sex male or female but this word only means someones biology. Performative acts and gender constitution 1988 in this essay, judith butler proposes her theory of gender performativity, which would be later taken up in 1990 throughout her work, gender trouble. Article summary performative acts and gender constitution. Judith butler gender studies bibliographies cite this. Four key claims judith butler makes in performative acts. Maxine eliot professor in the departments of rhetoric and comparative literature the codirector of the program of critical theory at the university of california, berkeley gender is not intrinsic but. Butlers recent views on gender, which i will argue, fail to be a convincing synthesis of freudian and foucauldian views. Butler wants to examine the way gender is constructed through certain acts of the body, in order to see what possibilities there are for culture to transform the categories of gender. For example, john searles speech acts, those verbal as. Judith butler, performative acts and gender constitution. Performative acts and gender constitution, judith butler. An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory judith butler philosophers rarely think about acting in the theatrical sense, but they do have a discourse of acts that maintains associative semantic meanings with theories of performance and acting. Chapter 46 judith butler performative acts and gender constitution an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory philosophers rarely think about acting inthetheatrical sense, but they do have a discourse of acts that maintains associative semantic meanings \viilt theories of perlbrmance and acting. Sexual politics, social change and the power of the performative gill jagger judith butlers work on gender, sexuality, identity, and the body has proved massively influential across a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.
Gender simple english wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It is a word that is used to talk about how people put off masculine traits most people think of as male and feminine traits most people think of as female traits. In this paper butler reexamines this term and completes it with the idea of precarity, by making a reference to. In the psychic life of power 1997a, butler writes about gender not only to deconstruct other modern theories of gender, subjectivity and the self, but to present her own, arguably modernist, theory of gender based on an. Pdf performative acts and gender constitution butler. Butler cites mp that the body is not just a historical idea but a set of possibilities that we must continually realise. Performative acts and gender constitution butler judith. In outlining butlers arguments, the paper makes comparisons to other theorists such as beauvoir and turner. There are many ways in which to view the concept of gender.
A succinct summary of judith butlers performative acts. Importantly, she combines speech act theory with a phenomenological theory of acts, lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as a heavy dose of foucaults notions of subject formation to explain how social agents constitute and reconstitute reality through their performance of language, gesture and sign. If gender attributes, however, are not expressive but performative, then these attributes effectively constitute the identity they are said to express or reveal. A performative utterance is an statement that is in itself an action. A performative utterance could also be thought of as an action created by a statement. In this thesis i argue that butlers notion of gender performativity implies that. An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory, judith butler discusses these gender roles in terms of performance and feminist criticism.