BODIES THAT MATTER

PIn Bodies That Matter/ renowned theorist and philosopher Judith Butler argues that theories of gender need to return to the most material dimension of sex and sexuality: the body. Butler offers a brilliant reworking of the body examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the matter of bodies sex and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain sex from the start delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She clarifies the notion of performativity introduced in Gender Trouble and via bold readings of Plato Irigaray Lacan and Freud explores the meaning of a citational politics. She also draws on documentary and literature with compelling interpretations of the film Paris is Burning/ Nella Larsens Passing/ and short stories by Willa Cather.PPrefacenbsp: Acknowledgementsnbsp: STRONGPartnbsp:1:/STRONGnbsp: 1. Bodies that Matternbsp: 2. The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginarynbsp: 3. Phantasmatic Identification and the Assumption of Sexnbsp: 4. Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversionnbsp: STRONGPartnbsp:2:/STRONGnbsp: 5. Dangerous Crossing: Willa Cathers Masculine Namesnbsp: 6. Queering Passing: Nella Larsen Rewrites Psychoanalysisnbsp: 7. Arguing with the Realnbsp: 8. Critically Queer.nbsp: Notes.nbsp: IndexPAs a philosopher of gender [Judith Butler] is unparalleled. Village Voice/Butler gives us a new way to think about the materiality of the body in the discursive performity operative in the materialization of sex. Following a common move in postmodern feminism Butler sets out to demolish the sex/gender distinction that has formed the mainstay of the de Beauvorian and radical feminisms notion that gender as a cultural construction could be critiqued and politicized against the givenness of the bodys biological sex. . . .What is new in Bodies That Matter/ is Butlers attempt to write more directly about race.nbsp: Signs/Extending the brilliant style of interrogation that made her 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity/ a landmark of gender theory/queer theory Butler here continues to refine our understandings of the complexly performative character of sexuality and gender and to trouble our assumptions about the inherent subversiveness of dissident sexualities. . . . indispensable reading across the wide range of concerns that queer theory is currently addressing.nbsp: Artforum/What the implications/limitations of sexing are and how the process works comprise the content of this strikingly perceptive book. . . . Butler has written a most significant and provocative work that addresses issues of immediate social concern.nbsp: The Boston Book Review //PPA brilliant and original analysis. Drucilla Cornell Rutgers University USA//PP...a classic. Elizabeth Grosz//PPnbsp:/PPnbsp:/PPnbsp:PJudith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative L