Feminist Theory
Post-Modernism/Queer Theory
Critical of the social
construction of the body, sex, gender
Seeks to liberate us from
conceiving of the body as natural, a given
And from conceiving of
sex/gender as a binary
Rather, gender is performative,
therefore a choice
In place of binary, we have
continuum, multiplicity, plurality
Builds upon, incorporates
critiques of psychoanalytic work of Freud, Lacan,
philosophy/psychoanalytics of Foucault, the
hermeneutics/deconstruction of Derrida
Luce Irigaray (b. 1932, Belgium)
MA degree in Philosophy from
Leuven, in Psychology from University of Paris
Diploma in psychotherapy,
Ecole Freudienne, where she studied with founder, Jacques Lacan
(b. 1935, France; d. 2003,
Tucson, AZ)
queer theory
lesbian materialism
coined the term Òthe straight
mindÓ
compulsory heterosexuality
From: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler/biography/
In her most famous work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity (1990), Butler argued that feminism had made a mistake
by trying to assert that 'women' were a group with common characteristics and
interests. That approach, Judith Butler said, performed 'an unwitting
regulation and reification of gender relations', reinforcing a binary view of
gender in which human beings are divided into two clear-cut groups, women and
men. Judith Butler notes that feminists rejected the idea that biology is
destiny, but then developed an account of patriarchal culture which assumed
that masculine and feminine genders would inevitably be built, by culture, upon
'male' and 'female' bodies, making the same destiny just as inescapable. That
argument allows no room for choice, difference or resistance.
Judith Butler argues that sex (male, female) is seen to cause
gender (masculine, feminine) which, in turn, is seen to cause desire (towards
the other gender).
Judith Butler's approach – inspired in part by Michel
Foucault – is basically to smash the supposed links between these, so
that gender and desire are flexible, free-floating and not 'caused' by other
stable factors.
Judith Butler suggests that certain cultural configurations of
gender have seized a hegemonic hold, and calls for subversive action in the
present: 'gender trouble' – the mobilization, subversive confusion, and
proliferation of genders, and therefore identities. This idea of identity as
free-floating, as not connected to an 'essence', but instead to a performance,
is one of the key ideas in queer theory. Seen in this way, our identities,
gendered and otherwise, do not express some authentic inner 'core' self but are
the dramatic effect (rather than the cause) of our performances.