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casparb's review against another edition
5.0
Ok it's Judith so it goes without saying this is a difficult text but even by their standards Bodies That Matter is a challenge. There's plenty of prep reading to do here, including one of the most difficult works of contemporary philosophy - Žižek's Sublime Object of Ideology . I don't think it's essential to read every text that JB has a chapter on here but certainly I think BTM asks for a level of Lacanian understanding and a competency with Derrida, who is especially present in the first half of the text. At the least watch Paris is Burning .
Foucault Nietzsche Kristeva Irigaray Laclau Freud Kripke & bell hooks are others to have solid grasp of and I don't claim to possess this for all.
It's a text that exists, in part, to tighten some of the screws of Gender Trouble , and I think it succeeds in that as well as developing new areas which seem even more fruitful than GT. will be coming back
Foucault Nietzsche Kristeva Irigaray Laclau Freud Kripke & bell hooks are others to have solid grasp of and I don't claim to possess this for all.
It's a text that exists, in part, to tighten some of the screws of Gender Trouble , and I think it succeeds in that as well as developing new areas which seem even more fruitful than GT. will be coming back
zoooeeeggg's review against another edition
love Butler <3 but I picked this up for thesis research and just did not need to read the rest of it. maybe down the line I'll pick it up again ...
emmettmaroo's review against another edition
3.0
It's Judith Butler; it is what it is. But I like her, sometimes.
andrewaackroyd's review against another edition
5.0
"This not owning of one's words is there from the start, however, since speaking is always in some ways the speaking of a stranger through and as oneself, the melancholic reiteration of a language that one never chose, that one does not find as an instrument to be used, but that one is, as it were, used by, expropriated in, as the unstable and continuing condition of the 'one' and the 'we,' the ambivalent condition of the power that binds"
Y'all this book is sooo good. Will go to use in my analysis of SOPHIE and Cather.
Y'all this book is sooo good. Will go to use in my analysis of SOPHIE and Cather.
dashadashahi's review against another edition
2.0
Of course, this book is full of important information. Butler's separation of the body and gender as sites of performativity that is socially constructed under sites of power and discourse is greatly interesting. The argument that the body isn't just matter but rather something that *becomes* via social constructions and negotiations is interesting and important in understanding the field of gender and sexuality.
The issue is that to access this information requires reading Butler's dense, convoluted writing style. It is such a slog to read it is barely worth it and is a prime example of what happens when academics are encouraged to write only for other academics - information is gatekept away from the non-academic population and reinforces the "us versus them" mentality inherent in much of academia's privatizing work.
The issue is that to access this information requires reading Butler's dense, convoluted writing style. It is such a slog to read it is barely worth it and is a prime example of what happens when academics are encouraged to write only for other academics - information is gatekept away from the non-academic population and reinforces the "us versus them" mentality inherent in much of academia's privatizing work.