Provides a comprehensive introduction to notoriously difficult work of
Judith Butler, plus a critical examination of it and its precursors, both
feminist (including Simone de Beaucoir), and non-feminist (including Erving
Goffman).Judith Butler's work on gender, sexuality, identity, and the body has
proved massively influential across a range of academic disciplines in the
humanities and social sciences. It is also notoriously difficult to access.
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to Butler's work, plus a
critical examination of it and its precursors, both feminist (including Simone
de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray), and
non-feminist (including Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and
Jacques Derrida). Topics covered include: gender as performance and
performativity sociological notions of performance the materiality of the body
and the role of biology power, identity and social regulation Butler's shifting
relation to psychoanalysis melancholia and gender identity performativity and
'race' subjectivity, agency and feminist political practice social change and
transformation
