Judith Butler: From Norms to Politics

Abbreviations x

Acknowledgements xii

1 Introduction 1

Feminism, identity and difference 4

From homosexual to gay and lesbian to queer 7

The influence of poststructuralism 10

Hegel and desiring subjects 13

Postscript 23

2 Rethinking Sex and Gender 25

The trouble with women 25

Feminism and the sex/gender debate 28

Denaturalizing sex and gender 30

Cultural intelligibility – contesting heteronormativity 33

From phenomenology to performativity 36

Performing gender 42

Women in/and feminism 44

Conclusion 46

3 Towards a Subversive Gender Politics 49

From parody to politics 50

Subversive gender politics 51

Performativity and subversion 54

Free will versus determinism 57

Enter iterability 61

The ambivalence of drag 66

The matter of bodies 68

Politicizing abjection – making bodies matter 74

Conclusion 76

4 Psychoanalysis and the Gendered Subject 78

Gender Trouble and psychoanalysis 79

Rubin and 'The Traffic in Women' 80

Freud and Oedipus 82

Melancholic gender identifi cations 83

Melancholia and performativity 85

Lacan and Oedipus 88

Assuming sex 89

Locating resistance 91

Kinship matters 93

Psychic subjectivity 97

Passionate attachment and primary dependency 99

Resisting Butler 102

Conclusion 105

5 'Talking Back' – Resignifi cation and Politics 107

Words that Wound 108

The force of the performative 110

Opposing sovereign performatives 113

A linguistic account of subjectivity 115

Linguistic subjectivity and responsibility 118

Revisiting agency – politics and resignifi cation 120

Against the state 126

Conclusion 133

6 What Makes for a Liveable Life? 134

Normative violence and questions of liveability 135

Corporeal vulnerability 138

Mourning and grief 141

Questions of recognition 143

What's wrong with 'desiring the state's desire'? 146

The politics of radical democracy 14

Cultural translation 150

Conclusion 154

Notes 157

Bibliography 182

Index 197