Non-Fiction, Psychology, Gender Studies, Lesbian, Queer, Queer Studies, Feminist, Feminism, Feminist Studies, United States, North American 

Routledge classics 

In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in Gender Trouble, Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, 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 offers a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in Gender Trouble and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory.
Source: Publisher 

Notes:
"First published 1993 by Routledge."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Bodies that matter -- The lesbian phallus and the morphological imaginary -- Phantasmatic identifi cation and the assumption of sex -- Gender is burning: questions of appropriation and subversion -- "Dangerous crossing": Willa Cather's masculine names -- Passing, queering: Nella Larsen's psychoanalytic challenge -- Arguing with the real -- Critically queer.