Section outline

  • This week, we will trace the genealogical relationship between Foucault's understanding of sexuality as a discursive product and Butler's notions of gender performativity.

    Set Reading:

    1. Butler, Judith, excerpts from Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subject of identity (New York and London: Routledge Classics, 2011), pp.xxx–xxxii ; pp.43–46; and Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), pp.223–242.


    Secondary reading:

    Sedgwick, Eve Kofosky, ‘Queer and Now’, in Tendencies (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp.1–8.

    David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Munoz, “What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?, special issue, Social Text, 84 – 85, (2005).

    Meg-John Barker, and Julia Scheele, 'Queer A Graphic History'(Icon Books Ltd, 2016), pp 79-82

    Chris Barker, 'Gender' in The SAGE Dictionary of Cultural Studies, (SAGE Publications, 2004), pp 72-73

    Seminar questions :

    -After reading Butler's chapter, focus on its highlighted parts. Then, explain her theory of gender performativity in your own words. How might we link this to Butler’s thoughts on drag, and what drag reveals about the performativity of gender?

    -In the Big Think video, Judith Butler says: “We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it’s a phenomenon that is being produced all the time. So to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start. I know it’s controversial, but that’s my claim.”

    Does the ‘performance’ of ‘male’ or ‘female’ change over time and according to cultural or geographical context? Why is Butler’s claim controversial, as she notes?


    -Reflecting on your own experiences, what are some examples of the ‘gender performativity’ that Butler discusses? Can you think of specific examples within the French and Francophone cultural context?