Serious bodies

In this book, the philosopher and gender theorist addresses the objections that were directed at her after the publication of her work, Gender Trouble (1990). These objections primarily concern the question of corporeality as materiality, a question that her critics felt was insufficiently considered in her early concept of the performative constitution of gender. In response, Butler seeks to show how the very question of corporeality as materiality is conditioned from the outset by symbolic mechanisms. However, Bodies That Matter is much more than just a polemical text, not least because Butler develops her concept through a genuine dialogue with other feminist theorists (Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva), with major philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century (Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida), and with psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan). She also uses excursions into literature (Nella Larsen, Willa Cather), political theory (Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Žižek), and gay and lesbian subculture. This interdisciplinary scope alone makes this book one of her most important works.