Butler Matters Judith Butler's Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies

Since the 1990 publication of Gender Trouble, Judith Butler has had a profound influence on how we understand gender and sexuality, corporeal politics, and political action both within and outside the academy. This collection, which considers not only Gender Trouble but also Bodies That Matter, Excitable Speech, and The Psychic Life of Power, attests to the enormous impact Butler's work has had across disciplines. In analyzing Butler's theories, the contributors demonstrate their relevance to a wide range of topics and fields, including activism, archaeology, film, literature, pedagogy, and theory. Included is a two-part interview with Judith Butler herself, in which she responds to questions about queer theory, the relationship between her work and that of other gender theorists, and the political impact of her ideas. In addition to the editors, contributors include Edwina Barvosa-Carter, Robert Alan Brookey, Kirsten Campbell, Angela Failler, Belinda Johnston, Rosemary A. Joyce, Vicki Kirby, Diane Helene Miller, Mena Mitrano, Elizabeth M. Perry, Frederick S. Roden, and Natalie Wilson.

Contents: Foreword. Part I Introduction: Introduction to the collection, Margaret Sönser Breen; 'There is a person here': an interview with Judith Butler, Warren J. Blumenfeld and Margaret Sönser Breen, with Susanne Baer, Robert Alan Brookey, Lynda Hall, Vicki Kirby, Robert Shail, and Natalie Wilson; Becoming Butlerian: on the discursive limits (and potentials) of Gender Trouble, Frederick S. Roden. Part II Language, Melancholia, and Subjectivity: When all that is solid melts into language, Vicki Kirby; Judith Butler and the images of theory, Mena Mitrano; The plague of the subject: subjects, politics, and the power of psychic life, Kirsten Campbell; Excitable speech: Judith Butler, Mae West, and sexual innuendo, Angela Failler. Part III Body Matters: Archaeology, Literature, and Pedagogy: Past performance: the archaeology of gender as influenced by the work of Judith Butler, Elizabeth M. Perry and Rosemary A. Joyce; Renaissance body matters: Judith Butler and the sex that is one, Belinda Johnston; Gender Trouble in the literature classroom: unintelligible genders in The Metamorphosis and The Well of Loneliness, Margaret Sönser Breen; Butler's corporeal politics: matters of politicized abjection, Natalie Wilson. Part IV Agency, Poststructuralism, and Pragmatism: Strange tempest: agency, poststructuralism, and the shape of feminist politics to come, Edwina Barvosa-Carter; Changing signs: the political pragmatism of poststructuralism, Robert Alan Brookey and Diane Helene Miller. Index.

Margaret Sönser Breen is Associate Professor of English and Women Studies at the University of Connecticut, USA and Warren J. Blumenfeld, Assistant Professor of Multicultural Education and International Curriculum Studies at Iowa State University, USA.