Judith Butler
Alright, so usually I like to say that I understand a lot of key points after reading a piece that we are assigned but I’m not going to lie, this one really threw me for a loop. I started reading Gender Trouble by Judith Butler and stopped after the first few pages. I decided that since I wasn’t understanding it so far, I might want to research her a little bit. After doing a little googling, I found only a few sites that even mentioned her. Although there weren’t a lot of sites about her, I did find one that was really interesting. I found out that in the UK, she has her very own trading card lol, neat huh?! Considering I can’t get the little linky thing to work on here for some reason, here’s the site to check it out: http://www.theorycards.org.uk/card02.htm
(Sorry if you can’t click it on it either, you’ll have to copy and paste it into the tool bar thinger)
So anyway, from this site it explains that she argues “the idea of two ‘biological’ sexes is just as socially constructed as gender is” it also mentions that she argues the feminist discussion of men and women of separate groups-and all women as one coherent group. I’m glad I read this because it helped me put a little more meaning to her writing before I really dove into it.
As for the piece itself, I honestly didn’t gain much. I found myself looking back plenty of times seeing if I had maybe missed something important that I highlighted. After doing that I realized…I didn’t really have much highlighted in the first place, I guess nothing really jumped out at me that screamed theory. One thing I was very happy about was the fact that she kept relating back to Foucault. I’m glad we just worked on his work so it was fresh in my mind, so that was a plus. I guess from this piece, I understood the fact that Butler was focusing on the fact that we are immediately designated with a sex. Even before a name in most cases. In this section she wrote “How are the contours of the body clearly marked as the taken-for-granted ground or surface upon which gender significations are inscribed, a mere facility devoid of value, prior to significance?” Hmm. Although I had this highlighted in my book, I’m still not really sure what it means. I guess I kind of saw it as…we take away peoples values by assigning them a gender?! It seems a little far fetched so I’m hoping the class discussion will help out a lot. As for relating this to other theorists, I guess it can relate to Rubin only because it focuses on sex and gender. This is definitely one of my shorter blogs only because my mind is too jumbled with information that I’m not really understanding yet. I really hope the class discussion will help and I’m sorry if you read this blog and realized that there’s not much here! hehe sorry!
Elizabeth
I felt exactly as you did after reading this piece. I was left not understanding much, and not having highlighted much to go back to and read again. Like you, one of the only things that stuck out to me was Foucault. And don’t feel bad about not having that much information in your blog, I do it all the time.
Posted 2 years, 3 months agoHey Elizabeth,
Posted 2 years, 3 months agoYou did a really good job on your blog, don’t worry about not understanding it all! I didn’t understand a lot of it either, so I always just pick out specific quotes that I liked or understood and talk about those.
I agree, it was nice that she related back to Foucault a lot because we just read his piece. I don’t know if this is completely off base, but I think Foucault’s discussion was more on sexual relations and how one should talk about it, while Butler’s was more on sexuality (masculine vs. feminine). I don’t know if that made any sense, my head is spinning! haha but you did a great job on your blog=)