Editing Judith Butler (section)

==Reception==
Butler's work has been influential in feminist and queer theory, [[cultural studies]], and [[continental philosophy]].<ref name=aranguiz>{{cite journal|last=Aránguiz|first=Francisco|author2=Carmen Luz Fuentes-Vásquez|author3=Manuela Mercado|author4=Allison Ramay|author5=Juan Pablo Vilches|title=Meaningful "Protests" in the Kitchen: An Interview with Judith Butler|journal=White Rabbit: English Studies in Latin America|date=June 2011|volume=1|url=http://www.whiterabbitesla.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Interview-with-Judith-Butler1.pdf|access-date=9 October 2013|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150403131535/http://www.whiterabbitesla.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Interview-with-Judith-Butler1.pdf|archive-date=April 3, 2015|df=mdy-all}}</ref> Their contribution to a range of other disciplines, such as [[psychoanalysis]],{{efn|Butler call themselves "creature of psychoanalysis". "It’s where I learned how to read. I was given permission to live and to love, which is what I do in my work. It was a wise and generous gift, which allowed me to move forward with my life."<ref name="Segal#" />}} literary, film, and [[performance studies]] as well as visual arts, has also been significant.<ref name="kearns" /> Their theory of gender performativity as well as their conception of "critically queer" have heavily influenced understandings of gender and queer identity in the academic world, and have shaped and mobilized various kinds of political activism, particularly queer activism, internationally.<ref name="aranguiz" /><ref>{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Judith Butler's Statement on the Queer Palestinian Activists Tour|url=http://www.alqaws.org/q/en/content/judith-butlers-statement-queer-palestinian-activists-tour-0|publisher=alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society|access-date=9 October 2013|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131023060728/http://www.alqaws.org/q/en/content/judith-butlers-statement-queer-palestinian-activists-tour-0|archive-date=October 23, 2013|df=mdy-all}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street|url=http://www.eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en|publisher=European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp)|access-date=9 October 2013|date=September 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181206001640/http://www.eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en|archive-date=December 6, 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Butler|first=Judith|title=Queer Alliance and Anti-War Politics|url=http://www.wri-irg.org/node/12105|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140808062548/http://wri-irg.org/node/12105|url-status=dead|archive-date=2014-08-08|publisher=War Resisters' International (WRI)|access-date=9 October 2013|date=May 2010}}</ref> Butler's work has also entered into contemporary debates on the teaching of gender, gay parenting, and the depathologization of transgender people.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Saar|first=Tsafi|url=https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-fifty-shades-of-gay-amalia-ziv-explains-why-her-son-calls-her-dad-1.5230870|title=Fifty Shades of Gay: Amalia Ziv Explains Why Her Son Calls Her 'Dad'|date=2013-02-21|work=Haaretz|language=en|url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Lee |first1=Rosa |editor1-last=Gleeson |editor1-first=Jules Joanne |editor2-last=O'Rourke |editor2-first=Elle |title=Transgender Marxism |date=2021 |publisher=Pluto Press |location=London |isbn=978-0-7453-4166-8 |pages=62–70 |chapter=Judith Butler's Scientific Revolution: Foundations for a Transsexual Marxism}}</ref>

Some academics and political activists see in Butler a departure from the sex/gender dichotomy and a non-essentialist conception of gender—along with an insistence that power helps [[Subjectification|form the subject]]—an idea whose introduction purportedly brought new insights to feminist and queer praxis, thought, and studies.<ref>{{cite web|last=Rottenberg|first=Catherine|title=Judith Butler|url=http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5173|publisher=The Literary Encyclopedia|access-date=9 October 2013|date=27 August 2003}}</ref> [[Darin Barney]] of [[McGill University]] wrote that:
{{blockquote|Butler's work on gender, sex, sexuality, queerness, feminism, bodies, political speech and ethics has changed the way scholars all over the world think, talk and write about identity, subjectivity, power and politics. It has also changed the lives of countless people whose bodies, genders, sexualities and desires have made them subject to violence, exclusion and oppression.<ref>{{cite news|last=Barney|first=Darin|title=In Defense of Judith Butler|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/darin-barney/in-defense-of-judith-butler-mcgill_b_3346589.html|work=Huffington Post|access-date=9 October 2013}}</ref>}}

Postmodern feminism's major departure from other branches of feminism is perhaps the argument that [[sex]] is itself [[social construction|constructed]] through [[discourse|language]], a view notably propounded in Butler's 1990 book, ''[[Gender Trouble]]''.<ref>Gutting, G. (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Foucault'' (2002), p. 389.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Digeser |first1=Peter |title=Performativity Trouble: Postmodern Feminism and Essential Subjects |journal=Political Research Quarterly |date=September 1994 |volume=47 |issue=3 |pages=655–673 |doi=10.1177/106591299404700305 |s2cid=144691426 }}</ref> Consequently, Butler's work is passible of criticism by [[Age of Enlightenment|modernist]] and [[Factual relativism|anti-relativist]] [[Criticism of postmodernism|critics of postmodernism]] who deplore the idea that categories spoken about in the natural sciences (e.g., sex) are socially constructed.

In 1998, [[Denis Dutton]]'s journal ''[[Philosophy and Literature]]'' awarded Butler first prize in its fourth annual "Bad Writing Competition", which set out to "celebrate bad writing from the most stylistically lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles", which Butler [[Denis Dutton#Criticism of academic prose|responded to]].<ref name="bad">{{cite web| url=http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm| first=Denis| last=Dutton| author-link=Denis Dutton| year=1998| title=Bad Writing Contest| access-date=September 14, 2009| archive-date=March 4, 2016| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304022732/http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm| url-status=dead}}</ref>{{efn|Butler's cited entry in a 1997 issue of the scholarly journal ''[[Diacritics (journal)|Diacritics]]'' ran thus:{{blockquote|The move from a [[Structuralism|structuralist]] account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively [[Homology (sociology)|homologous]] ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of [[Althusser]]ian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.}}}}

Some critics have accused Butler of elitism due to their difficult prose style, while others state that Butler reduces gender to "discourse" or promotes<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bettcher |first=Talia |title=Feminist Perspectives on Trans Issues |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-trans/ |journal=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |year=2020 |quote=While Butler's theory was initially viewed by some as a kind of gender voluntarism, it is clear that this is very far from her actual view, further refined in ''Bodies that Matter'' (1993). Butler clarifies that instead of a kind of voluntary theatricality donned and doffed by a pre-existing agent, gender performance is constitutive of the agent itself.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Phillips |first=Adam |chapter=Keeping It Moving: Commentary on Judith Butler's "Melancholy Gender / Refused Identification" |title=The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection |publisher=[[Stanford University Press]] |year=1997 |isbn=0-8047-2811-9 |editor-last=Butler |editor-first=Judith |pages=157 |language=en |quote=From a clinical point of view, Butler's initial political voluntarism in ''Gender Trouble'' would have made analysts wary. |author-link=Adam Phillips (psychologist)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Probyn |first=Elspeth |author-link=Elspeth Probyn |title=Lesbians in Space: Gender, Sex, and the Structure of Missing |journal=[[Gender, Place & Culture]] |page=79 |doi=10.1080/09663699550022107 |quote=[In Butler's eyes] we can have whatever type of gender we want ... and that we wear our gender as drag |via=[[Taylor & Francis]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Heinämaa |first=Sara |date=1997 |title=What Is a Woman? Butler and Beauvoir on the Foundations of the Sexual Difference |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3810249 |journal=[[Hypatia (journal)|Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy]] |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=20–39 |doi=10.1111/j.1527-2001.1997.tb00169.x |jstor=3810249 |s2cid=143621442 |issn=0887-5367 |quote=The So-Called Voluntarist Theory of Gender. I will proceed backwards, from present to past, from critiques and interpretations to Beauvoir's own writing. My starting point is the recent criticism presented by Judith Butler in her ''Gender Trouble'' (1990a). In this work, Butler contrasts her own "performative theory of gender" to Beauvoir's ...<br />... the notion that Butler presented a voluntarist theory of gender. ... Judith Butler bases her voluntarist reading on [[Michèle Le Dœuff|Le Doeuff]]'s work. }} <nowiki>[[fi:Sara Heinamaa]]</nowiki></ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Boucher |first=Geoff |title=The Politics of Performativity: A Critique of Judith Butler |url=https://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia01/parrhesia01_boucher.pdf |journal=[[Parrhesia (journal)|Parrhesia]] |quote=In the revised introduction to ''Gender Trouble'' (1999), however, Butler ... repudiate[s] voluntarist interpretations of her work. ... Butler says the [[Agency (philosophy)|agency]] in question is not that of the [[subject (philosophy)|subject]] (as in [[individualist]]-voluntarist accounts), but of language itself, whereby we can locate "agency within the possibility of a variation on ... [linguistic] repetition" {Butler, 1999 #6@145}.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Durmuş |first=Deniz |year=2022 |title=Tracing the Influence of Simone de Beauvoir in Judith Butler's Work |journal=Philosophies |volume=7 |issue=Current French Philosophy in Difficult Times |page=137 |doi=10.3390/philosophies7060137 |quote=Butler's theory of performative gender has been criticized for being a voluntarist theory. [[Elspeth Probyn]], for example, takes Butler as saying that gender construction is a totally voluntary act. Hence, Probyn argues that according to Butler's theory of gender performativity 'we can have whatever type of gender we want' ... Butler herself does not criticize [[Simone de Beauvoir|Beauvoir]] for ... a voluntaristic framework ... [Butler] mentions Michele Le Doeuff and other feminists who accuse of Beauvoir for resurrecting 'a classical form of voluntarism which insidiously blames the victims of oppression for 'choosing' their situation'. |via=[[MDPI]] |doi-access=free}}</ref> a form of gender {{annotated link|Voluntarism (philosophy)|voluntarism}}. [[Susan Bordo]], for example, has argued that Butler reduces gender to language and has contended that the body is a major part of gender, in opposition to Butler's conception of gender as performative.<ref>Hekman, Susan (1998). "Material Bodies." ''Body and Flesh: a Philosophical Reader'' ed. by Donn Welton. Blackwell Publishing. pp. 61–70.</ref> A particularly vocal critic has been feminist [[Martha Nussbaum]], who has argued that Butler misreads [[J.&nbsp;L. Austin]]'s idea of [[performative utterance]], makes erroneous legal claims, forecloses an essential site of resistance by repudiating pre-cultural agency, and provides no "normative theory of social justice and human dignity."<ref name="Professor of Parody">{{Cite news|last=Nussbaum|first=Martha C.|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody|title=The Professor of Parody|date=February 22, 1999|magazine=The New Republic|access-date=June 22, 2024|issn=0028-6583|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20001212223500/http://www.tnr.com/archive/0299/022299/nussbaum022299.html|archive-date=December 12, 2000|url-status=dead|url-access=limited}}</ref> Finally, [[Nancy Fraser]]'s critique of Butler was part of a famous exchange between the two theorists. Fraser has suggested that Butler's focus on performativity distances them from "everyday ways of talking and thinking about ourselves.&nbsp;... Why should we use such a self-distancing idiom?"<ref>Fraser, Nancy (1995). "False Antitheses." In Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Nancy Fraser (eds.), ''Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange''. Routledge. p. 67.</ref> Butler responded to criticisms in the preface to the 1999-edition ''Gender Trouble'' by asking suggestively whether there is "a value to be derived from...experiences of linguistic difficulty."<ref name=interview2001>{{cite journal|last1=Breen|first1=Margaret Soenser|last2=Blumenfeld|first2=Warren J.|last3=Baer|first3=Susanna|last4=Brookey|first4=Robert Alan|last5=Hall|first5=Lynda|last6=Kirby|first6=Vicky|last7=Miller|first7=Diane Helene|last8=Shail|first8=Robert|last9=Wilson|first9=Natalie|s2cid=141316680|journal=International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies|volume=6|issue=1/2|year=2001|pages=7–23|issn=1566-1768|doi=10.1023/A:1010133821926|title="There Is a Person Here": An Interview with Judith Butler}}</ref>

More recently, several critics — such as semiotician [[Viviane Namaste]]<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Namaste|first1=Viviane|title=Undoing Theory: The "Transgender Question" and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory|journal=Hypatia|volume=24|issue=3|year=2009|pages=11–32|issn=0887-5367|doi=10.1111/j.1527-2001.2009.01043.x|s2cid=145627130}}</ref>
— have criticised Judith Butler's ''Undoing Gender'' for under-emphasizing the intersectional aspects of gender-based violence. For example, Timothy Laurie notes that Butler's use of phrases like "gender politics" and "gender violence" in relation to assaults on transgender individuals in the United States can "[scour] a landscape filled with class and labour relations, racialized urban stratification, and complex interactions between sexual identity, sexual practices and sex work", and produce instead "a clean surface on which struggles over 'the human' are imagined to play out".<ref>{{Citation | title= The Ethics of Nobody I Know: Gender and the Politics of Description | first= Timothy | last= Laurie | journal=Qualitative Research Journal | volume= 14 | issue= 1 | page= 72 | year= 2014 | url= https://www.academia.edu/6262250| doi= 10.1108/QRJ-03-2014-0011 | hdl= 10453/44221 | hdl-access= free }}</ref>

German feminist [[Alice Schwarzer]] speaks of Butler's "radical intellectual games" that would not change how society classifies and treats a woman; thus, by eliminating female and male identity Butler would have abolished the discourse about sexism in the queer community. Schwarzer also accuses Butler of remaining silent about the oppression of women and homosexuals in the Islamic world, while readily exercising their right to [[Same-sex marriage|same-sex-marriage]] in the United States; instead, Butler would sweepingly defend [[Islam]], including [[Islamism]], from critics.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.emma.de/artikel/eine-antwort-auf-butler-334719|title=Weiberzank – oder Polit-Kontroverse?|last=Alice Schwarzer schreibt|date=29 August 2017|website=Emma|language=de|access-date=2017-12-04}}</ref>

EGS philosophy professor [[Geoffrey Bennington]], translator for many of Derrida's books, criticised Butler's introduction to the 1997 translation of Derrida's 1967 ''[[Of Grammatology]]''.{{efn|He criticised it for "vagueness, inaccuracies, misunderstandings, and plain errors", such as an "extraordinarily inaccurate account of [[Ferdinand de Saussure|Saussure]]'s notion of the sign", doing Derrida and original preface-writer [[Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak]] "a real disservice".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-03-20 |title=Los Angeles Review of Books |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/embarrassing-ourselves/ |access-date=2023-02-08 |website=[[Los Angeles Review of Books]] |language=en}}</ref>}}

===Non-academic===
[[File:Manifestantes protestam contra e a favor de filósofa Judith Butler em São Paulo (38245843031).jpg|thumb|[[São Paulo]], Brazil. An ''[[Inside Higher Ed]]'' article notes that before a democracy conference in Brazil "Butler was burned in effigy as police kept groups of protesters – for and against Butler – apart. A pink bra was attached to the figure that was burned". Some protesters "held crosses and Brazilian flags in the air."<ref name=ihe />|left]] Before a 2017 democracy conference in Brazil,<ref name=ihe>{{cite web | url=https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/judith-butler-discusses-being-burned-effigy-and-protested-brazil | title=Judith Butler discusses being burned in effigy and protested in Brazil
| date=November 13, 2017
|publisher=[[Inside Higher Ed]]}}</ref> Butler was burnt in [[effigy]].<ref name=WhyBacklash /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Aragão |first=Alexandre |title=Please Watch This Insane Footage Of Judith Butler Being Called A Witch In Brazil |url=https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexandrearagao/judith-butler-brazil |access-date=2023-02-15 |website=[[BuzzFeed News]] |date=November 8, 2017 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Guardian interview"/><ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-02-24 |title=Ep. 236: Judith Butler Interview: "The Force of Nonviolence" {{!}} The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast {{!}} A Philosophy Podcast and Blog |url=https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2020/02/24/ep236-butler-nonviolence/ |access-date=2023-02-15 |language=en-US |website=[[The Partially Examined Life]] }}</ref>

[[Bruno Perreau]] has written that Butler was literally depicted as an "[[antichrist]]", both because of their gender and their Jewish identity, the fear of minority politics and critical studies being expressed through fantasies of a corrupted body.<ref>Bruno Perreau, Queer Theory: The French Response, Stanford University Press, 2016, p. 58-59 and 75–81.</ref>