Gender Trouble
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season221 pages, about 4 hours: two-thirds the length of a typical book on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbThe book opens with a preface, then a chapter that questions feminism’s use of the category woman.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesReviewers trace the book’s argument to Mill’s Subjection of Women and Rubin’s Traffic in Women, neither on the shelf.
The case for it
on its reach
“I am struck by how astonishingly broad the achievements of this book were”
a Substack review on her ideas
“her ideas lead me to think more deeply about how social interactions”
a book blog on performative identity
“Butler’s innovation is to understand identity itself as a signifying practice”
Amy Hollywood · Harvard Divinity Bulletin, 2006 on Kristeva and Wittig
“I found all that very informative and was happy to learn more about these thinkers”
a book blog
The case against
on the prose
“You wouldn’t read “Gender Trouble” for the prose.”
a book blog on the prerequisites
“It would be even more difficult to read without that background knowledge.”
a book blog on getting through it
“it bordered on being physically strenuous to get through her book.”
a book blog on her written style
“Her written style, however, is ponderous and obscure.”
Martha Nussbaum · The New Republic, 1999
