Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

Samantha Michele Riley (Penn State University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Cultural Studies

Dates

First circulation or publication 2004

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Commentary / criticism

Resources

Undoing Gender (2004) is comprised of a collection of eleven essays, all of which derive from Judith Butler's theoretical work on gender and sexuality. In writing Undoing Gender, Butler sought to rework her theories on gender performativity as presented in her work Gender Trouble (1990), and, in doing so, engage with her critics. Butler asks us to imagine gender and sexuality outside societal norms, in that these norms, and in particular gender as a norm, “figures as a precondition for the production and maintenance of legible humanity” (11). Those individuals who fall outside the hetero-norm, such as transsexuals, intersexuals, and homosexuals, put into question their very existence as human beings. In this ontology of selfhood and Otherness, Butler wants to know, if norms author our gender and sexuality, as well as our humanness, what part...

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2378 words

Citation: Riley, Samantha Michele. "Undoing Gender". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 November 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=27763, accessed 09 June 2026.]