Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex is a book published by Judith Butler in 1993. Along with Butler’s 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Bodies That Matter is a leading work of 20th-century feminist philosophy. Judith Butler, an influential philosopher and cultural critic, currently teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. In Bodies That Matter, Butler tackles the topics of materiality, performativity, gender, and sex. They challenge essentialist views, proposing that gender performativity defines identities over time. The book delves into the theme of Performativity and Identification to examine sexual difference as a regulatory ideal, criticize the sex/gender distinction, and explore the nature of gender norms. Such norms are based on exclusion, which is especially important for understanding the theme of The Feminine as Other. Butler analyzes the implications of exclusion and develops the notion of abjection (exclusion) as a category with subversive potential.

Butler scrutinizes poststructuralist idealism, critiques the feminist focus on an idealized female body, and questions essentialism while advocating for a nuanced understanding of materiality.