An author: Judith Butler

I want to write about Judith Butler. She is an American author, she was born in 1956.

She has working in topics like: feminism, gender, philosophy, politics, ethics, subjectivity, psychoanalysis, and so on.  She wrote books and papers that prefigure many debates of the last decade. She wrote some books like: Bodies That Matter, Precarious Life, Senses of the Subject and others.

One of her most important ideas is: the performative constitution of gender. She propose to us that gender is a reading, an interpretation make for “the others” for our behavior or acts and our sexuality isn’t a “expression” of an underlying gender .

I always say “if I had to choose a book to make a frame work to write a paper, I would choose her book <The Psychic Life of Power> (1997)”. This book is a recompilation of papers where Butler discusses about identity, gender and philosophy.  I find one of her thesis interesting in particular: we want to, we love to, our enslavement. We are in life always self-enslavement.

When I read something of her work every reading I do is to learn something new or a new perspective about what is interesting me in that moment.  

I’m not sure if I “admire” her. I don’t know if she lived a hard life or if she had to encourage difficult situations. At least I always say to me if I'm at a standstill with a thought or theoretic problem, I will find support in her work.