Butler

Abstract

Cyborgs, nomadic subjects, performance: though Judith Butler in Gender Trouble does aim for a retheorisation of possibilities around gender, she does not follow the mode of myth and imaginative refiguration. Far from it. Her work conforms rigorously to the philosophic tradition within critical and cultural theory. And it is only incidentally directed at the reading of aesthetic texts. However, once again the question of a ‘utopianism of difference’ is pertinent, as indeed, very specifically, is subjectivity. The further one goes in this attempt to track some recent arrivals in critical theory, the more the current situation looks like the moment after the toss, when members of the two teams head for their own end of the field: for psychoanalysis, against psychoanalysis.