Título: Judith Butler
Seção: "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution" (1988)
Background: Judith Butler FBA (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics and the fields of third-wave feminist, queer and literary theory. Since 1993, she has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is now Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory. She is also the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School. Butler is best known for her books Gender Trouble:

Conteúdo: In this essay, Judith Butler proposes her theory of gender performativity, which would be later taken up in 1990 throughout her work, Gender Trouble. She begins by basing her theory of gender performativity on a feminist phenomenological point of view. She suggests that both phenomenology and feminism ground their theories in "lived experience". Further, in comparing phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and feminist Simone de Beauvoir, Butler argues that both theories view the sexual body as a historical idea or situation; she accepts this notion of a "distinction between sex, as biological facticity, and gender, as the cultural interpretation or signification of that facticity". This combination of theories is essential for founding Butler's view of "theatrical" or performative genders in society.  Butler argues that it is more valid to perceive gender as a performance in which an individual agent acts. The performative element of her theory suggests a social audience. For Butler, the "script" of gender performance is effortlessly transmitted generation to generation in the form of socially established "meanings": She states, "gender is not a radical choice... [nor is it] imposed or inscribed upon the individual". Given the social nature of human beings, most actions are witnessed, reproduced, and internalized and thus take on a performative or theatric quality. With Butler's theory, gender is essentially a performative repetition of acts associated with the male or female.

user: What is Performative Acts and Gender Consitution?

assistant: Butler argues that the performance of gender itself creates gender. Additionally, she compares the performativity of gender to the performance of the theater.

user: How does she compare them?

assistant: She brings many similarities, including the idea of each individual functioning as an actor of their gender.

user: Was her argument well received?

assistant: However, she also brings into light a critical difference between gender performance in reality and theater performances.

user: What is the difference/

assistant: She explains how the theater is much less threatening and does not produce the same fear that gender performances often encounter

user: What is the result of this?

assistant: Butler uses Sigmund Freud's notion of how a person's identity is modeled in terms of the normal.

user: Where did she publish this piece?

assistant: She revises Freud's notion of this concept's applicability to lesbianism,

user: How does she revise this?

assistant: She instead says that all gender works in this way of performativity and a representing of an internalized notion of gender norms.