Love them or hate them, Judith Butler might just be one of the most influential thinkers of the last 30 years, spawning and developing our understanding of basically all humanities concerns:  sexuality and gender, language and meaning, peace and violence, relationships and family, identity and subjectivity, law and politics, and even life and death. 

I would argue that anyone studying law, arts, philosophy, languages, politics, and even biology or medicine would benefit greatly from at least one of Butler’s insights — and I’d assume that’s very likely to include you. 

Butler is best-known for their theory of performativity, applying linguist J. L. Austin’s theory of ‘performative’ utterances – acts of speech which, in being spoken, bring that action into being (e.g. “I promise…” → constitutes a promise) – to a general understanding of our performative constitution of gender/sexual identity – acts of social speech, if you will. Or, in Butler’s words: 

Consider gender, for instance, as a corporeal style, an “act,” as it were, which is both intentional and performative, where “performative” suggests a dramatic and contingent construction of meaning. (Gender Trouble, p177)

Confused? Don’t worry. 

Whether you’ve ever referred to gender as ‘performed’, or simply acted in a way that was intended to represent – to ‘do’ – your gender (like actively choosing the cologne that’s assigned to your gender)… you’re evidence of Butler’s argument. 

Butler’s ideas remain equally consequential and controversial in the wide-ranging canon of continental philosophy; whilst the philosopher has books and prizes written in their honour, they have also been dubbed ‘the Professor of Parody’ with protests against their work in Brazil which burnt an effigy of her.

That said, Darin Barney provides the following defence of Butler, summarising their legacy amid polarised reception amongst certain sections of their academe:

[Their] work… on gender, sex, sexuality, queerness, feminism, bodies, political speech and ethics has… also changed the lives of countless people whose bodies, genders, sexualities and desires have made them subject to violence, exclusion and oppression, by lending recognition, dignity and power to their experience, and by illuminating the contours of an ethics in which we might begin to live well with, and because of, the differences that constitute us.

Where do I stand? 

After reading the preface to Gender Trouble in Year 10 at the ripe age of 15, my life was never the same; truly, an anagnorisis of my gay (?) teenagehood. 

Butler’s work proved instrumental to my relationship with myself, my body, and the plethora of bodies and selves (and embodied selfhoods!) I have come across in my lifetime. I probably revisit Butler on a fortnightly-to-monthly basis in some capacity, either reading their work directly or another scholar’s Butlerian analysis. 

However, even a Butlerite like me can admit that their work can be difficult to read, especially for a beginner. 26 years ago, Butler won first prize in the journal Philosophy and Literature’s ‘Bad Writing Competition’ for a 94-word sentence.

…Regardless of the polarity of their work’s reception, Butler’s importance as a theorist, a writer, and an academic is clear. 

So, having chipped away at Butler’s body of work for four, coming on five, years… I have collated an ordered list of five essays (~70 pages total) to get started with Butler’s work, each with a difficulty rating, the length, the overall topics, and my favourite quote.

Essay 1) Judith Butler: ‘We need to rethink the category of woman’ 

For: anyone!!

Difficulty: 1 / 5 stars (2000 words)

Topics: Queer and feminist politics/activism; performativity; queer history 

Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing. We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to “assign” gender to us. 

Let’s start with an interview with theorist Julie Gleeson. Here, Butler’s reflections span a range of topics, tracking temporal and cultural differences in the many political arenas in which they operate: queer rights, access to academia, collective action, what it means to have or do a gender. While not essential reading, Gleeson’s interview showcases Butler’s interconnected, interdisciplinary approach, deepening your reading of her work. 

Essay 2) Protest, Violent, and Nonviolent 

For: politics, international relations, history, and law students

Difficulty: 1 / 5 stars (12 pages)

Topics: (Anti-)Fascism; political action; democracy; class; justification of violence; harm

Protest is a way of voting on and with the streets, asserting a sense of the people that remains radically unrepresented by the “representative” government that exists. (p 239)

Two great things about this essay are that it’s written really simply, and there are no overdrawn academic footnotes as Butler introduces, analyses, and moves on from each external reference. This is great for those without a thorough backing in theory or philosophy, hence why I’ve suggested it so early in my list of accessible Butler works. Read these 12 pages and you’ll never think the same way about the scenes of violence our society lets slide (but maybe shouldn’t): tasers, arrests, insecticide, your parents smacking you. 

Essay 3) How Can I Deny That These Hands and This Body Are Mine? 

For: philosophy, linguistics, and English students

Difficulty: 2 / 5 stars (18 pages)

Topics: Descartes; the mind vs the body; thinking; writing; embodiment; metaphysics

There is no writing without the body, but no body fully appears along with the writing that it produces. (p 28)

Did you take PHIL1004 and also find yourself deeply dissatisfied with Descartes’ work? Read this. I found this when preparing for my PHIL1004 final exam, desperate for an articulation of the holes I kept poking in Cartesian mind-body dualism (the idea that our minds and our bodies are separate entities; the former, reliable and the latter, an obstacle to our access to the former). Butler tears Descartes to shreds, without the overly verbose technicality that analytic philosophy seeks to ingrain in a budding philosopher. Like psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Butler exposes the impossibility of Descartes’ attempt to disembody himself through his philosophical practice. 

Essay 4) Kinship beyond the Bloodline 

For: sociology, biology, medicine, policy, law, international relations, or history students

Difficulty: 3 / 5 stars (22 pages)

Topics: Family; queerness; slavery; blood; culture; race; friends-as-family; relationships; coming out; family law

On the one hand, the reduction of kinship to genetic tie… is one way that the government evacuates the affective character of the bond of kinship. On the other hand, that same affective tie is presumed and exploited by the exact same policy. (p 33)

Is blood thicker than water? Butler manages to pack a LOT into this essay, blending STEM and the Arts remarkably, hence my 3/5 difficulty rating; even though everyone should read this essay, some aspect of this analysis will almost certainly be outside of your usual. Butler covers epigenetics, migration policy, tribalism, reproduction, and the family to present an account for how society and science blend natural and cultural processes in its heteronormative structuring of relationships. 

Essay 5) Performative Acts and Gender Constitution

For: anyone gay; English, sociology, philosophy — or any Arts students

Difficulty: 4 / 5 stars (12 pages)

Topics: Phenomenology; bodies; theatre; gender; identity; performance; speech acts; gay shit

Gender reality is performative which means, quite simply, that it is real only to the extent that it is performed. (p 527)

I’m leaving the most challenging, but most rewarding for last: where it all started (at least, the gender theory). It’s here that Butler first introduces their theory of gender performativity. This piece is technical, but not particularly challenging – I read it in Year 10 without any background in philosophy; for me, my curiosity about much-asked questions (Why are you gay? What makes you gay? Are you a guy or a girl?)  were plenty to pique my interest. 

If you want to really, really understand every question you’ve probably asked yourself from an early age about your gender and our gendered world, these 12 pages are scripture. Although written in 1988, Butler presents a cogent explanation of many historical and current phenomena, and how male and female are unstable, shifting, and largely discursively established categories: how can “man” include Louis XIV’s silk stockings and Andrew Tate’s extra-tight V-neck shirts? How can “woman” both presume and chastise sexuality?

The danger of Butler’s work, its thrill, resides within these 12 pages…exemplifying knowledge’s power to challenge power itself.