Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex

Judith Butler was born on February 24, 1956. They are an American philosopher, gender theorist, and cultural critic. They became a doctor of philosophy in 1984 at Yale University with a dissertation that was later reworked into the book Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. Butler is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Comparative Literature. Their multiple awards include the Andrew Mellon Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in the Humanities (2009-2013), the Adorno Prize (2012), the Brudner Prize from Yale University, and the Albertus Magnus Professorship from the City of Cologne.

Butler’s work has impacted gender studies, contemporary philosophy, queer theory, and gender activism. They became a leading figure in third-wave feminism due to their groundbreaking work on identity, gender performativity, intersectionality, and power dynamics. Influenced by thinkers such as G. W. F. Hegel, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault, Butler gained prominence with the publication of their 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. In this major work, Butler challenges conventional notions of gender and identity as fixed, arguing instead that gender is performative—it is a constant negotiation and delineation of social and cultural configurations—rather than an innate quality.