Judith Butler

Judith Butler
Butler in March 2012.
Born	(1956-02-24) February 24, 1956 (age 60) Cleveland, Ohio, United States
Alma mater	Yale University
Era	20th / 21st-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Third-wave feminism Critical theory Queer theory Postmodernism Post-structuralism Performative turn
Main interests	Feminist theory Political philosophy Ethics Psychoanalysis Phenomenology Discourse Embodiment Sexuality Gender theory Jewish philosophy
Notable ideas	Gender as social construction Gender performativity
Influences Karl Marx Michel Foucault Theodor Adorno J.L. Austin Luce Irigaray Monique Wittig Emmanuel Lévinas Jacques Derrida Jacques Lacan Sigmund Freud Søren Kierkegaard Friedrich Nietzsche Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Simone de Beauvoir
Influenced Susan Stryker Sandy Stone Jasbir Puar Andrea Smith Pussy Riot

Judith Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics and the fields of 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: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, in which she challenges conventional notions of gender and develops her theory of gender performativity. This theory has had a major influence on feminist and queer scholarship. Her works are often implemented in film studies courses emphasizing gender studies and the performativity in discourse. Butler has actively supported lesbian and gay rights movements and has spoken out on many contemporary political issues. In particular, she is a vocal critic of Zionism, Israeli politics and its effect on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, emphasizing that Israel does not and should not be taken to represent all Jews or Jewish opinion.

Judith Butler was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a family of Hungarian and Russian Jewish descent. Most of her maternal grandmother's family perished in the Holocaust. As a child and teenager, she attended both Hebrew school and special classes on Jewish ethics, where she received her "first training in philosophy". Butler stated in a 2010 interview with Haaretz that she began the ethics classes at the age of 14 and that they were created as a form of punishment by her Hebrew school's Rabbi because she was "too talkative in class". Butler also stated that she was "thrilled" by the idea of these tutorials, and when asked what she wanted to study in these special sessions, she responded with three questions preoccupying her at the time: "Why was Spinoza excommunicated from the synagogue? Could German Idealism be held accountable for Nazism? And how was one to understand existential theology, including the work of Martin Buber?" Butler attended Bennington College and then Yale University where she studied philosophy, receiving her B.A. in 1978 and her Ph.D. in 1984. She spent one academic year at Heidelberg University as a Fulbright-Scholar. She taught at Wesleyan University, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins University before joining University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. In 2002 she held the Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. In addition, she joined the department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University as Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Visiting Professor of the Humanities in the spring semesters of 2012, 2013 and 2014 with the option of remaining as full-time faculty.