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Gender undone: Subversion, regulation and embodiment in the work of Judith Butler

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Anoop NayakORCiD

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Abstract

Judith Butler's philosophical writings on identity have provided inspiring, if occasionally 'troubling', ways of rethinking gender. A key contribution has been the challenge to conventional social constructionist ideas and thinking on subjectivity. In developing a paradigm of performativity, Butler's work takes us beyond the territory of identity secured in much previous feminist poststructuralist debate. She does so in part by providing an ontological critique-a type of 'queering' if you will-of such seemingly knowable categories as 'man', 'woman', 'girl' or 'boy'. In addressing the radical interruption in identity theorising offered in Butler's writing, we consider the arresting claim that identity is a type of 'doing' that is only made manifest at the point of action. To explore the theoretical, empirical and political issues at stake, we draw especially upon Butler's writings on identity and ally this to some of our own ethnographic research on gender, youth and schooling. Here, we explore young people's compulsion to enact and display stylised forms of gender embodiment, and the spectacular enactments of transgression that can elicit a practice of gender dissimulation. Our focus is upon the subversion, regulation and embodiment of gender identities and its implications for the sociology of education. © 2006 Taylor & Francis.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Nayak A, Kehily M

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: British Journal of Sociology of Education

Year: 2006

Volume: 27

Issue: 4

Pages: 459-472

Date deposited: 15/01/2010

ISSN (print): 0142-5692

ISSN (electronic): 1465-3346

Publisher: Routledge

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425690600803038

DOI: 10.1080/01425690600803038

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