Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) Nat Hurley, Associate Professor No concept has been more central to literary analysis of gender and sexuality over the past forty years than Judith Butler’s concept of “gender performativity”—even where that concept has come to be contested. As I contemplated my selection for the “Forty on Forty,” I asked myself which moments of cultural critique have most shaped the terms of analysis that remain most urgent for the cultural study of gender and sexuality today. Gender Trouble rose to the top for me. But I would like to devote my remaining word space here to recognizing several other top contenders: Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, volume 1 (1976; English translation 1978); editors Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, This Bridge Called My Back (1981); the 1982 Barnard Conference (originally called The Scholar and the Feminist IX); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985); and the Montreal Massacre at L’ Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. [End Page 15] Nat Hurley, Associate Professor English and Film Studies University of Alberta Copyright © 2015 Association of Canadian College and University Teachers