Talk:Gender Trouble

Question

There's a disagreement in number between "signfication" and "are." A typo? "How are the contours of the body clearly marked as the taken-for-granted ground or surface upon which gender signification are inscribed, a mere facticity devoid of value, prior to significance?" (129)

No, I think Butler is talking about the contours themselves. Butler is arguing that the body is a sort of map where the parts of the body (the contours) become inscribed with meaning. 71.224.16.16 (talk) 22:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean that's what she intended, despite the non-agreement, or do you mean that the grammar is right?

If the former, do you think it could be "signification is inscribed" or "significations are inscribed"?

If the latter, how does it work, that view; how are the contours the subject of the second "are", and what do you make of the phrase "upon which gender signification are inscribed"?

I think it is a typo, or more likely, a careless oversight, which the publisher might well have changed to either of the above. I wonder, is it definitely in the book, not just in wikipedia? To me, the verb for the plural noun "contours" is the "are" just before it, and I can't see what else could be the subject of the second "are", other than "signification".

Could it be that Butler was humorously playing with language and it's prescriptions about number as well as gender, in the same way as adopting the pronoun "they" and having the verb agree with it; she wanted to subvert readers' views of number and gender. (I do hope not!) Nick Barnett (talk) 19:12, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Further Reading

Shouldn't there be more books/journals listed under further reading? For the one book that is mentioned, shouldn't there be a more complete reference/bibliographic note? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.231.129.51 (talk) 12:48, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there should be fewer. Wikipedia is not a catalog. -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:32, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Mikeblas, with regards to the material you recently removed from this article, I have to say that I am not sure it does qualify as an original research essay. I can see how some of it might, but much of the material appears acceptable; other parts could be acceptable if suitably modified. I recently rewrote the article Spinoza: Practical Philosophy; here is a link to the article as it was before I rewrote it. Before the rewrite, the description of the book was about as bad as the material you removed from this article, but it was still valuable in that it gave me something to work with. It made better sense to rewrite that material than to simply remove it. Here too, rewriting would have been a better approach than outright removal. In any case, since that was such a drastic edit, I think it would be reasonable for you to discuss it. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:25, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Anyone interested in re-writing the material can recover it from the history. The material in question hadn't been addressed (in any substantial way) in more than eight years since being originally posted in May of 2006. At a certain point, we have to decide that a rewrite isn't forthcoming and we need to start anew. Per WP:PLOTSUM, the given summary was also too long. Above all, material posted must be verifiable; this OR essay wasn't, and has been removed because of it. -- Mikeblas (talk) 13:51, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you and I are familiar with the fact that past versions of the article are stored in the revision history - but not everyone who might be capable or interested in rewriting the article would necessarily know that, Mikeblas. I think one can reasonably suggest that removing the material altogether makes it less likely that anyone will attempt to rewrite it. As you mention the length of time that material was in the article without any substantial improvement, I should note that the content of Spinoza: Practical Philosophy remained largely unchanged from the time it was first added by an IP address in 2006 until I rewrote it in 2015. The content of articles does have to be verifiable, but one needs to distinguish between original research on the one hand and material that is simply uncited on the other; much of the content you removed was the latter. Citations could have been added with a bit of effort. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:39, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

That not everyone knows how to use a feature isn't a reason for eeryone else to avoid its requirement. If you'd like to shape up the deleted text, feel free to do so and re-add it afterwards. Until then, I think it should remain deleteed because it's OR, refectling the opinion of its author, and too weakly referenced to be viable. -- Mikeblas (talk) 23:47, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, we'll see about that. I am not going to rush to restore that material, but I might quote some of it here on the talk page and ask you or others who think it should stay out of the article why they think given passages are original research rather than simply uncited material. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:54, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Reversion of article

Mikeblas, I sympathize with the IP who reverted you here. The edit was a predictable one, given that you removed so much of the article's content without replacing it with something better. Even though it was only an IP who reverted you, I believe WP:BRD still applies. As I pointed out before, the real solution to the article's problems is to carefully rewrite it, not to simply blank its existing contents. Rewriting requires so much more work and thought than just blanking an article, but it's the right way to go. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:26, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

The article wasn't blanked: I removed unreferenced, non-neutral, original research that has been tagged for cleanup for about six months. There's little point in re-writing the material since it's a terrible starting point. WP:BOOKS advises against chapter-by-chapter summaries, as such detail is generally unencyclopedic. Sourcing reliable material is (if this is a notable book) not hard. It's not possible to demonstrate in any meaningful way that your claim that starting from the unreferenced, OR material is any "easier". Meanwhile, Wikipedia's own guidelines tell us that OR material is not acceptable here. As a result, I've removed the material again. Please feel free to replace it with referenced, relevant material. But I'll continue to delete unreferenced material as, by Wikipedia's fundamental policies, it is not permitted. -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:39, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

One thing that should be easy to start citing are the claims about the book's influence. The article claims the book to have created the notion of "gender performativity". The gender performativity article cites only one other author aside from Judith Butler, which doesn't seem like it substantiates the "influential" claim. Such a claim should be readily backed by other references and academic research, would lead to an easy way to generate meaningful material for this article.

The "canonical texts" claim is another extraordinary claim that needs substantial validation with references, and would similarly generate material for this article. -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:51, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

You know very well what I mean. "Blanked" isn't some technical term that can only be used one way. You removed nearly all of the article's content because, in your opinion, it was "non-neutral, original research." As I said, some parts of it would meet that description whereas other parts would not. The proper thing to have done would have been to remove only those parts that actually were non-neutral, original research. That would have required careful editing, which you evidently could not be bothered doing. You are edit warring and you should know perfectly well that that by Wikipedia's fundamental policies is not permitted. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 04:06, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Rather than revert you again, I propose to go through the removed material carefully and restore everything that in my judgement does not qualify as "non-neutral, original research." FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 04:09, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

That's something that you can do offline, or after copying your text to a sandbox. There's no reason to keep the unreferenced text live, in the article. -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:50, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

The material can easily be cited to the book itself. Restoring appropriate material, and properly citing it, would be a better response to the IP who recently reverted you again than continuing to edit war. And to the IP, I would simply point out that yes, talk page discussion is required. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:59, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Criticisms?

Where is the criticisms section? 162.231.134.145 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:08, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

There is no need for a separate criticism section. Mentioning critical reviews and commentary would be helpful, but those can be placed within the "reception" section. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:15, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps it's enough to have a single 'reception' section for a film or an album but for a philosophical work it just doesn't fit. Many of Butler's works have been well received on their release, but they still face substantial criticism from other schools of philosophy and sociology. In the almost thirty years since Gender Trouble's release there have been criticisms even from other feminists of different schools of thought. But to package together thirty years of debate and differing opinions under 'reception' is just not appropriate; you could do a meta-review of criticisms of the book that'd be both longer than the rest of the article, and indeed the book itself. I'm just trying to make the point that overtly philosophical, overtly academic works should not use the same template as works of popular fiction. Criticism in philosophy is part of the academic process; it's not just 'different people have different opinions on the Phantom Menace'. 81.100.137.118 (talk) 09:57, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Agreed - it is absurd to find no criticism section for a theorist who admits that she "didn’t take on trans very well". However, there is a sensible amount of general criricism on the Judith Butler page. The best known crit of Butler was written by Martha Nussbaum in The New Republic in 1999. Here are two quotes, the first is a gripe about style and obscurity, the second is more specific to Gender Trouble, protesting at its elite stance which denies any concern for the oppression of real women:

It is difficult to come to grips with Butler’s ideas, because it is difficult to figure out what they are. . . . Thus obscurity fills the void left by an absence of a real complexity of thought and argument.

She doesn’t envisage mass movements of resistance or campaigns for political reform; only personal acts carried out by a small number of knowing actors. Brymor (talk) 21:15, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

I have added a reference to the Judith Butler page to solve this problem. Brymor (talk) 21:06, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Numbers in brackets

Sorry if this is a dumb question but what are the numbers in brackets about? Are they the relevant page numbers in the book? If so, can we make this clearer, maybe by prefixing them with a "p"? I'm not saying using page numbers like this is bad but I've not seen this done in any other Wikipedia articles so it is a bit confusing without clarification. Also, are we sure that all printings of the book use the same page numbering? If not, should we not be clear about which edition the page numbers relate to? --DanielRigal (talk) 21:01, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

The correct method for references and page numbers is the following example. Click on Edit to see how this is done. Describe something from a source on page 71.

===Notes===

===References===

• Zeman, Adam; Kapur, Narinder; Jones-Gotman, Marilyn (2012). Epilepsy and memory (1. ed.). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0199580286.

TMM53 (talk) 02:14, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Is it OK if I use shortened foot notes?

Is it OK if I use shortened foot notes to replace page numbers in parentheses? See the response above for an example. This would make this document similar to the other documents in Wikipedia. I will wait for a few weeks to see responses. Thanks TMM53 (talk) 02:19, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I did not change any content. Corrections:

Page numbers now follow Wikipedia method for showing page numbers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TMM53 (talk • contribs) 20:46, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Notes, citations and references are separated. This makes if far easier for the reader to understand content.

Short footnotes are used. This makes it far easier for the needed editing to be done.

Butler uses she/her and they/them pronouns.[a] However, Butler prefers they/them pronouns.[b] This article uses they/them pronouns for consistency. replaces Butler uses she/her and they/them pronouns[2] but in 2020 said that they prefer the latter.[3] This article uses they/them pronouns for consistency. Reason for change: The change is a simpler briefer sentence.

Routledge first published Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity in 1990; other Routledge publications occurred in 1999, 2006 (Routledge Classics) and 2007. replaces Gender Trouble was first published by Routledge in 1990. Later that decade, a second edition was published by Routledge. In 2006, a Routledge Classics edition was published.[4] and (1990; second edition 1999) was deleted. Reason for change: The original statement was in error. Also, the original statement is redundant.

TMM53 (talk) 20:44, 30 September 2023 (UTC)