Join revolutionary philosopher and queer thinker Judith Butler for their unique perspective on why the political right has focused so intently on gender politics. Butler’s newest book is Who’s Afraid of Gender?
Since their foundational philosophical critique of gender and sexuality, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler has been a singularly important contributor to our contemporary understanding of those categories, including what it can mean to be queer. Butler’s revolutionary cultural influence and constant drive towards better understandings of our world guarantee that they will remain a widely read canonical writer for decades to come. In recent years, Butler’s theoretical and activist work on gender performance and nonviolence has placed them in conversations around transgender rights, Black Lives Matter, and the Occupy Movement. Their forthcoming book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, examines why recent authoritarian governments and transexclusionary feminists have focused so much of their energy and ire on gender.
Poulomi Saha is an english professor and the co-Director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley. They are currently at work on their second book, Fascination, which investigates the obsession with, and fear of, Indian spirituality across American history, touching on everything from Thomas Jefferson to the docuseries Wild, Wild Country.
Photo by Stefan Gutermuth