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by Judith Butler
From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world.
Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on "gender" that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed "anti-gender ideology movements" that are dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous, perhaps diabolical, threat to families, local cultures, civilization―and even "man" himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to nullify reproductive justice, undermine protections against sexual and gender violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights to pursue a life without fear of violence.
"[A] trenchant polemic... Thoughtful and powerfully assured, this is an essential take on an ongoing political battle." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy. A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes." ―Kirkus Reviews
"A profoundly urgent intervention." ―Naomi Klein
"A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in re-imagining collective futurity." ―Claudia Rankine
"Judith Butler's Who's Afraid of Gender is more than a corrective and antidote to this corrosive time and to the terrible conjoining of the far right, conservatives, and liberals over meaning and mattering made manifest in the phantasms of 'gender.' It is also―and urgently―a call and an invitation to 'new coalitions and new imaginaries' and 'to help produce a world in which we can move and breathe and love without fear of violence.' It is a call to reject 'righteous sadism,' to know the risk of making another world, and to act, anyway, collectively toward it." ―Christina Sharpe, author of Ordinary Notes
This information about Who's Afraid of Gender? was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Judith Butler is the author of several books including Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection, Excitable Speech, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, and The Force of Non-Violence. In addition to numerous academic honors and publications, Butler has published editorials and reviews in The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Nation, Time Magazine, the London Review of Books, and in a wide range of journals, newspapers, radio and podcast programs throughout Europe, Latin America, Central and South Asia, and South Africa. They live in Berkeley.
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