Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex

In the Preface of Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler introduces some of the central topics of the book, such as materiality, performativity, gender, and sex. The author alludes to the theoretical complexity of these concepts and the contemporary discussions regarding them while providing their perspective in first-person language. Butler affirms that they are personally invested in the subject matter of the book and the questions it seeks to address. In addition, Butler responds to some of the questions and critiques raised by their book Gender Trouble, published in 1990, three years before Bodies That Matter. One key idea that Butler conveys in the Preface is that ideas in texts cannot be entirely divorced from the lives and contexts of their authors, just like the materiality of the body cannot be understood apart from the body’s life and context.

Butler explains that their attempt to study bodies as straightforward objects of thought has proven challenging because bodies signify a world beyond themselves. Bodies resist strict definitions, which drives Butler to question whether this resistance itself is fundamental to understanding bodies. Because bodies elude easy categorization, Butler places their writing between the philosophical tradition that avoids the body as an object of study and feminist writing that integrates the feminine body into writing without maintaining a critical distance.