i'm conflicted about Judith
this interview from 2010
I'm sure I've told you that I began to be interested in philosophy when I was 14, and I was in trouble in the synagogue. The rabbi said, "You are too talkative in class. You talk back, you are not well behaved. You have to come and have a tutorial with me." I said "OK, great!" I was thrilled.
He said: "What do you want to study in the tutorial? This is your punishment. Now you have to study something seriously." I think he thought of me as unserious. I explained that I wanted to read existential theology focusing on Martin Buber. (I've never left Martin Buber.) I wanted look at the question of whether German idealism could be linked with National Socialism. Was the tradition of Kant and Hegel responsible in some way for the origins of National Socialism? My third question was why Spinoza was excommunicated from the synagogue.
when I was 14 my main concerns were "when will this zit go away?" and "does X fancy me?" I certainly didn't know who Spinoza was or whatever else the teenage Judith was retrospectively fascinated by... this interview answer strikes me as a bit disingenuous, but then maybe she was precocious and I was, and remain, really thick... when the teacher told the 14 year old me that I was "too talkative in class" my response was to avoid eye contact and a "fuck you" muttered under my breath - "What did you say?!"..."erm, nothing..."
but, I have partially read copies of
Gender Trouble and
Bodies That Matter, and as a John Waters fan I have to respect her play on words, although when I suffer from insomnia these are go to works for sending me to sleep, my eyes can barely focus after a paragraph
she is the the spectre*** hanging over humanities - I have friends who write papers on queer studies and the like, and they moan to me that they are obliged to quote Judith, even though they take issue over some point that I'm too stupid to understand, and then on the other hand I have friends who were inspired by the Judith who made them realise that it was OK to be themselves
but from my reading of Judith, it strikes me that Butler states the obvious, only that it is couched in ultra-academic theory that makes it sound far more intellectual than it really is...
although when I see a snippet of an Andrew Tate video I truly understand that gender is performative, he is totally acting out his idea of what a "male" is, and Judith is 100% correct ( admittedly this is probably not the example she intended to provide proof of her correctness )
*** I sometimes wonder if "Judy" from Twin Peaks is one and the same