Barkley -- I know you asked for the lowdown on Butler, I can't speak on her newest stuff, not having access to the texts (the library here has ordered them), but here're some brief pointers: "Gender Trouble" (1990) Does the tour through Beauvoir and structuralism through psychoanalysis and Foucault, Kristeva and Wittig; best part is pp. 128-141, where she talks about bodily inscriptions being subverted by the performative. She's starting to ask the right questions here, but doesn't get very far. "Bodies That Matter" (1993) Goes through post-structuralism in some detail, and is pretty critical of the thing; check out pp. 124-140, which deal with "Paris is Burning", an interesting documentary on gay African American streetgangs and their fight for their own cultural identity. The conclusion, pp. 223-242 is also intriguing, she starts to theorize the whole "queer theory" movement. It's all interesting stuff, at least to me (but then, I'm into the literary thing). She's asking some important, powerful questions about our assumptions about gender, bodies, history etc. Her main problem is that she never really gets into the problem of class identity; but she *does* acknowledge the thing, especially in her analysis of "Paris" and her insistence that the documentary is indeed limited by the class perspective of the filmmaker (who is a white, educated lesbian professional, like Butler herself). -- Dennis
