62 pages • 2 hours read
Judith ButlerBodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex
Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Bodies That Matter”
In the first chapter, Butler explores the necessity of questioning philosophical discourse from a contemporary feminist position. Feminist theory takes a critical stance toward what is called “idealism” in poststructuralist philosophy, which focuses on discourse as the dominant category worthy of study. Butler also notes that poststructuralism’s position regarding the body is problematic due to an understanding of materiality as subordinate to discourse—elevating mind over matter.
However, Butler is also critical of the feminist focus on the female body, urging a broader investigation of exclusionary mechanisms and power dynamics that shape feminist discussions around the category of “women” and the concept of materiality. Moving away from a simplistic understanding of cultural construction, Butler proposes investigating the specificity of the process of construction. Along with construction, Butler questions the lower status of materiality, emphasizing the inseparability of materiality and language. With this, they challenge the idea that materiality is completely external to language.
Butler traces the association of femininity with materiality back to Latin and Greek etymologies. In Latin, matter is associated with the nouns mater (mother) and matrix (womb), while in Greek, the noun hylē means “matter” but also “wood” and the origin of the universe. To these connections, Butler adds Karl Marx’s understanding of matter as related to transformation and Aristotle’s dynamic view of matter as potential and form as reality. Butler points to the association of women with (passive) matter and men with (active) form, especially when reproduction is involved.
The following section compares Aristotle’s and Foucault’s ideas of the soul and body. For Aristotle, matter cannot appear on its own without the intelligibility principle (schema) that shapes it. For Foucault, on the other hand, the soul is a normative ideal that shapes and cultivates the body. The soul acts on behalf of power, which is the ultimate organizing principle. Butler criticizes these approaches, asking whether they leave space for any strategies for resisting these configurations.
Butler’s focus in this chapter is Luce Irigaray’s analysis of the form/matter distinction in Plato and her attempt to disrupt these binary oppositions. Irigaray explores the traditional connection between matter and femininity. Commenting on Plato’s Timaeus, Irigaray argues that philosophy designates the feminine as an excluded category. More specifically, women’s representation within the philosophical economy is “the site of their erasure” (12). Another important term for Irigaray is that of the “receptacle.” Following Plato’s argument in Timaeus, the receptacle is an excluded and unshaped materiality, existing completely outside of the conventional binaries. Materiality on its own, without the organizing principle of form, is not intelligible; therefore, it cannot be categorized. Extrapolating from this argument, Irigaray argues that the power of female reproduction is coopted by a phallogocentric schema, subordinating it to the masculine principle. For Irigaray, Plato’s concept of the receptacle establishes a patriarchal (and phallic) order. Irigaray’s solution is to act on behalf of the feminine by mimicking the philosophical categories in Plato’s text, exposing its mechanisms and gradually altering its internal configurations. This mimetic strategy involves a repetition and displacement of the phallic economy, thus disrupting its claims of self-grounding.
Butler agrees with Irigaray’s interpretation of traditional categories but is critical of what they see as Irigaray’s essentialism. In Butler’s view, Irigaray wishes to replace the patriarchal position with a feminine one rather than reworking the very assumptions on which these positions are formed. Furthermore, Butler wishes to undertake a more comprehensive exploration of excluded identities that do not fit within the category of “women.”
In the final section of the chapter, Butler offers their own interpretation of materiality as related to Plato’s concept of the receptacle and sexual difference. The receptacle is that which “receives” passively, like a glass that “receives” water. For Butler, Plato’s association of the feminine with the receptacle reveals a heterosexual gender hierarchy, according to which not only the feminine but all nonconforming identities are subordinate to the masculine. Butler’s analysis questions the permanence of gender roles and the potential of nonconforming elements, such as lesbian relationships, to destabilize established gender positions. Butler opens up the category of “matter” in Plato to include other identities, such as animals, women, and enslaved people. Butler ends the chapter by arguing for the disruptive potential of the excluded categories in challenging established norms.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological”
Butler opens the second chapter with an analysis of Freud’s essay “On Narcissism: An Introduction” (1914) and explores the relationship between sexuality and hypochondria. Freud’s essay examines bodily pain and argues that patients suffering from bodily illness end up developing a libidinal investment in pain. Pain, according to Freud, establishes the connection between the physical and the imaginary faculties. Then Butler introduces the notion of erotogenicity (a synonym of the word “erogenous,” something that produces sexual arousal), emphasizing Freud’s connection of bodily pain with sexual stimuli sent to the mind. Butler points out that, according to Freud’s theory, body parts are separated by the different investments of psychic energy, thoughts, and mental processes that one allocates to them. This is called “psychic investiture.” Butler argues that a body part does not exist before such psychic investiture. In other words, there are no premade body parts waiting to be invested with psychic energy; rather, this investment and the emergence of body parts as recognizable elements happen at the same time.
Following this discussion, Butler turns to the topic of genital organs, focusing on penises. For Freud, penises are the original site of erotogenization. Butler argues that Freud’s theory of erotogenization exemplifies the process of narcissistic investment. Narcissistic investment is a specific manifestation of the broader concept of psychic investiture. Whereas psychic investiture encompasses the allocation of psychic energy to various objects and body parts, narcissistic investment focuses on the self as a primary object of attachment. Butler argues that Freud’s theory creates the symbolic concept of the phallus. The phallus, for Freud, is the signifier of sexual difference. It is connected to the realization in young girls that they are not sexually male. This realization, called a castration complex, is at the foundation of sexual differentiation and gender identity in society.
Butler criticizes Freud’s connection between pathology and erotic processes because this approach merges illness and sexuality. Butler cautions against accepting Freud’s theory in the context of contemporary (at that time) discourses conflating gay relationships and sex with the AIDS crisis.
Butler then turns to the complex relationship between language and the materiality of the body. They argue that language never fully expresses the materiality of the body. However, Butler is also wary of understanding materiality as outside of language because this would make it impossible to mobilize materiality to rearticulate the domains of “alterity,” or otherness.
Butler argues that language itself is material because the signs it uses denote materiality. At the same time, they point to the fact that there is always an extra-linguistic domain that is not contained by language. Butler contends that language and materiality are not opposites; instead, language both is and refers to what is material. Materiality, in turn, is always embedded in the process of signification—creating meaning—mutually implicating language and materiality.
Examining the development of bodily morphology, Butler notes that the materiality of the body is not inherent but acquired through language. Bodily morphology analyzes the physical structure, form, and configuration of the human body. Butler extends this study beyond the body’s physical structures and engages with the ways bodies are culturally and socially constructed through discourses. They call this a “phantasmatic morphology” (46). Adopting a framework that combines the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, Butler highlights the use of language to displace bodily satisfaction and physical relations. For Kristeva, language is an attempt to recapture the primary loss of the maternal body.
Butler develops the connection between body parts and cognition in Jacques Lacan’s theory of ego formation. For Lacan, ego formation takes place during “the mirror stage,” when an individual develops an image of their body through a mirror. This image is a psychically invested idealization, or “fiction,” of the body as a totality. Lacan suggests that this narcissistic projection establishes the morphology of the body and conditions the understanding of the surrounding physical world, as well as other bodies.
Butler criticizes Lacan’s theory because this schema, they argue, is exclusively masculine and denies the articulation of a feminine fiction of the body. According to Butler, Lacan’s theory is sustained by the phallus as a symbol of control. Although Lacan argues that the phallus is not a physical part but an imaginary construct, the phallus is nevertheless a masculine symbol invested with a central status in the formation of the human psyche.
Butler introduces the concept of the lesbian phallus to challenge Lacan’s masculine symbol, which is invested with power. Butler focuses on the historical aspects of ego formation, arguing that ego formation occurs with the development of a “specular image” of the body. A specular image of the body, for Butler, refers to the visual representation of the body as mediated through cultural and social constructs. Butler extends the idea of the specular image to explore how societal norms and expectations influence the understanding of gendered bodies. The images one encounters in media, cultural representations, and societal discourses contribute to the construction of a normative specular image of the body, reinforcing particular ideals of gender and sexuality.
Turning once again to Lacanian psychoanalysis, Butler discusses the symbolic nature of the phallus. They note that the relationship between the phallus and the penis in Lacan is still significant, although Lacan insists that the phallus is a stand-alone “privileged signifier” (46). The lesbian phallus, on the other hand, is not a privileged symbol of lesbian sexuality. In lesbian discourse, the phallus becomes a “transferable phantasm” (53), and its masculine connotation is open to re-symbolization. The lesbian phallus challenges normative constraints about female sexuality; therefore, it is a powerful tool for subverting traditional heterosexist gender views. The lesbian phallus also challenges the symbolic connection between the phallus and the penis. The reworked symbol provides an alternative that challenges the schema between anatomy and symbolization that classical psychoanalysis still operates with.
Part 1, Chapters 1-2 Analysis
In the first and second chapters of Bodies That Matter, the text engages with the exclusion of the feminine and other categories from the classical matter/discourse binary. Butler questions both the traditional philosophical framework and the feminist grounding in the sexed specificity of the female body, urging a reconsideration of the matter of bodies. Butler engages with philosophical texts from both classical philosophy (e.g., Plato and Aristotle) and modern thought (e.g., Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva). This range demonstrates knowledge of the whole field of philosophy rather than just their contemporaries or feminist scholars. Additionally, reevaluating Plato and Aristotle—some of the first philosophers in the Western canon—underlines Butler’s intention to uproot hegemonic ideas that are considered absolute truth.
Their philosophical method is deconstruction. Judith Butler studied at Yale University, where they attended the seminars of famous deconstruction scholars Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man. Deconstruction analyzes and destabilizes binary oppositions, hierarchical structures, and assumed certainties in language and thought. It seeks to reveal the inherent contradictions and ambiguities within these structures, challenging fixed meanings and emphasizing the complexity of interpretation. In the first and second chapters of Bodies That Matter, Butler engages in deconstruction to address the relationship between sex, gender, and matter. They challenge traditional binary oppositions, such as the Aristotelian one of matter and form. Taking up Irigaray’s work in the first chapter, Butler accepts her critique of the binary oppositions in philosophy, highlighting her contention that women’s representation within philosophy is the site of their erasure. Butler engages with the theme of The Feminine as Other, accepting Irigaray’s premise and her reading of Plato. However, Butler is not content with Irigaray’s deconstructive analysis and pushes the method further by addressing what they consider a feminist binary, which replaces the traditional one: the patriarchal binary, which privileges the masculine over the feminine. For example, criticizing Irigaray’s understanding of the category of the feminine, which excludes other beings such as nonbinary people, animals, and nature, Butler states the following:
Irigaray […] fails to follow through the metonymic link between women and these other Others, idealizing and appropriating the “elsewhere” as the feminine. But what is the “elsewhere” of Irigaray’s “elsewhere”? If the feminine is not the only or primary kind of being that is excluded from the economy of masculinist reason, what and who is excluded in the course of Irigaray’s analysis? (22).
Butler carries the disruption of binary oppositions further, exploring the mimetic—or imitative—strategies that, for example, the lesbian phallus offers. By misappropriating the phallus, a masculine symbol, and disassociating it from its support—the penis—Butler accomplishes the deconstructive analysis that Irigaray, in Butler’s view, did not. The Relationship Between the Penis and the Phallus, disrupted by Butler’s counterimage of the lesbian phallus, is one of the central themes in the first part of Bodies That Matter.
Central to Butler’s deconstructive approach is the examination of language that hides assumptions and power dynamics. Butler scrutinizes the language used to articulate and regulate gender, revealing how certain terms and discourses marginalize and exclude certain identities. Particularly in the second chapter, they challenge the binary distinction between language and materiality, asserting that materiality is embedded in the process of signification:
This is not to say that, on the one hand, the body is simply linguistic stuff or, on the other, that it has no bearing on language. It bears on language all the time. The materiality of language, indeed, of the very sign that attempts to denote “materiality,” suggests that it is not the case that everything, including materiality, is always already language. On the contrary, the materiality of the signifier (a “materiality” that comprises both signs and their significatory efficacy) implies that there can be no reference to a pure materiality except via materiality (37).
Butler challenges the power that discourse has over matter in philosophy by showing how the two terms—language and matter—are intricately connected. To further this point, they engage with Jacques Lacan’s work, exploring the process of bodily morphology in childhood. Butler shows that in centering the phallus as the symbol of ego formation, the traditional psychoanalytic schema is heterosexist by default, elevating the masculine above the feminine in all contexts. Butler then questions the assumed distinction between material bodies and discursive practices, arguing that the body itself is shaped by historical practices and discourse. Rather than separate and hierarchized, language and the body are inextricable.
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