Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex

In Bodies That Matter, Butler challenges conventional notions of gender identity and sexuality, particularly as they relate to the construction of the feminine in societal discourse. The notion of the feminine as the other is deeply rooted in Western philosophical, psychoanalytic, and feminist traditions, and Butler engages with these traditions to deconstruct and reexamine the implications of such categorizations.

Butler introduces the notion of the woman as the other through the work of Luce Irigaray in Chapter 1. Irigaray explores how philosophy constructs the boundaries of discourse that exclude the feminine. She argues that the feminine is excluded from the very act of articulation in traditional metaphysics. Irigaray bases her analysis on classical philosophy, especially on the works of Plato and Aristotle. Irigaray coins this constitutive exclusion of the feminine as phallogocentrism. Phallogocentrism is a term that combines two concepts: “phallus,” which symbolizes the penis and is associated with masculinity and patriarchal power, and “logocentrism,” which refers to the centrality of language and the written word in Western philosophical thought. The term points to a hierarchical structure in which masculine values and perspectives are prioritized and normalized, casting the feminine as the other.