For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary.

Ever since feminist theory introduced the distinction between sex and gender, the question of what it means to be a woman has preoccupied feminist thought. In ____Gender__ ____Trouble ____ Judith Butler questions whether it is possible to "be" a woman at all or, for that matter, any gender.

One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s _Gender Trouble_ is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated (...) social _performance _rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent. (shrink)

Jacqueline Rose argues for the importance of sexual difference and fantasy as key concepts through which an interrogation of contemporary theory should be sustained.

"There is hardly a page in this collection of hard-thought and brilliantly written essays that does not yield some new insight." —Hayden White "... de Lauretis's writing is brisk and refreshingly lucid." —International Film Guide.

Contemporary feminist debates over the meanings of gender lead time and again to a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism. Perhaps trouble need not carry such a..