Judith Butler in the Hall of Mirrors: Poststructuralist Feminism as the Rhetoric of Psychosis

Within the current epoch, questions about the politics of identity tend to take place within wider poststucturalist paradigms that convey the illusion of tacit objectivity. Futhermore, their linguistic-idealism character forecloses and displaces the very 'material reality' its constitution is dependent upon. This article will critique one particular exponent of this theoretical practice, Judith Butler, in her influential works, Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter. The article is not so much interested in poststructuralist feminism per se but in illuminating the 'pre-ontological' foundation of the essentially Foucauldian paradigm Butler employs, demonstrating how its relativistic character and totalizing effect runs counter to the very cultural possibility that it wants to promote.