Bodies That Still Matter

Judith Butler (Cleveland, 1956) is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. After her initial work in the field of gender studies, she has since published influential books in the fields of ethics, politics and human rights. She is presently deemed to be one of the world’s most influential intellectuals. Notable among her books published in Spanish are El género en disputa: el feminismo y la subversión de la identidad (Paidós 2007 - Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity,1990); Cuerpos que importan (Paidós – Argentina, 2008 – Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, 1993); Marcos de guerra. Las vidas lloradas (Paidós 2009 – Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? 2009); and Deshacer el género (Paidós 2012 – Undoing Gender, 2004). She has recently published Dispossessions: The Performative in the Political (co-authored with Athena Athanasiou, 2013) and Senses of the Subject (2015), while Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly is to appear in November 2015. The CCCB’s bilingual “Breus” collection has published two of her lectures Vulnerabilitat, supervivència (Vulnerability, Survival, 2008) and Violència d’Estat, guerra, resistència (State Violence, War, Resistance, 2010). The latter text was also published in Spanish by Katz Ediciones in 2011.

This lecture, organized in collaboration with the United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility (UNU-GCM) in Barcelona, falls within the annual guest lecture series of this institute.