<P>Judith Butler's work on gender, sexuality, identity, and the body has proved massively influential across a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Yet it is also notoriously difficult to access. </P>
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<P>This key book provides a comprehensive introduction to Butler's work, plus a critical examination of it and its precursors, both feminist (including Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray), and non-feminist (including Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida). The volume covers such topics as:</P>
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<LI>gender as performance and performativity </LI>
<LI>sociological notions of performance</LI>
<LI>the materiality of the body and the role of biology</LI>
<LI>power, identity and social regulation</LI>
<LI>subjectivity, agency and feminist political practice.</LI></UL>
<P>A comprehensive introduction to Butler's work, this book also covers melancholia and gender identity,&nbsp;hate speech, pornography&nbsp;and 'race', social change and transformation, and Butler's shifting relation to psychoanalysis. </P>
<P>Clearly laid out to cover key themes for a student audience, this text will be an essential read for undergraduates in the fields of gender, psychoanalysis and sociology.</P>