Reflections on Gender Trouble Thirty Years Later: Reply to Hershatter, Loos, and Patel

2020/11/01 by Judith Butler
Social Sciences · #Anthropological Studies and Insights #Japanese History and Culture #Socioeconomic Development in Asia

paper · doi:10.1017/s0021911820003654

openalex publication_date 2020/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

I am most honored and perhaps also startled to read these comprehensive scholarly essays dedicated to the question of the appropriation of Gender Trouble in Asian studies. Sometimes “appropriation” is a problematic activity, such as the cultural appropriation of artworks and styles from minority communities, such as the indigenous, for the purposes of market circulation, profit, or the augmentation of human capital. But when texts such as Gender Trouble enter the global market of books, a different kind of appropriation becomes possible. The book is at once taken up and refused, indicating the limits of translation or marking a resistance to cultural imperialism.

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