朱迪斯?巴特勒是美国当代文学、文化和社会政治研究领域中最重要的批判性理论家之一。1990年，巴特勒发表了《性别麻烦》一书，随即引起了国内外相关领域内众多学者的密切关注，引发了关于性、性别、身体与主体构成等多方面的理论讨论。本论文将巴特勒置于西方哲学体系，尤其是以福柯、德里达和拉康为代表的20世纪法国后结构主义的理论框架之内，集中探讨巴特勒学术生涯前10年中的主要思想，梳理和阐释其内在逻辑和理论脉络，系统呈现巴特勒的身体/性别理论。巴特勒借助精神分析及后结构主义理论，从哲学角度出发，对性别、身体和主体等范畴逐一解构，揭示了话语建构性别、性别建构主体的真相，以求彻底颠覆异性恋制度和法勒斯中心主义的霸权。巴特勒认为，“性别”不是同身体一起与生俱来的，而是异性恋制度的话语和社会规范施为地生产的，其本质是“权力/知识”或“权力/话语”的虚构。性别行为以同样的施为性建构了作为性别主体的身体，而身体的物质化则是性别范畴的征引和反复征引的结果。在巴特勒的理论体系中，主体不是实存，而是为了在社会规范中获得可理解性和合法地位的一个虚构。施为的过程是一个不断重复的过程，因此，在施为过程中发挥作用的言语和在施为过程中生成的性别、主体等范畴都处在不断的变化之中。在言语被征引和重复征引的缝隙之间，语言与物质之间的场域生产出新的语境，言语的意义也随着语境的变化而无法固定，因此，在言语的施为过程中产生的身体、性别和主体的意义也就无法固定。与此同时，在话语生产主体的过程中被禁忌排除的东西并没有消失，而是隐蔽地、内在地构成主体，使其成为内部不符合规范的、不服从权力话语质询的主体。在这个意义上，作为话语施为之产物的身体、性别和主体就构成了从内部反抗权力/准则和颠覆霸权的潜在力量。
Judith Butler is one of the most important critical theorists in the fields of literary, cultural and social political studies in contemporary America. In 1990, she published the most important theoretical monograph of her critical career, Gender Trouble, which immediately attracted attention from scholars of different fields of related disciplines both inside and outside the United States, generating discussions on such subjects as sex, gender, body and subject formation. This thesis, by putting Butler in the tradition of Western philosophy, especially the theoretical framework of 20th century French post-structuralism represented by Foucault, Derrida and Lacan, etc., focuses on her notions on the above mentioned subjects that she discussed repeatedly in the first ten years of her critical career, particularly in the two important books published in this period, Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, hoping to delineate the internal logic and historical development of her theory of body/gender politics.Starting from and then going beyond psychoanalysis and post-constructionist theories, Butler deconstructs one by one the categories of body, gender and subject by revealing the truth that they are all constructed by discourses, thus to thoroughly undermine the hegemony of heterosexuality and Phallus centrism. Butler argues that gender is not born with the body but performatively produced by the heterosexual discourses and social norms. Genders are but false formulations of Power/Knowledge or Power/Discourse. Similarly, bodies as the sexual subjects are also constituted by the performative sexual behavior, whereas the materialization of the body results from the citation and recitation of sexual categories. In Butler’s theories, the subject is not a being but a fiction to gain intelligibility and legitimacy recognized by the social norms.The process of performativity is one of reiteration and therefore speech, which functions in the process, and the categories of gender, sex and subjects that are generated in it, are always changing. Between the citation and recitation of the speeches, and between language and matters, emerges a new context in which meaning can never be certain and neither the signification of the categories that is produced in the process of performativity. Meanwhile, those that are excluded by taboos in the process of the subjection do not disappear but covertly and internally constitute the subject into something not adhering to the social norms and appellation of the power/discourse. It is in this sense that body, gender and subject produced by discursive performance would become a potential force undermining the hegemony of social power and norms from inside.
