If I were Judith Butler, I would desist from giving interviews to journalists. She has done a few lately (with Owen Jones on YouTube, with Slate magazine last year, with the Guardian a few days ago, etc.) and in each and every one of those interviews, she repeats the same thing. And in this repetition, she affirms she still lives in the 1990s. It may not be altogether her fault. She is repeatedly interviewed about her book Gender Trouble that was published in the ‘90s, the occasion being the contemporary dominance of the trans movement. And so she opines on what she said in the book. The trouble, though, is that she opines as if what she says is “subversive,” a radical parole in a langue of traditionalism. “We need to rethink the category of woman,” she repeats in her latest interview with the Guardian (September 7th) as if we had not already done far more than that.
