Embodiment and Subversion: Objections to Judith Butler's Nietzsche.
The article examines the significance of Nietzsche’s passage GM I 13 for Judith Butler’s work *Gender Trouble* (1990) and argues that Butler misunderstands this passage. While Butler interprets Nietzsche’s rejection of a fixed “perpetrator behind the deed” as liberation and unlimited self-transforma...
| Publicado en: | Nietzsche - Studien Vol. 55; no. 1; pp. 186 - 214 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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De Gruyter
5/31/2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | The article examines the significance of Nietzsche’s passage GM I 13 for Judith Butler’s work *Gender Trouble* (1990) and argues that Butler misunderstands this passage. While Butler interprets Nietzsche’s rejection of a fixed “perpetrator behind the deed” as liberation and unlimited self-transformation, the article shows that Nietzsche rather emphasizes the limitations of human self-transformation, since the body, as a hierarchy of drives, requires necessary coherence and self-discipline. Using the critique of anthropologist Saba Mahmood on Butler’s concept of the subversion of gender norms, it is illustrated that a real change of embodied identity requires more than mere symbolic acts, namely a lengthy restructuring of the “architecture of the self.” Overall, the article advocates for a more nuanced reception of Nietzsche that takes into account both the liberating and limiting aspects of his philosophy, thereby critically supplementing Butler’s notion of gender performativity. This article considers the importance of Nietzsche's GM I 13 to Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990), arguing that Butler misreads Nietzsche's passage and exploring the implications of their misreading. I begin by placing Butler's reading in the context of French poststructuralist readings of Nietzsche that appear to have influenced Butler. I then turn to Butler's crucial invocation of GM I 13, showing how Nietzsche is claiming that consideration of the human being as a hierarchy of drives reveals our limitations when it comes to self-transformation – whereas Butler takes the lack of a "doer" behind the "deed" to be a thought that amplifies our capacity for self-transformation. Turning to Saba Mahmood's criticisms of Butler's account of the subversion of gender norms, I show how, without speaking of Nietzsche, Mahmood's critique highlights what Butler failed to register in Nietzsche: namely, that thinking of the gendered human being as embodied means acknowledging that the subversion of cultural norms must involve more than the disruption of repeated culturally significant acts. Rather, it must involve the potentially long, slow work of reengineering the body as a hierarchy of drives. |
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