Who says theory is dead?

Gender-theory superstar Judith Butler takes on 9/11 and its aftermath in a new book -- written in clear English! But the task of postmodern theory, she argues, is more crucial now than ever.

By Astra Taylor

Jul 6, 2004 | Throughout the '80s and '90s, in the days before Sept. 11, many people already believed America was at war. These were the Culture Wars, and fighting on the front lines were tenured humanities professors from America's elite universities, proponents of what has come to be known simply as Theory. Armed with the insights of postmodern philosophy, they shocked and awed through their intellectual acrobatics, decentering the subject, doubting the existence of Truth and destabilizing metanarratives. Their aim was not to literally destroy Western Civilization (as some of their ideological and philosophical opponents suggested) but to deconstruct it.

Those were heady days for academics, when the mere mention of the word "poststructuralist" made folks shake if not with fear then at least with outrage.

At the center of the raging debate about the culture wars stood the feminist philosopher Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot professor in rhetoric and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of the now classic "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity," one of the defining works of queer theory. With over 100,000 copies sold, it is academia's equivalent of a platinum album. Over the last decade Butler has published a steady stream of theoretical work, most of which revisits and reformulates the fundamental ideas explored in "Gender Trouble": the social construction and performative nature of sex and gender. Her latest offering, however, "Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence," relates to her seminal work only tangentially, if at all. It is a collection of five provocative political essays that reflect on our post-9/11 world.

Back in the late '90s, Butler appeared as the embodiment of postmodern thought to both conservative and liberal critics alike. The immense success of "Gender Trouble" and the appeal of her analysis among college students (there was even a fanzine, Judy!, printed in her honor) made her a favorite target in the media and among fellow academics, who may or may not have envied her popularity. Articles dissecting Butler's postmodern prose abounded, an especially notable one being Martha Nussbaum's blistering critique in the Atlantic Monthly. (Butler was once referred to by Camille Paglia, in her Salon column, as a "slick, super-careerist Foucault flunky.") Butler even made headlines in the New York Times when she won an award for "Bad Writing" -- writing that was too theoretically obtuse, a trademark of postmodern critique. She, in turn, published a clearly written defense of her style on the Times' Op-Ed page, making the case that complicated language is sometimes required to convey nuanced ideas.

Today, however, theory no longer frightens and fascinates with the same force. We now inhabit a world in which there are more pressing things to be concerned with and to be afraid of, one in which foreign affairs take precedence over matters of philosophy. Recent historic events -- Sept. 11, the war in Iraq and even the evolving protest movement for global justice -- have challenged (excuse me while I use a properly obtuse term) the hegemony of postmodernism in the academy. As a result it is fashionable not to flaunt poststructural proclivities but rather to claim that we have, in fact, actually reached the End of Theory.

This end was declared immediately after the attack on the World Trade Center, in the pages of the Chicago Tribune. A good number of people, rightly or wrongly, had come to equate postmodernism with moral relativism, as well as with a rejection of notions like truth and even the existence of an objective reality. When faced with the very real horror of Sept. 11, such a position seemed not only spurious but actually, to some, downright insulting. For many it was the end, and good riddance.

Next Page: Is Butler joining the mad dash away from theory? Nope, not when you get Foucault applied to Guantanamo

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