ABSTRACT
In her preface to Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex' (1993), Judith Butler refers to philosophy as 'always at some distance from corporeal matters (Butler, 1993, p.ix). In this paper, I examine Butler's own distance from corporeal matters in order to posit that her work is not as distanced from the actual materiality of the body as critics have claimed. That, in fact, her analysis of the abject body serves as a sustained consideration of a political subversion grounded in materiality-a subversion that endorses the individual body as potentially disruptive to the symbolic domain of viable bodies. Focussing on Bodies That Matter, I discuss Butler's analysis of matter in relation to signification and how, in our culture, certain bodies come to matter more than others. Through a consideration of the novels Mister Sandman (1996), by Barbara Gowdy, and Geek Love (1989), by Katherine Dunn, novels largely concerned with bodily abnormality, I consider the ramifications of Butler's theories on bodily identity for the various abject bodies that populate these texts. In particular, I argue that while Butler's work revolving around abject materiality is overshadowed by a theoretical focus on gender and performativity, this aspect of her work actually constitutes the most sustained analysis of bodily materiality as politically constituted. While in the main Butler's work insists on an identity 'performed' through various discursive acts, her theories on abject materiality insist that the body is not entirely discursively constructed and offer the most politically efficacious view of corporeal identity.
