ABSTRACT
Butler’s theoretical work is concerned with unearthing the processes, both cultural and psychological, that shape our identities. She is guided, in many senses, by a quest to test orthodox explanations of gender, principally those of the theoretical heavyweights – Claude Lévi-Strauss, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Butler’s critique of these thinkers is concerned, to a large degree, with the various explanations they give to describe the development of gendered identities that do not fit into orthodox heterosexual categories.
