Heterosexual melancholy: Butler before vulnerability

In this lecture, Sara Edeheim returns to the concept of heterosexual melancholy as defined by Judith Butler in their 1990s writings.

The lecture will discuss the concept’s central significance for Butler’s understanding of not only gender but also vulnerability. Though vulnerability is not expanded on in these early texts, Butler mentions – in a passage from Bodies that Matter – a ‘trembling body’, the body that seeks regulation to evade the truth about its own limits.

What is the relation between this, by necessity, unsexed body and the almost manic repetition of gender that Butler calls performativity? And how can we understand vulnerability when placed in this context?

This lecture is part of the PhD course ‘Gender, Sexuality and Vulnerability in Theory and Methodology’, hosted through a partnership between the National Research School in Gender Research and the University of Bergen’s Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK).

The lecture open to all