朱迪斯·巴特勒在《安提戈涅的诉求》中又一次制造了亲缘关系的‘麻烦’，并提出美国21世纪性别研究的伦理学转向。巴特勒通过对黑格尔、拉康、伊利格瑞等思想家语境中《安提戈涅》的创造性解读，从伦理意识、血亲关系和欲望主体三个概念出发，阐明了一种新的性别政治伦理。这本批评论著延续并丰富了关于安提戈涅的批评传统，是批评史上‘复杂且至今仍充满活力’的解读之一。

继《性别麻烦》和《身体之重》之后，巴特勒的这部论文集对她自己提出的性别操演观点进行了重新审视，并开始将对性别的关注点从哲学话语转向现实生活与政治。她针对身体解剖学、美学以及社会与政治等领域对性与性别的各种限定和标准，提出了消解性别这一应对策略。在本书中，她考察了乱伦禁忌的意义和目的、新型亲属关系、性别跨越、双性、性别诊断和变性手术等问题，将对性别规范的批判置于人类生存与延续的框架之内。巴特勒的论述涉及近年来出现的“新性别政治”的各个方面。

「如果不想陷入以暴易暴的惡性循環，我們就必須回答一個重要的問題：在政治領域，除了帶來好戰的呼號，悲傷還能為我們帶來什麼？」在這部激情洋溢、極具個人風格的著作中，巴特勒深刻反思了「9·11」事件之后的美國社會，批評了美國當局發動長期戰爭的決策，繼而呼吁人們深入認識哀悼與暴力的力量，理解它們如何促成團結並鼓舞人們追求全球正義。顯然，巴特勒一直致力於激發、探索各類「麻煩」，而這也正是其學術志趣所在：「由心理世界出發探索公共生活，鼓舞人們懂得團結、認識痛苦。」誠如荷米·巴巴所言，正是這些因素使我們成為自由的主體。

《身体之重》聚焦于身体和性别的物质性和述行性。巴特勒在本书中引入“征” 、“复现”等重要概念，厘清了她首次在《性别麻烦》中提出并引起广泛争议的“性别述行”理论。通过解读柏拉图、伊瑞葛来、拉康、弗洛伊德、德里达等人的相关论述，以及威拉·凯瑟和詹妮·利文斯顿等人的文学文本和电影作品，本书详细考察了霸权话语如何形构了身体、性别和性属，揭示了在此过程中必然产生的排除、错综复杂的身份认同及其不确定性。巴特勒还在书中提出了诸多尚未解决的议题，这意味着身体政治将进入一个更具开放性的话语空间。
巴特勒认为性别的规制力是一种生产力，它具有生产它所控制的身体的力量。性别是被强行物质化了的理想建构——它不是身体的简单事实或静态状况，而是一个过程，通过对律法的反复征引和复现，管制规范强行对身体和性别加以物质化。而这种物质化从来不曾真正完成，事实上，规制性律法的权力可以被反戈一击，生成质疑这种霸权的再表述。

朱迪斯·巴特勒（Judith Butler）是美国当代*影响力的哲学家之一，本书（《欲望·身份·生命——朱迪斯·巴特勒的主体之旅》）将以“主体”这一饱含矛盾的现代哲学概念为线索，勾勒这位哲学家的理论发展。阐释巴特勒的主体理论基础，分析巴特勒以主体理论出发“介入”性／别、女性主义等领域的过程，并探讨巴特勒近期的“伦理转向”，以此为巴特勒未竟的主体旅程划上暂时的句号。
本书内容属于跨学科研究，涉及哲学、社会学、文化研究等多学科议题。其论述置身于全球话语的视野，力图从中国实际出发全面评价乃至批判西方理论的建树与不足，厘清其深层局限，去芜存菁，结合中国国情与现实需要，借鉴运用西方成果、批判审视西方霸权。

Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world.

《权力的精神生活:服从的理论》对黑格尔、尼采、弗洛伊德、福柯、阿尔杜塞等有关服从理论的论述进行了比较研究，以读书笔记的形式阐述了作者对服从的观点：权力在主体的屈从与生产中的双重作用与权力所采取的精神形式。作为权力的一种形式，服从是自相矛盾的。被一种外在于自身的权力所支配是权力所采取的一种熟悉的和苦恼的形式。但是，为了发现“某人”是什么，某人作为一个主体的形成，所依赖的权利却完全是另一种权力。按照福柯的说法，如果我们理解了权力同样形成了主体，它就提供了它存在的条件和它欲望的轨迹。权力不仅仅是我们的存在所依靠的东西，它也形成了自反性。利用黑格尔、尼采、弗洛伊德、福柯和阿尔杜塞，这本富有挑战性和明晰的著作提供了主体形成的理论，它阐明了矛盾的社会权利的精神作用。

What does it mean to lead a moral life?In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practice-one responsive to the need for critical autonomy and grounded in a new sense of the human subject.Butler takes as her starting point one's ability to answer the questions What have I done?and What ought I to do?She shows that these question can be answered only by asking a prior question, Who is this 'I' who is under an obligation to give an account of itself and to act in certain ways?Because I find that I cannot give an account of myself without accounting for the social conditions under which I emerge, ethical reflection requires a turn to social theory.In three powerfully crafted and lucidly written chapters, Butler demonstrates how difficult it is to give an account of oneself, and how this lack of self-transparency and narratibility is crucial to an ethical understanding of the human. In brilliant dialogue with Adorno, Levinas, Foucault, and other thinkers, she eloquently argues the limits, possibilities, and dangers of contemporary ethical thought.Butler offers a critique of the moral self, arguing that the transparent, rational, and continuous ethical subject is an impossible construct that seeks to deny the specificity of what it is to be human. We can know ourselves only incompletely, and only in relation to a broader social world that has always preceded us and already shaped us in ways we cannot grasp. If inevitably we are partially opaque to ourselves, how can giving an account of ourselves define the ethical act? And doesn't an ethical system that holds us impossibly accountable for full self-knowledge and self-consistency inflict a kind of psychic violence, leading to a culture of self-beratement and cruelty? How does the turn to social theory offer us a chance to understand the specifically social character of our own unknowingness about ourselves?In this invaluable book, by recasting ethics as a project in which being ethical means becoming critical of norms under which we are asked to act, but which we can never fully choose, Butler illuminates what it means for us as fallible creaturesto create and share an ethics of vulnerability, humility, and ethical responsiveness. Judtith Butler is the Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. The most recent of her books are Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence and Undoing Gender.