SUBVERTING LÉVI-STRAUSS’S STRUCTURALISM: READING GENDER TROUBLE AS “TWISTED BRICOLAGE”

This article critically analyzes Judith Butler’s presentation of Claude Lévi-Strauss inher book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1999). In thisbook, Butler criticizes feminists for employing Lévi-Strauss’s binary oppositions andtheir use of the sex/gender binary in their critique of patriarchy. Butler’s analysisprovides a fruitful lens to understand how gender operates. However, as the articleshows, this analysis relies on a misrepresentation of Lévi-Strauss’s take on thesedualities. Employing Lévi-Strauss’s term “bricolage,” the article reads Butler’smisinterpretation as a twisted form of bricolage, which destabilizes certainassumptions in Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism. The article presents an example of howLévi-Strauss’s structural theory has influenced not only feminist theory but also itscritique. The article also aims at providing an alternative way to understand influentialgender theorist Judith Butler’s misinterpretation of other scholars.