Interview with Judith Butler: Sara Ahmed

Interview with Judith Butler

Sara Ahmed

2016

Sara Ahmed: I have been asked to interview you about Gender Trouble and how this book has shaped the field of Queer Studies. In the preface to the second edition of Gender Trouble, you write that ‘the life of the text has exceeded my intentions, and this is surely in part because of the changing context of its reception’. I really like this description. I like the idea that texts have lives other than the ones we give them as writers, and that these lives are partly about how texts are ‘picked up’.