Butlerian

English

Etymology

From Butler +‎ -ian.

Adjective

Butlerian (comparative more Butlerian, superlative most Butlerian)

1. Of or relating to Samuel Butler (1835–1902), iconoclastic Victorian author.
2. Of or relating to Judith Butler (born 1956), American philosopher focused on feminism, queer theory, and ethics.
   • 2005, Kirsten Pullen, Actresses and Whores: On Stage and in Society, page 21:

     As [Mae] West aptly demonstrates, theatrical performance, performance in everyday life, and Butlerian performativity suggest how both actresses and prostitutes employ a variety of strategies to intervene in their discursive representations.

   • 2015, Tracy Morison, Catriona Macleod, Men's Pathways to Parenthood: Silence and Heterosexual Gendered Norms, page 47:

     As we have explained, Butlerian theory affords us a way of understanding gendered, heterosexual relations that illuminates and helps to make sense of the (non-)responses of our participants.

   • 2022, Peter Rehberg, Hipster Porn: Queer Masculinities and Affective Sexualities in the Fanzine Butt, page 91:

     In Butt, gender is aesthetically transcended: instead of a Butlerian gender performance that destabilizes masculinity through parody, or a celebration of the destruction of the masculine ego-ideal, which Bersani foregrounds, we find a non-essentialist transformation of the materiality of the male body.

Noun

Butlerian (plural Butlerians)

1. An advocate of a form of Lamarckism put forward by Samuel Butler and Ewald Hering

Anagrams

• untirable, untriable