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

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