Book Review: Judith Butler, Race and Education by C. Chadderton

Abstract

In Judith Butler, Race & Education, Chadderton (2018) undertakes the task of explaining how Butler’s work is applicable to understanding race and racism in society and how it may be applied to education in general. Butler’s work has been celebrated for its contributions to the fields of philosophy, gender studies, politics, sociology, religion, literary theory, ethics, cultural studies, education, and other fields. Butler is best known for her work on gender and social theory. Chadderton (2018) seeks to make Butler’s readers aware of the aspects of Butler’s work that directly address race and its significance. Recent research on race embraces the idea that race is a social construct. As such, race is not a scientific reality that is inherently present; instead, it is an arbitrary marker of identity that serves as a demarcation for social categorical assignment. Chadderton (2018) argues that Butler’s approach to understanding the reality of race in society is an alternative framework for understanding race. This is because Butler’s work focuses on “the operation of power, the formation of the subject, and the workings of marginalization” (p. 4). Butler’s approach views race as a hegemonic norm that forms subjects, and a performative, which is made to appear real through the repeated citations, acts, practices, and institutions which make it appear real. In Butler’s earlier work, she posited that gender was performative. Butler has noted that performance and performativity are not the same thing. She explains that we act in ways representative of being a man or that of being a woman as if being a man or woman is an internal reality. Butler argues that gender is a phenomenon that we produce and reproduce all the time through our actions. This notion of performativity rest on the assertion that nobody really has gender from the start. Through “performativity” we create gender. Butler’s view of gender is that it is constructed through acts that are in conformance with dominant social norms regarding gender. This same approach can be applied to race. The application of Butler’s approach to race would require that we reject the notion that race is an innate and natural part of an individual’s identity. The notion of performativity means that the different meanings of race are made to appear real because of the Book Reviews