Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

CHAPTER 5
Judith Butler
Olson and Worsham quoted Butler as stating,
RUTHANN MAYES-ELMA
For me, there’s more hope in the world when we can question what is taken for granted, especially about
what it is to be a human ... What qualifies as a human, as a human subject, as human speech, as human
desire? How do we circumscribe human speech or desire? At what cost? And at what cost to whom? These
are questions that I think are important and that function within everyday grammar, everyday language, as
taken-for-granted notions. We feel that we know the answers.
WHY BUTLER?
Judith Butler is a very well known theorist of gender, power, sexuality, and identity. Many
academics are introduced to Butler in graduate school, thus she has been described as “one of the
superstars of ‘90s academia, with a devoted following of grad students nationwide,” according to
the Web site theory.org.uk. I fell in love with Butler while I was doing my dissertation; her theories
on the aforementioned were fascinating (which we will get to later) and in my opinion could help
the educational system become stronger. Butler’s theories fall directly in line with postformal
thinking. The definition of postformalism that I work from has been set forth by Joe Kincheloe,
Shirley Steinberg, and Patricia Hinchey in this important book, The Post-Formal Reader: “Postformal
thinking is concerned with questions of meaning, self-awareness, and the nature and
function of the social context. . . . Post-formalism grapples with purpose, devoting attention to
issues of human dignity, freedom, power, authority, domination, and social responsibility” (1999,
pp. 21–22). In thinking through this lens it couldn’t be more obvious that Butler fits so nice
and neatly within it, although Butler would hate the idea of anything fitting nice and neatly into
a box.
Although Butler’s main interest and passion resides with gender, power, sexuality, and identity,
many crossovers can be derived from these and used to improve our educational system. Once
we understand Butler’s train of thought we can use the same reasoning and apply it to the many
aspects of schools today in order to change what is a purely mechanistic system with all of its
testing into a postformalistic system in which each student has control of their own learning.