Podcast: University of Minnesota Press
Episode: Judith Butler and Talia Mae Bettcher talk philosophy, personhood, resistance
Pub date: 2025-04-23

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Talia Mae Bettcher’s Beyond Personhood provides an entirely new philosophical approach to trans experience, trans oppression, gender dysphoria, and the relationship between gender and identity. Arguing that the tense relation between trans oppression and resistance is mediated through the complex social phenomenon of gender make-believe, Bettcher introduces the groundbreaking theory of interpersonal spatiality, which requires rejection of the philosophical concepts of person, self, and subject. Here, Bettcher is joined in conversation with Judith Butler.

Talia Mae Bettcher is professor of philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles, and author of Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy and coeditor of Trans Philosophy.

Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. They are author of several books including Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and, most recently, Who’s Afraid of Gender?

Praise for the book:

"It's a beautiful book. Challenging, crucial, indispensable to our times."
—Judith Butler (in this episode)

"Profound and provocative . . . broadly relevant to many disciplines and social movements."
—Susan Stryker, Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University

Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy is available from University of Minnesota Press.

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