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Dressing up/dressing down : power, performance and identity in the Book of Judith.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>09/2001
<mark>Journal</mark>Theology and Sexuality
Issue number15
Volume8
Number of pages9
Pages (from-to)23-31
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

In this paper Sawyer reads the book of Judith through the lens of queer theory and contemporary French feminist philosophy. She argues that the story of Judith is a clear example of gender subversion in the ancient world, a rupture in the metanarrative, a disruption of boundaries. Par ticularly interesting is the depiction of Judith as becoming feminine, putting on drag, as it were, in order to entice Holofernes. Judith puts on a particular performance of gender to achieve her purpose and then resumes her role as gender subverter imitating a male warrior at the end of battle by loading up her mules with booty! If the inner truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can be neither true nor false, but are only produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity (Butler 1990: 136).