Reviews

Judith Butler Maxine Elliot Professor, Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, University of California-Berkeley, Author of "Gender Trouble" and "Excitable Speech" A brave and timely book, Michael Warner's "The Trouble with Normal" offers a thoroughly intelligent and impassioned critique of gay marriage and the mainstream trend of the lesbian and gay movement to embrace -- without critically evaluating -- the normalizing institutions of the state. Warner is arguably the most productive and radical of queer theorists in our time, and his arguments are an urgent necessity if progressive sexual politics is to retain its claim to radicalism. He not only shows us how shame grips and damages political positions that seek the imprimatur of the normal, but traces with convincing detail the concrete political disenfranchisements for sexual minorities that follow from the purging of a radical perspective on sexuality from lesbian and gay politics. One may not concur with every word, but everyone will attest to the power and necessity of the invaluable critical voice offered here.