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초록

The purpose of the paper is to show how Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism is reflected in Judith Butler’s Queer theory in Gender Trouble. Sartre’s existentialism says that “existence precedes essence” in Being and Nothingness and Existentialism is a Humanism. This means that there is no given and specific human nature. Man first of all exists and defines himself afterwards. Sartre takes an example of a waiter in a cafe. The waiter acts in bad faith because he thinks the waiter is his essence. Butler makes a concept of “performativity” to show that gender is an imitative structure and that gender is constructed through a stylized repetition of acts. Also, Butler argues that the notion of an original gender identity is often parodied within the cultural practices of drag, cross-dressing, and the sexual stylization of butch/femme identities. Both Sartre’s existentialism and Butler’s Queer theory basically deny the concept of “essence.”

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