Queer Butler'

Because “[e]ven the most common and unremarkable title, the bare name of a novel’s central character, will tell us something in advance about how to read” (Mullan, 2006 :16), the choice of a question and the selection of the weird word queer and the proper name of a thinker as a title for the following article is not fortuitous; it purposes to shed light on one of the most controversial theoretician and philosopher of the modern times. Right away, we have to underscore the fact that the name Butler is not a distinctive feature of this wo/man thinker at issue, i.e., Judith Butler. In fact, Samuel Butler (1835-1902) popularized the name in question thanks to his famous Erewhon (1872) “in which an imaginary utopian community in New Zealand serves to satirize the follies of contemporary England as he saw them” (MacArthur, 1992:169). However, it has been Judith Butler who has recently caused this patronymic to enjoy the fame which is its nowadays.