Discipline and Punish vs Gender Trouble: Which Should You Read?

Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault · 1975 ★★★★☆ 4.1 333 pages · ≈ 6 h 10 m · Challenging

“On 2 March 1757 Damiens the regicide condemmed 'to make the amende honorable before the main door of the Church of Paris', where he was to be 'taken and conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing but a a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds'; then, 'in the said cart, to the place de Greve, where, on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms,”

English version of "Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison"

Gender Trouble Judith Butler · 1989 ★★★★☆ 4.0 264 pages · ≈ 4 h 53 m · Moderate

“For the most part, feminist theory has assumed that there is some existing identity, understood through the category of women, who not only initiates feminist interests and goals within discourse, but constitutes the subject for whom political representation is pursued.”

One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential'…