Gender in Real Time

After decades of innovative scholarship that galvanized a field and shattered a world of preconceptions, the study of gender now appears to languish. It has been a long while since the publication of a provocative and influential text like Judith Butler's Gender Trouble . Kath Weston argues that the problem is one of time. For too long gender studies has been preoccupied with the visual, with ample attention given to issues of performativity and embodiment, all at the expense of time. Gender in Real Time makes a provocative and important new argument that will revolutionize the field of gender studies. Introducing temporality into the equation and examining the ways gender exists, Weston uses the tools of political economy, the history of mathematics, Darwinian evolution, and a bit of physics to propel gender studies toward the future. Startling new concepts like zero gender and the meaning of time claims are introduced. Moreover, the impact of our time-sensitive society, with its ever-increasing need for speed and accelerated development, is explored for its effect on the production of gender. With chapter titles including, Unsexed, The Ghosts of Gender Past, and The Global Economy Next Time, this book offers a pioneering addition to the field that will forever change our notion of gender.

"Gender in Real Time is a provocative call to refocus gender studies on the neglected political economy of space-time: the historically sedimented social relations, demands of duration and memory that are gender's very fabric. The connections Weston draws are fascinating and suggestive. This is a book that inspires!" -- Rosemary Hennessy, author of Profit and Pleasure: SexualIdentities in Late Capitalism"Who would have thought that mathematics could prove so important to feminist and queer theory? Kath Weston's eloquent meditation on the time-space continuum and the concept of zero provocatively argues for the importance of the undetermined and the 'unsexed' in thinking about sex and gender. Gender in Real Time is wise, witty, and a wonderful read." -- Linda Williams, author of Hard Core:Power, Pleasure, and the 'Frenzy of the Visible'"This compelling book literally moves gender theory into new dimensions by making bodies 'come up temporal' and take up space. Gender matters differently after reading this powerfully inventive and evocative account of bodies, visibility, and representation in a global economy." -- Sarah Franklin, co-author of Global Nature,Global Culture: Gender, Race, and Life Itself"Weston's compelling presence throughout the book provides a sense of companionship: this journey may be challenging and sometimes awkward, but reading Gender in Real Time is an oppurtunity to walk through these ideas with the past, guture, and 'now' of and for gender studies in mind...[Weston] succeeds at continuing to fray the edges of seemingly definitive academic genres, weaving together ethnographic insights, stories from interviewees which can be cross-referenced with those in earlier work, critical perspectives on gender and sexuality studies, and well-crafted, careful writing." -- CurrentAnthropolgy

Kath Weston is the Director of the Women's Studies program at Harvard University and is the author of Render Me,Gender Me, Long Slow Burn (Routledge, 1998) and FamiliesWe Chose, which won the Ruth Benedict Prize in Anthropology.