A tangible item that endures the great purge has a subtle quality. You are aware of that terrible afternoon when a student rips through boxes, discards seminar readings, gives away three-pound textbooks, and completely destroys a bedroom’s remnants of college life. The majority of theoretical materials fail. In some way, the Judith Butler trading card does.
The Theory Trading Cards were developed by Bournemouth University as a teaching aid for first-year media students, who are often intimidated by the idea of academic theory in general. With just a picture, a name, and a few words on the back, the format is purposefully approachable, condensing decades of thought into something manageable. Serious reading was never intended to be replaced by the deck. It was intended to open a door that is frequently closed. Additionally, the Judith Butler card proved to be the door that many students actually entered.
Butler, a Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at UC Berkeley who was born in Cleveland in 1956, has spent decades creating work that challenges conventional wisdom. One of the seminal works of queer theory, Gender Trouble was published in 1990 and sold over 100,000 copies. Many students found it extremely challenging to understand the main point—that gender is not something you are but rather something you do, a series of repeated performances shaped by social constraint—through textbook prose alone. That argument is succinctly and persuasively summarized in the trading card. In order to challenge presumptions, Butler advocates for the spread of radical gender performances. On the back of a card, twelve words. Depending on who you ask, it can be either elegant or reductive.
It’s possible that the person this card represents contributes to its unique feel. Butler’s theories have a distinct feel to them; they challenge your preconceived notions about your own body and behavior in addition to describing the outside world. There’s a way that intellectual disruption like that leaves its mark. When students first meet Butler at the age of 19, they frequently carry that initial shock into their thirties, searching for words to express what they felt but were unable to put into words.
Walking around college campuses or looking through recent graduates’ social media feeds gives the impression that some thinkers turn into talismans. Among them is Butler. The card version of that talisman is compact enough to be placed against a coffee mug, tucked into a wallet, or pinned above a desk. The physical format is really useful because it breaks up the never-ending scroll and requires you to focus on one concept at a time. It’s not as common as it seems.
Even if the synopsis would fit on cardstock, Butler’s actual arguments were never straightforward. Gender Trouble questioned whether attempting to define “women” rigidly might actually reinforce the very structures feminism sought to dismantle, challenging feminism’s own presumptions about what “women” as a category means. The idea is uncomfortable. Both now and in 1990, it wasn’t. The card points in the direction of that discomfort, but it doesn’t quite capture it.
Whether the trading card format will remain a charming experiment or become a permanent fixture in university teaching is still up in the air. However, the Butler card’s longevity—it moves apartments, survives graduation, and reappears on office bulletin boards—indicates that it’s accomplishing more than the syllabus could. Certain concepts take shape. That form appears to occasionally be the size of a playing card.
