The Hollow Discourse: Judith Butler and the Collapse of Meaning, Matter, and Mind

Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity has often been celebrated as radical, liberatory, and disruptive of essentialist and binary conceptions of identity. But when scrutinized more deeply, it emerges not as a subversive theory of liberation, but as a self-negating discourse of void—one that denies not only essence but existence itself. Her framework does not just dismantle metaphysical binaries; it empties the very ontological ground beneath our feet, replacing being with performance, substance with signification, and consciousness with discursive play. In doing so, she transforms what was once a phenomenological and ethical exploration of identity into a fatalistic linguistic nihilism.

Butler denies any original or authentic gender core. There is no real “man” or “woman” beneath the gendered expressions and stylized acts that society enforces. Identity, she argues, is constructed entirely through repetitive discursive performances. But if there is no foundational self—no interiority, no essence—then what is performing the performance? Her theory collapses under the weight of its own logic, as it eliminates the possibility of a subject capable of action, intention, or awareness. The subject, too, is merely the effect of discourse. There is no ground, no origin, no referent—only endless linguistic iteration. In this void, not even matter remains. Sex, which might be presumed to have some biological basis, is reclassified as another discursive product. There is no sex before discourse, no flesh before interpretation. Even the particles of materiality, the atoms that make up the biological body, do not exist independently; they, too, are said to be produced by discourse.

At this point, the ontological absurdity becomes evident. If discourse produces everything, including the body, the subject, and even particles themselves, then discourse exists in a vacuum, unsupported by any reality outside itself. Yet discourse cannot exist without a medium, without a speaker, a mind, or at the very least, a system of thought. So who or what generates discourse? If Butler says that discourse creates the subject, the world, and all matter, she is left with the paradox that discourse must preexist itself in order to bring itself into being. This is not philosophy but a tautological ouroboros, a self-consuming contradiction. If discourse constructs all reality, and yet there is no reality outside discourse, then Butler effectively asserts that nothing exists—not even the discourse she depends on.

This is the final consequence of her ideological maneuver: a denial not only of essence, but of being, truth, and even thought. The result is a metaphysical vacuum—a radical monistic nihilism dressed in the language of liberation. Butler’s theory performs what we might call the great inversion of Buddhism. Whereas Buddhist emptiness (śūnyatā) is a fertile, generative void—pregnant with potential and inseparable from form—Butler’s void is sterile and collapsing. In Buddhism, emptiness is not the denial of matter or mind, but the realization that phenomena lack inherent, independent existence. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. The world is not denied; it is re-understood through the lens of interdependence, impermanence, and consciousness.

Butler’s view, by contrast, replaces this interdependent realism with performative anti-realism. She denies not only the self, but also the mind that perceives, the body that acts, and the world in which it acts. This is not a Buddhist no-self (anattā) but a Western void of meaning, an ontological annihilation. In Buddhism, consciousness precedes thought, perception precedes narrative, and mind precedes discourse. In Butler’s world, there is no mind at all—only text. Her worldview is not one of liberation, but of fatalism. If nothing exists but performance, and if performance itself is illusory, then her theory ultimately denies the very possibility of change, resistance, or awareness. There is no subject to resist, no truth to reveal, no reality to return to. There is only a hollow play of signs floating in a void of meaninglessness.

This becomes even more dangerous when we understand that Butler not only denies ultimate truth but also erodes relative truth. In classical Buddhist terms, we can speak of two levels of truth: the conventional (relative) and the ultimate. Butler undermines both. In her framework, there is no truth at all—only performance. But if there is no truth, not even relative, then even discourse loses coherence. It becomes a ghost speaking to no one, about nothing, within a void that does not exist. This is a metaphysical suicide.

What remains is a pure ideology masquerading as critique. Butler’s theory is not a radical break from domination—it is the perfect ideology for a system that wants to liquefy all identities, all truths, all forms of resistance into an endless simulation of progress. She offers a doctrine of performativity that ultimately collapses into performative nonexistence. Her denial of essence, mind, matter, and truth leaves only a deadening vacuum. If we accept her theory, we accept the annihilation of meaning.

In contrast, the Buddhist view—confirmed by modern neurocognitive science and behavioral psychology—affirms the reality of both matter and mind. The doctrine of the two truths allows us to understand how phenomena exist conventionally while lacking inherent selfhood. This leads to compassion, awareness, and wisdom—not despair. Where Butler leads us into discursive void and ideological fatalism, Buddhist thought offers a path beyond illusion toward a more integrated and grounded view of reality.

Butler’s theory is not a liberation from power. It is the logical endpoint of a system that denies reality itself—a postmodern abyss in which not only identity, but existence, is dissolved.