For those of a certain mindset, [Judith] Butler is the Harry Potter of philosophy, transforming boring old truisms about the material world into something alchemical, shifting and sexily impermanent. This effect is heightened by the famous opacity of Butler’s prose style, which can make people think they must be accessing really deep truths, and by the fact that Butler rarely spells out the consequences of her view, coyly offering with one sentence what she then seems to take away with another.