Judith Butler and Politics (original) (raw)

Bodies and Norms, Judith Butler and Politics

Judith Butler and Politics, 2023

There are many accounts of Butler’s understanding of performativity. The one offered here relies primarily on its relation to becoming. To this end, the second chapter reads early Butler, trying to reconstruct the influence of Simone de Beauvoir, along with Gayle Rubin, Monique Wittig, Hegel and Michel Foucault, on their conceptualisation of the relation between bodies and norms. The theory of performativity is about the reality in which we live, as embodied – and hence also always gendered – beings. Performativity tells us something about how the real has been established for us, but also about our role in the constitution of such reality. Norms shape our social reality that we at the same time perform – under constraint. The second chapter presents Butler’s understanding of sex, gender and performance, so to say, prior to the introduction of the complex notion of performativity. It thus ends with a host of unresolved questions, most important of which is why we do our genders – or, why we craft our bodies – the way we do?

Equal bodies: The notion of the precarious in Judith Butler's work

European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2022

The aim of the article is to offer a reading of Judith Butler's understanding of the precarious, the notion which gives rise to her particular understanding of precarity. The first part of the article discusses the transition from the theory of performativity to the theory of precarity and claims that the body provides the link between a performative act and a precarious life. The second part scrutinizes the idea of the precarious as it appears in conjunction with life. Precariousness and precarity are related to dispossessability and dispossession, and to a politically induced inequality. The article concludes with a claim that the notion of the precarious offers itself as a possible point of departure for an entirely different conceptualization of equality, and as a strong basis for coalitional action or collective struggle. The specific positioning of the body and the political desire for radical equality in Butler's thought makes theories of performativity and precarity interrelated.

The Trajectories of the Concept of Life in Judith Butler’s Thought

In this paper we propose to look into different meanings of livability and life in Judith butler’s thought. Although crucial for her early work (she points to it in her 1999 Introduction to Gender Trouble), the concept of livability as such emerges more often and in a more pronounced manner in her later books (from Undoing Gender and Precarious life to Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly). Our main question is: what is the thread that runs through different concepts of life in butler’s work? What are the links between abject, unlivable, precarious, ungrievable, jettisoned and dispossessed life? this raises further questions: the question of gradation of livability (which life matters and ‘how much’, and how to think this quantifiability of something so unquantifiable); and the question of universality (all lives matter). these questions obviously need to take into account the terms under which a life is qualified and counted as livable. such conditions encompass the norms that organize the possibility of recognition and the orders of recognizability and differential allocation of humanness. they encompass the ways in which we are constituted politically, but also in which this ‘we’ is social and bodily. the question of livable life is thus very much entangled with the issue of (individual) agency, but also with what we as agents require “in order to maintain and reproduce the conditions of (our) own livability”.

Judith Butler: Life, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics: E-Special Issue Introduction

E-Special Issue Introduction Judith Butler: Life, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics: E-Special Issue Introduction, 2024

They have contributed to Theory, Culture & Society and inspired key debates and scholarship around their work. Gender Trouble transformed our understanding of gender, influencing generations of academics, activists, and cultural producers. Butler is an exceptional thinker who aims to build more inclusive and sustainable societies through their writing, which has influenced numerous fields, e.g. sociology, gender studies, politics, and the arts. The editorial introduction juxtaposes earlier and subsequent writings by Butler in order to encourage a wider reading of their work. Drawing upon the full catalogue of Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society, the collection includes articles published by Butler, interviews with them, a book review, and articles about their work.

In conversation with Judith Butler: Binds yet to be settled

Judith Butler is well-known as feminist, gender and queer theorist. She is probably the most widely acclaimed woman in philosophy, which was recognized not only by her great readership, but also by many awards, such as Theodor Adorno Preis awarded to her in 2012. However, Judith Butler has not dedicated her work solely to critical theory: she is also a human rights activist, and the staunch advocate of anti-war politics, non-violence and radical democratic principles. Butler came to Belgrade as the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory’s honorary guest in November 2015. She gave a lecture on ‘Vulnerability and resistance’, followed by an intensive seminar on her newest book, Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. On that occasion we began this exchange which centred very much on her recent conceptual framework. 2015 was an important year because it marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of Gender Trouble, the book that has most notably changed the course of gender and sexuality studies. That book had also had tremendous impact on how women’s and gender studies were framed in post-Yugoslav region – suffice it to say that it has been translated in Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia. The fact that Butler’s work which did not revolve around gender has been much less known, prompted this interview to focus on politicality of vulnerability, precarity and dispossession, the cornerstones of her political and ethical theory. Questions put forward make linkages with gender which ‘is still there’; they ask what kind of human can we claim to defend in times of post-humanism and relentless production of human capital; when freedom, equality and livability work together; and how to argue for non-violence and act non-violently in the amidst of so many forms of violence. The interview took place immediately after Paris and Beirut killings, which was to some extent captured by its tone and by its aspiration to understand the limits of what is politically impossible to will. The impossibility of leading a good life in bad life informed Butler’s answers, with her constant readiness to make us think and will differently, to make us understand our obligation to co-habit the earth together on terms of equality.

The politics of performativity: a critique of Judith Butler

Parrhesia, 2006

Judith Butler's celebrated concept of "performativity" is designed to expose hegemonic conceptions of identity as fictions. It thereby seeks to contribute to a leftwing cultural politics, based on the strategy of the marginal subversion of the reigning cultural norms. 1 Her work, which has been central to debates around identity politics and cultural recognition, 2 began by questioning the unity of the liberal subject and problematised liberal legal discourse on minority rights, 3 but has now shifted, in the context of neo-conservative xenophobia and the "war on terror," to explore the implications of the traumatic encounter with an unknown other. 4 Introducing a recent debate with leading thinkers on the Left, Butler has welcomed critical engagement with her positions that explored theoretical differences in the context of political solidarity with the post-Marxian emancipatory project. 5 In this spirit, my article presents a critique of what I take to be the persistent kernel of methodological individualism in Butler's work. I aim to demonstrate that her theoretical trajectory exhibits a major inconsistency, which indicates the limitations of an individualistic account of subjectformation framed in exclusively cultural terms.

Introduction:“There Is a Person Here”: An Interview with Judith Butler

International Journal of …, 2001

In this interview, the coeditors, along with other contributors, ask Judith Butler a variety of questions regarding queer theory, gender identities, scientific and legal discourse, bodily abjection, race and class positioning, and political organizing. This range of subject matter suggests not only the breadth of Butler's work, but also its applicability to any number of people, whose relation to theory ranges from highly politicized to politically indifferent. The interview demonstrates the responsiveness of Butler's work to cultural translation and political action.