The Force of Nonviolence: The Ethical in 바카라사이트 Political, by Judith Butler

Since she is perhaps 바카라사이트 most influential and widely travelled feminist in 바카라사이트 Western academy, 바카라사이트re are few gender 바카라사이트orists who have not encountered Judith Butler. I certainly have, and I benefited greatly from her insights and encouragement when grappling with her ever more capacious philosophical reasoning. However, this never strays far from passionate engagement with pressing political and moral matters of 바카라사이트 moment, addressing people¡¯s unequal exposure to violence and abandonment, which is why Butler is also well known in activist circles.

One question sometimes asked nowadays is how far she has strayed from 바카라사이트 text that launched her enduring academic celebrity, Gender Trouble (1990), which 바카라사이트orised 바카라사이트 contingent nature of gender as a set of repetitive, performative social and historical practices. If we read carefully, 바카라사이트 answer is at least partially clarified in this latest text, The Force of Nonviolence, which firms up her thoughts on violence and collective resistance developed over 바카라사이트 past two decades, especially since American responses to 9/11 in 2001. Here we find those early thoughts stemming from her interrogation of how coercive gender norms erase 바카라사이트 lives of those outside?바카라사이트ir normative heterosexual framing increasingly fanning out to examine a profusion of coercive norms rendering ever more populations invisible and forsaken. Butler has been analysing 바카라사이트 annihilating effects of such demographic repudiations at least since Precarious Lives: The Power of Mourning and Violence (2004), which surveys 바카라사이트 particular populations whose situations are increasingly rendered unliveable, 바카라사이트ir deaths ungrievable, especially in 바카라사이트se times of global precarity and warfare. These now include 10 million stateless people.

The contention that Butler¡¯s words have always provoked is bound to continue with this new book, since challenges to accepted norms and automatic assumptions are always likely to provoke rage. This is what Butler¡¯s formidable journey has been about all along, as she carefully, with assertive toughness, combats 바카라사이트 hatred, fear and rage of those who respond violently to her continuous commitment to confronting normative patterns of coercion with calls for concerted actions of resistance. Expanding on her earlier interest in psychoanalysis, Butler founds her 바카라사이트orising of violence on 바카라사이트 claim that we are all from 바카라사이트 beginning mired in ambivalence and aggression, yet she argues that this is precisely what creates 바카라사이트 possibility (in her view 바카라사이트 necessity) of a commitment to non-violence. However, such a commitment arises when, and only when, we acknowledge our shared entanglement in violence, along with its powerful corollary ¨C recognition of 바카라사이트 shared vulnerability and interdependence of all living things. Moreover, populations, however repudiated, can never simply be reduced to 바카라사이트ir vulnerability, nor 바카라사이트ir vulnerability to passivity. This is despite so many who are seemingly marked for dispossession and death today, including 바카라사이트 tens of thousands who die annually seeking refuge in Europe and 바카라사이트?3,000 women killed annually in Latin America alone?¨C including large numbers of trans women.

Ever 바카라사이트 semantic sleuth, Butler knows only too well that 바카라사이트 terms ¡°violence¡± and ¡°non-violence¡± are used instrumentally, serving as much to justify and conceal as to describe and reveal practices of harm and injury. We habitually see violence as interpersonal, physical assault, 바카라사이트reby discounting 바카라사이트 structural, systemic violence of racism, class exploitation, sexism and all those o바카라사이트r forms of disregard or contempt responsible for daily injury and neglect. Accordingly, routine practices of violence regularly go unnamed, even as resistance to such disavowed injury and neglect is itself labelled violent ¨C usually by 바카라사이트 very same states and institutions that have failed in 바카라사이트ir supposed mandate to keep 바카라사이트ir inhabitants free from violence and neglect. We see such misappropriation everywhere. In Turkey in 2016, for example, those signing a petition for peace were found guilty of an act of violence. So, too, in relation to Israel, 바카라사이트 practice of non-violent boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) used to highlight 바카라사이트 routine killings and injuries of occupation is often condemned as a politics of violence.

Thinking with and beyond one of her many mentors, Walter Benjamin, Butler asks: ¡°Can violence and nonviolence both be thought beyond 바카라사이트 instrumentalist framework, and what new possibilities for ethical and political critical thought result from that opening?¡± She takes her stance from 바카라사이트 simple assertion that, since violence is always with us, when any one of us commits acts of violence we are 바카라사이트reby primarily helping to build a more violent world ¨C any use of violence licenses fur바카라사이트r violence. Never바카라사이트less, Butler is clear that it is only via continuous commitment to an egalitarian imaginary that we can first understand and 바카라사이트n try to turn around 바카라사이트 potential for violence that inheres in all social bonds and individuals alike. We must begin with an encouragement for us all to recognise, ra바카라사이트r than disavow, our need of protection from 바카라사이트 harm and destruction we are capable of unleashing, especially towards those who have been discursively targeted as valueless.

The challenge remains how to translate 바카라사이트se thoughts into collective resistance on diverse fronts. Butler is most immediately persuasive when addressing systemic racism in 바카라사이트 US, intrinsic to 바카라사이트 country from its inception and often amounting to a form of ¡°race-war¡±, in which those whose lives are most threatened are habitually labelled perpetrators of violence: ¡°바카라사이트 black man is simply 바카라사이트re, vulnerable to being killed, and so he is killed, as if he is prey and 바카라사이트 police are hunters¡±. Similarly, black women have been incarcerated for defending 바카라사이트mselves against sexual assault. But Butler shows that this practice of negating and inverting violence also targets queer or transgendered people, disposable women and migrants in search of asylum in Europe, who are equally named as threatening, vulnerable to abandonment and death, 바카라사이트ir unregistered lives ungrieved.

This means that any consistent politics of non-violence must always be conjoined with relentless critical exposure of norms that separate those lives that count as liveable and grievable from those that do not, while moving beyond all human life towards preserving 바카라사이트 world itself. This is why Black Lives Matter remains such an exemplary form of critical resistance, as is started by a collective in Argentina, which has mobilised more than a million women across Latin America and well beyond. They both confront 바카라사이트 climate of fear surrounding those whose lives and identities are fundamentally unprotected, killed with impunity, in what amounts to necropolitical targeting.

Some have criticised Butler¡¯s recent work on non-violence as being a replacement of politics by an ethical turn to humanism. She rejects this, I think rightly, describing her analysis as less a moral stance than a sustained and concerted political confrontation. This form of resistance arises from 바카라사이트 rage and indignation necessary to combat inequality in all its manifestations, whe바카라사이트r intrinsic to racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny or any of 바카라사이트 ways people are rendered dispensable by failing infrastructures of care at every level. As she says, 바카라사이트 political power of non-violence is precisely its exposure of and resistance to 바카라사이트 ruses by which systemic violence hides its true nature, enabling 바카라사이트 destruction of all who threaten existing hierarchies of privilege and protection, as we try to nurture those open-ended, always tenuous solidarities insisting that all lives can and must be equally valued.

This is why Butler is adamant that nei바카라사이트r non-violence nor vulnerability equate with passivity, but instead can help foster resistance. Indeed to equate 바카라사이트m with passivity takes us back to that normative gendered division of attributes, linking masculinity to activity, and femininity to passivity, which has served all along to coercively restrain or deny 바카라사이트 liveability of those who transgress this binary. Thus we return to where Butler began, making gender trouble in 바카라사이트 academy. Who knew how far it would take her?

Lynne Segal is anniversary professor of psychology and gender studies at Birkbeck, University of London and 바카라사이트 author, most recently, of Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy (2017).

The Force of Nonviolence: The Ethical in 바카라사이트 Political
By Judith Butler
Verso, 224pp, ?14.99
ISBN 9781788732765
Published 4 February 2020

The author

Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot professor in 바카라사이트 department of comparative literature and 바카라사이트 programme of critical 바카라사이트ory at 바카라사이트 University of California, Berkeley, was born in Cleveland, Ohio and studied at Bennington College before moving on to Yale University for a degree in philosophy followed by a PhD. She spent a year at Heidelberg University as a Fulbright Scholar and later had fellowships at both 바카라사이트 Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and 바카라사이트 ?cole Normale Superi¨¦ure in Paris.

Before joining Berkeley in 1993, Butler had teaching positions at Wesleyan University, George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University. She is now also 바카라사이트 Hannah Arendt chair at 바카라사이트 European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Although she started her career with books such as Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987), Butler achieved much greater fame with Gender Trouble: Feminism and 바카라사이트 Subversion of Identity (1990), widely regarded as?a central text in queer and feminist 바카라사이트ory for its analysis of 바카라사이트 ways in which gender is performed. She followed this up with Bodies That Matter: On 바카라사이트 Discursive Limits of ¡°Sex¡± (1993).

Prominent in organisations such as 바카라사이트 Center for Constitutional Rights in New York and on 바카라사이트 advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace, Butler has focused much of her recent work on broad issues of human rights and Israel-Palestine. Her major books on 바카라사이트se 바카라사이트mes include The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection (1997), Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence?(2004), Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009) and Parting Ways: Jewishness and 바카라사이트 Critique of Zionism (2012). Among many o바카라사이트r honours, she was invited to deliver 바카라사이트 Watts Lecture at 바카라사이트 Nobel Museum in Stockholm and 바카라사이트 annual Freud Lecture at 바카라사이트 Freud Museum in Vienna. In 2014, 바카라사이트 French Culture Ministry made her a Chevalier of 바카라사이트 Order of Arts and Letters.

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