Books by Judith Butler

One of America's leading feminist voices examines the world of violence and terror, and asks why some lives are more valued than others. Through five essays, this book responds to various US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for an understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest for global justice.

Judith Butler elucidates the dynamics of public assembly under prevailing economic and political conditions. Understanding assemblies as plural forms of performative action, she extends her theory of performativity to show why precarity-destruction of the conditions of livability-is a galvanizing force and theme in today's highly visible protests.

In Frames of War, Judith Butler explores the media’s portrayal of state violence, a process integral to the way in which the West wages modern war. This portrayal has saturated our understanding of human life, and has led to the exploitation and abandonment of whole peoples, who are cast as existential threats rather than as living populations in need of protection. These people are framed as already lost, to imprisonment, unemployment and starvation, and can easily be dismissed. In the twisted logic that rationalizes their deaths, the loss of such populations is deemed necessary to protect the lives of ‘the living.’ This disparity, Butler argues, has profound implications for why and when we feel horror, outrage, guilt, loss and righteous indifference, both in the context of war and, increasingly, everyday life.This book discerns the resistance to the frames of war in the context of the images from Abu Ghraib, the poetry from Guantanamo, recent European policy on immigration and Islam, and debates on normativity and non-violence. In this urgent response to ever more dominant methods of coercion, violence and racism, Butler calls for a re-conceptualization of the Left, one that brokers cultural difference and cultivates resistance to the illegitimate and arbitrary effects of state violence and its vicissitudes.

Judith Butler's new book considers the way in which psychic life is generated by the social operation of power, and how that social operation of power is concealed and fortified by the psyche that it produces. It combines social theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis in novel ways, and offers a more sustained analysis of the theory of subject formation implicit in her previous books.

Vi opfatter ofte anstrengelsen for at modvirke uretfærdigheder, frisætte os fra overgreb og udøve social protest – om det er for klimaet eller for fred – som en kamp. Noget, der skal forstås i aggressive og militære termer. I den sammenhæng ses ikkevold for det meste som noget passivt. Noget, der ikke har styrke. Men måske er det netop gennem vores sårbarhed og fællesskab, at vi kan stå sammen om en ny etisk protest.I ‘Ikkevoldens styrke’ viser Judith Butler, hvordan vi kan handle og demonstrere politisk uden at bruge vold. Budskaber om fred og forandring kan nemlig ikke fungere, hvis de baseres på militarisme. I en filosofisk analyse viser hun, hvordan vi kan forbinde os med vores mindst destruktive side og danne nye sociale forpligtelser ved at gå på gaden i vores civile sårbarhed med hinanden i hænderne i stedet for med våben.I en bog, Politiken kaldte ”stærkt gribende”, henvender Butler sig til alle mennesker, unge som ældre, der oplever, at noget strukturelt må forandres i vores verden, hvis kloden og menneskene skal have en fremtid.

Essaysamling i anledning af Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels 250 års fødselsdag.Den tyske filosof Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel har betydet så meget for vores forestillinger om modernitet, historie og fremskridt, at vi alle er hegelianere – de fleste af os ved det bare ikke. Hegel ville udvikle et filosofisk system, som skulle begribe hele hans tid i tanker – men det er også med Hegel, at vi kan få greb om vores egen samtid. I denne bog forklarer en række filosoffer de vigtigste temaer i hans filosofi, så du får chancen for at forstå Hegel helt forfra.Bogen har essays af: Judith Butler, Rune Lykkeberg, Hans-Jørgen Schanz, Lotte List, Christian Dahl, Niels Grønkjær, Anna Cornelia Ploug og Isak Winkel Holm.

Judith Butler er en af de mest indflydelsesrige filosoffer i vores samtid. Med ‘Ordenes vold’ begynder Klim en udgivelse af nogle af hendes vigtigste værker.Her foretager Butler en dyb undersøgelse af, hvordan hadtale sårer, og ord handler – men også hvad konsekvenserne bliver, hvis vi forsøger at beskytte os mod det gennem censur. Ordenes kraft stammer nemlig fra deres evne til både at nedværdige og anerkende.Vi forstår alle, at et brændende kors foran en sort families hjem er en handling af had. Men begår vi også en handling, når vi sårer et menneske ved at tiltale dem med et andet køn, end de identificerer sig som? Må der stå ’neger’ i Pippi Langstrømpe? Er porno et overgreb på kvinder? Hvis det at tale også er at handle, hvordan beskytter vi så hinanden – med love? Censur? Og hvor får ordene den vældige kraft til at såre fra?

This book brings together a group of Judith Butler's philosophical essays written over two decades that elaborate her reflections on the roles of the passions in subject-formation through an engagement with Hegel, Kierkegaard, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Merleau-Ponty, Freud, Irigaray and Fanon.

What does it mean to lead an ethical life under vexed social and linguistic conditions? In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practice -one responsive to the need for critical autonomy yet grounded in the opacity of the human subject.

The celebrated author of Gender Trouble here redefines Antigone's legacy, recovering her revolutionary significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and sexual politics. Butler's new interpretation does nothing less than reconceptualize the incest taboo in relation to kinship-and open up the concept of kinship to cultural change.Antigone, the renowned insurgent from Sophocles's Oedipus, has long been a feminist icon of defiance. But what has remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power that she opposes. Antigone proves to be a more ambivalent figure for feminism than has been acknowledged, since the form of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Butler argues that Antigone represents a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. Moreover, Antigone shows how the constraints of normative kinship unfairly decide what will and will not be a livable life.Butler explores the meaning of Antigone, wondering what forms of kinship might have allowed her to live. Along the way, she considers the works of such philosophers as Hegel, Lacan, and Irigaray. How, she asks, would psychoanalysis have been different if it had taken Antigone-the "e;postoedipal"e; subject-rather than Oedipus as its point of departure? If the incest taboo is reconceived so that it does not mandate heterosexuality as its solution, what forms of sexual alliance and new kinship might be acknowledged as a result? The book relates the courageous deeds of Antigone to the claims made by those whose relations are still not honored as those of proper kinship, showing how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be.

This classic work by one of the most important philosophers and critics of our time charts the genesis and trajectory of the desiring subject from Hegel's formulation in Phenomenology of Spirit to its appropriation by Kojeve, Hyppolite, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze, and Foucault. Judith Butler plots the French reception of Hegel and the successive challenges waged against his metaphysics and view of the subject, all while revealing ambiguities within his position. The result is a sophisticated reconsideration of the post-Hegelian tradition that has predominated in modern French thought, and her study remains a provocative and timely intervention in contemporary debates over the unconscious, the powers of subjection, and the subject.

Judith Butler follows Edward Said's late suggestion that through a consideration of Palestinian dispossession in relation to Jewish diasporic traditions a new ethos can be forged for a one-state solution. Butler engages Jewish philosophical positions to articulate a critique of political Zionism and its practices of illegitimate state violence, nationalism, and state-sponsored racism. At the same time, she moves beyond communitarian frameworks, including Jewish ones, that fail to arrive at a radical democratic notion of political cohabitation. Butler engages thinkers such as Edward Said, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, and Mahmoud Darwish as she articulates a new political ethic. In her view, it is as important to dispute Israel's claim to represent the Jewish people as it is to show that a narrowly Jewish framework cannot suffice as a basis for an ultimate critique of Zionism. She promotes an ethical position in which the obligations of cohabitation do not derive from cultural sameness but from the unchosen character of social plurality. Recovering the arguments of Jewish thinkers who offered criticisms of Zionism or whose work could be used for such a purpose, Butler disputes the specific charge of anti-Semitic self-hatred often leveled against Jewish critiques of Israel. Her political ethic relies on a vision of cohabitation that thinks anew about binationalism and exposes the limits of a communitarian framework to overcome the colonial legacy of Zionism. Her own engagements with Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish form an important point of departure and conclusion for her engagement with some key forms of thought derived in part from Jewish resources, but always in relation to the non-Jew.Butler considers the rights of the dispossessed, the necessity of plural cohabitation, and the dangers of arbitrary state violence, showing how they can be extended to a critique of Zionism, even when that is not their explicit aim. She revisits and affirms Edward Said's late proposals for a one-state solution within the ethos of binationalism. Butler's startling suggestion: Jewish ethics not only demand a critique of Zionism, but must transcend its exclusive Jewishness in order to realize the ethical and political ideals of living together in radical democracy.

The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does or should religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while Jurgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "e;the political"e; in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.

Undoing Gender addresses the regulation of sexuality and gender that takes place in psychology, aesthetics, and social policy.