Dispossession: The Performative in the Political

by Judith Butler, Athena Athanasiou

Dispossession describes the condition of those who have lost land, citizenship, property, and a broader belonging to the world. This thought-provoking book seeks to elaborate our understanding of dispossession outside of the conventional logic of possession, a hallmark of capitalism, liberalism, and humanism. Can dispossession simultaneously characterize political responses and opposition to the disenfranchisement associated with unjust dispossession of land, economic and political power, and basic conditions for living? In the context of neoliberal expropriation of labor and livelihood, dispossession opens up a performative condition of being both affected by injustice and prompted to act. From the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa to the anti-neoliberal gatherings at Puerta del Sol, Syntagma and Zucchotti Park, an alternative political and affective economy of bodies in public is being formed. Bodies on the street are precarious – exposed to police force, they are also standing for, and opposing, their dispossession. These bodies insist upon their collective standing, organize themselves without and against hierarchy, and refuse to become disposable: they demand regard. This book interrogates the agonistic and open-ended corporeality and conviviality of the crowd as it assembles in cities to protest political and economic dispossession through a performative dispossession of the sovereign subject and its propriety.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Politics, LGBT, Academia, Queer

240 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2013

About the author

Judith Butler is an American philosopher, feminist, and queer theorist whose work has profoundly shaped gender studies, political philosophy, ethics, psychoanalysis, and literary theory. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Hungarian-Jewish and Russian-Jewish family, Butler was raised in a Jewish cultural and ethical environment that fostered an early engagement with philosophy, ethics, and questions of identity, attending Hebrew school and specialized ethics classes as a teenager. They studied philosophy at Bennington College before transferring to Yale University, where they earned a BA in 1978 and a PhD in 1984, focusing on German idealism, phenomenology, and French theory, including Hegel, Sartre, and Kojève. Butler taught at Wesleyan University, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins University before joining the University of California, Berkeley in 1993, where they co-founded the Program in Critical Theory, served as Maxine Elliot Professor, directed the International Consortium of Critical Theory, and also hold the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School. Butler is best known for Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, works in which they introduced the theory of gender performativity, arguing that gender is constituted through repeated social acts rather than a fixed identity, a concept that became foundational in feminist and queer theory. They have also published Excitable Speech, examining hate speech and censorship, Precarious Life, analyzing vulnerability and political violence, Undoing Gender, on the social construction of sexual norms, Giving an Account of Oneself, exploring ethical responsibility and the limits of self-knowledge, and Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, addressing public protest and collective action, while their 2020 book, The Force of Nonviolence, emphasizes ethical engagement in social and political struggles. Butler has engaged in global activism, supporting LGBTQIA rights, opposing anti-gender ideology, advocating for Palestinian rights, critiquing aspects of contemporary Israeli policy, and participating in movements such as Occupy Wall Street, while navigating controversies including critiques of their comments on Hamas and Hezbollah, debates over TERF ideology, and disputes over the Adorno Prize, illustrating the intersections of their scholarship and public interventions. Their work extends into ethical theory, exploring vulnerability, interdependence, mourning, and the recognition of marginalized lives, as well as the performative dimensions of identity and the social construction of sex and gender. They have influenced contemporary feminist, queer, and critical theory, cultural studies, and continental philosophy, shaping debates on gender, sexuality, power, and social justice, while also participating in public discourse and advocacy around education, political violence, and anti-discrimination. Butler is legally non-binary in California, uses they/them pronouns, identifies as a lesbian, and lives in Berkeley with their partner Wendy Brown and their son.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dispossession: The Performative in the Political by Judith Butler consists of conversations between the brilliant Butler and Athena Athanasiou, a professor of social anthopology at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, in Athens, Greece. The conversations tackle an enormous amount of material, from Palestine to Egypt to Occupy Wall Street (just to mention a few), performative movements around the world. Dispossession describes the condition of those who have been pushed off their land, their jobs, their ways of living. Butler and Athanasiou look to establish a way of looking for a way to look at these losses without relying on current norms of ownership. How can we look to be "dispossessed" of a self-valorizing identity and turn towards a relationally-oriented description without dismissing or appearing to validate the casualties of neoliberalism or colonialism? How do we protect the vulnerable without inscribing into them a victim identity that reinforces a society that uses that identity to efface the self identified?

This is a book to read and re-read. It covers so much-maybe too much-ground but uses each instance to point to a wider range of human identity and social constructs allowing for a world beyond what we have limited ourselves to.

[Uğur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unconsciousness, ideation is dispossession.

Although you have as immovable as the worlds, if you have surrendered your ideas, your dignity, your self (both conscious and physical), you are dispossessed. This is the real property that the system attacks a person and tries to seize the castles of consciousness and honor first. Because when you remove a person from the exploitation system, neither the customer, the taxpayer, nor the individual remains. It would be very naive to think that they will not be able to take you in when everything is about people. The system pursues a simple ideal in order to ensure its sustainability. A uniform, limited and manageable human ideal. At this point, all your property is not your immovables, but your consciousness and your self. At this point, it starts to guide you as far as the information it gives you by taking over all your doors of understanding and perception. The reason why communication technologies are so advanced today anyway is because of this simple ideal of the system.

Butler goes over this state of dispossession and reveals the philosophy of resistance in his book by finding a denominator from the masses left under the influence of the dominant discourse. Of course, this type of dispossession proves that material dispossession followed by emigration, confiscation, unemployment.

It is a very beautiful book in which he reminds us again how a struggle can be waged against them with a distinction between those who become property in the system of sovereigns and those who become Decommissioned, and the philosophy of being a people. I would say don't skip this book at Butler readings. Have a pleasant reading.

[aerialxav · Rating 5 out of 5]

Preface, chapter 1-3, 8, 15

[Kamiya Kumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

After having read the book, I’m still trying to fully grapple with what exactly dispossession means. Through the conversation that Butler and Athanasiou engage in, they highlight dispossession in several ways, one being the dispossession of self, which could largely be defined by the owning of land, property etc. in light of liberalization and embedded social conventions and norms. I found interesting that “being is defined as having; having is constructed as an essential prerequisite of proper human being”. And lack of having / possessing can result in one being dispossessed and equated to the status of an animal / barbarian / monster. Very much capitalist in nature, the more one owns, one acquires a higher status in society.

Butler and Athanasiou, propose an argument, in my opinion, that is lost in words. At times, through examples, one sees the light and commences to understand what they are proposing, however, for it to be more accessible to a wider audience I would suggest a much more simplified form of the same! I am going to include a few quotes that really struck me and include my ruminations.

“Sometimes the norms that are supposed to ‘set us free’ end up operating as constraints on the very freedom they are meant to protect”, linked with “movements that demand recognition for the oppressed in already existing terms, notably based on identity claims of woundedness, ultimately shore up and reinforce the very structures of domination that have caused the injury”. These pieces left me thinking in terms of how one negotiates these aspects of structure, instance and even naming. I’ve often thought about the introduction of these issues to young children, who may have been oblivious till a certain point and with the naming, quickly become part of the structure becoming aware of their own & peers disadvantage and / or privilege. The authors draw attention to the troubling and yet necessary nature of naming.

The underlying reason that Butler & Athanasiou identify for much of the dispossession seems to be the liberal democratic structure, with the excessive focus on the individual. They suggest instead performativity of the plural so that people can be passionately attached to a set of common goals / struggles, as a way of resisting and moving forward collectively. They share examples of movements where people have come together to re-claim public spaces through civil disobedience or non-violent demonstrations.

On examining the Indian context, the vision set in the constitution has been of a socialist nation. Functioning as a democratic socialist nation, there have been public & private participation across industries. The railway for instance, is completely managed by the Government ensuring that it remains extremely affordable to every layperson of the country. A distance of 1143 billion kilometers can be travelled with an expenditure of less than 20 dollars. Recognizing the historical and social context, the Government introduced reservations to burgeon the status of socially & economically disadvantaged population such as scheduled castes, tribes and women.

Viewing the authors’ conversation, from a socialist lens, I can safely say that there are other sets of challenges that exist in a pluralistic society, such as facets of accountability, policy to ground implementation and rising disparities to mention a few. With the frustrations of a bureaucratic system, many private enterprises began emerging to address issues of timely delivery, quality maintenance of services etc. Additionally, in the face of Globalization / or we could say Americanization, more multi-nationals are entering the economy and providing jobs, and simultaneously creating individualistic aspirations of owning property / land and having more.

This is very much in contrast to the spiritual philosophy that underlies eastern cultures, where specifically yogis have and continue to deeply focus on unconditional detachment. Recognizing that one’s desires to have more, more and more will never end, only resulting in unsatisfied cravings and unhappiness. Yoga and Buddhism to name a few, emphasize the importance of going within and connecting with one’s absolute self. As Butler & Athanasiou, question who really the self is, who gets to ask the question and who gets to answer, I deeply believe that practices of meditation, mindfulness and yoga enable human beings to search for their authentic selves, untainted by the external definitions of chasing an illusion. Nichiren Daishonin, a school of Buddhism, doesn’t negate desires, it merely emphasizes the law of cause and effect awakening individuals to the fact that everything exists within them and through their own mindful actions that are synchronized for their own happiness and others, they are able to live fully optimized and happy lives.

I wonder whether Butler & Athanasiou are aiming to highlight that when people connect / extend their goals to a cause and meaning bigger than themselves, they are able to open their lives expansively. If plurality means the understanding that when I light a lantern for someone else, my path automatically gets lit, then I would agree that Governments, political, social and normative structures and individuals need to re-define their ways of living, to embrace the law of dharma. A simple yet profound phenomena that the more you give is the more you get!

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting - the message of the book comes from Derrida: "that responsibility requires responsiveness" (p.66).

[Konsqueeracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Widely underrated, and a great approximation of Butler to the Greek queer scene. The conversation with Athena Athanasiou even encompasses themes such as the Greek financial crisis and cultural products of the last decades, such as Panos Koutras's movie Strella. There are also a lot of references to the war in Palestine. Dispossession, intelligibility, livability, normativity, politics of recognition and redistribution, as well as some first signs of the migration crisis in the Mediterranean sea, are concepts that are discussed throughout the book. Really useful for gender studies students.

[Kayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of dispossession as an active political development within a group of people is interesting and Butler describes this process in the abstract very well but could use more historical concrete examples to feel less longwinded

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can see this becoming an edifice for my research but this must lose at least one star for the constant invocation of Derrida's term 'always already'.

[Tim Rideout · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superb distillation of Judith Butler and Athena Athansiou’s work on precarity and how to counter the forces of precarity (particularly neoliberalism).

Compelling and powerful.

[Bethamphetamine Crawfish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alright

[Giuliana Gramani]

q

[Alejandro González]

No entendí nada.