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Şiddetsizliğin Gücü: Etik-Politik Bir Düğüm
Toplumsal çatışmalarda şiddete ve şiddetsizliğe başvurmanın siyasi ve etik boyutlarını tartışan Butler açıkça şiddetsizlikten yana tavır alıyor. Butler, meşru şiddet tekelini elinde tutan aktör olarak devletin şiddet tanımındaki muğlaklığı kendi amaçları doğrultusunda nasıl kullanabildiğini gösterirken, bir yandan da şiddetsizliği savunmak için yeni bir tasavvur geliştiriyor ve şiddetsizliği toplumsal eşitliğin bir gereği olarak temellendiriyor. Şiddetin özsavunma olarak meşrulaştırılmasında sorunlu bulduğu sınırı, kimin “öz”, yani “biz” olarak tanımlanageldiğini ve bu sınır var olduğu sürece şiddeti özsavunmayla gerekçelendirmenin nasıl bir dışlama, dolayısıyla eşitsizlik yarattığını tartışıyor. Yine eşitlik açısından, bütün yaşamların aynı derecede önemli addedilmesi için insanlar daha hayattayken “yası tutulabilirliğin” nasıl pay edildiğini düşünmeye çağırıyor. Klasik sözleşmeciliğin temelinde yatan bireyciliğin eleştirisiyle birlikte, Butler şiddetsizliği karşılıklı bağımlılığın kaçınılmazlığına dayandırıyor.
Siyaset ve felsefeyle ilgilenen okurlarımızın zevkle okuyacağına inanıyoruz.
Siyaset ve felsefeyle ilgilenen okurlarımızın zevkle okuyacağına inanıyoruz.
192 pages, Paperback
First published February 4, 2020
333 people are currently reading
4785 people want to read
About the author
Judith Butler
220 books3,672 followersJudith Butler is an American post-structuralist and feminist philosopher who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy and ethics. They are currently a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.
Butler received their Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984, for a dissertation subsequently published as Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. In the late-1980s they held several teaching and research appointments, and were involved in "post-structuralist" efforts within Western feminist theory to question the "presuppositional terms" of feminism.
Their research ranges from literary theory, modern philosophical fiction, feminist and sexuality studies, to 19th- and 20th-century European literature and philosophy, Kafka and loss, and mourning and war. Their most recent work focuses on Jewish philosophy and exploring pre- and post-Zionist criticisms of state violence.
Butler received their Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1984, for a dissertation subsequently published as Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. In the late-1980s they held several teaching and research appointments, and were involved in "post-structuralist" efforts within Western feminist theory to question the "presuppositional terms" of feminism.
Their research ranges from literary theory, modern philosophical fiction, feminist and sexuality studies, to 19th- and 20th-century European literature and philosophy, Kafka and loss, and mourning and war. Their most recent work focuses on Jewish philosophy and exploring pre- and post-Zionist criticisms of state violence.
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October 14, 2023
I used to experience an odd sensation every time I listened to Yoko Ono’s and John Lennon’s song “Imagine”. It was this strange mixture of righteous indignation and hope. The song seemed to me incredibly naive, silly even - “Imagine there’s no country/ it’s easy if you try/ … Imagine all the people/ living life in peace/". Every time I heard those words, I thought, “that’s stupid: there is a country; we don’t live in peace”. The song, when such thoughts crossed my mind, was a hipster’s hope at changing the world without actually attempting to confront the messiness of it. I used to think, “Well, what if Yoko and John didn’t live in the Dakota? What if they were not millionaires? What if they had to go through the drudgery, the small daily humiliations, the working sixty hour weeks while making minimum wage and not being able to afford rent or childcare? Would they then still preach the virtues of living in the imagination?” At such moments, I used to think that rich people, or at the very least, people relatively removed from some dire situations, had no business offering hope.
Nevertheless, for some reason, the song always left me hopeful. It insisted on freeing my frame of thinking from the actual and relocating it to the possible. It said that to construct a utopian vision of the world - to abandon the “real” or the “realistic”- while seemingly a practically useless endeavour, was nonetheless an unfurling of horizons, a necessary precondition to creating a better world. The entire song was an acknowledgment that sometimes vision (or the lack of it) and the language we use to speak of it thereof shapes and even entrenches reality. It maintained that sometimes, some things are impossible precisely because we refuse to think of them as possible.
Recently, reading Judith Butler’s new book, “The Force of Nonviolence”, gave me a new vocabulary for thinking through my conflicted feelings about “Imagine”. It also made me much less of a skeptic regarding the political uselessness of songs like “Imagine” and of stances that might be termed “naïve idealism”.
Butler’s main argument in the book is that we need to entirely reimagine a whole new way for human beings to coexist with each other. She calls this world a world of ‘radical equality’. In this world, our realization that human beings are inextricably bound to each other would lead us to view violence, in all its manifestations, not just as an affront to the other but to the bond that binds us to one another, too, and thus to our very selves. In this world, we would have abandoned the individuation of liberalism, the view that our lives, our projects, and our goals are entirely our own. By so doing, and thereby understanding that we do not have Selbstständigkeit, Butler thinks that we would then recognize the interdependence of our lives, leading to us treating each other - and our environment -nonviolently.
To be clear, Butler’s call for nonviolence is not instrumentalist, not in the way that Martin Luther King’s or Mohandas Gandhi’s was. Her argument is not that nonviolence is the best way to achieve the political goals we would like to see - though I doubt she disagrees with this. Rather, she is arguing more in line with what supposed “realists” would deridingly call “Kumbaya,” something in the mould of Ono and Lennon. She’s articulating a possible world, not making arguments about the real one. And though that possible world may perhaps not seem realistic to many people, she doesn’t care.
Butler points out, quite accurately, that the liberal idea of the free-standing individual has always assumed as its subject the adult male, ideally (but not necessarily) well-off, heterosexual, and in the prime of his life. This adult male seems to have no needs he cannot find satisfaction for by himself - or by doing violence on another; no external dependencies he needs to concern himself with. He does not see himself, like the adult woman, as being tied to overpowering social expectations- sometimes to provide care, sometimes to look and act in certain ways, etc. He is not like the child: materially, developmentally, and emotionally wholly dependent on others. Nor is he like the queer person, whose desire has been politicized and whose various expressions of self are more often than not invitations for violence. He is also not like the old person, or the infirm person, or the disabled person, who is rendered physically dependent on another.
Unable to recognize his interdependence with others in the various ways that supersede his narrow conception of individuality (for example, he never thinks of himself as dependent on the Bangladeshi sweatshop workers who make his clothes or the Mexican farmers who grow his food or the doctors who heal his body, etc), this male does violence to others and to the environment. He fails to realize that in doing so, he is also doing violence not just to himself but also to the very bond of interrelationality that unites him with these others.
This male, because of his perceived independence, Butler also notes, is the one whose life is seen as most "grievable", thus more important than the female life, the queer life, or the disabled life. In creating this distinction, violence against those whose lives are seen as not worth grieving is legitimized. Thus, starting from President Reagan himself, the AIDS crisis was not considered particularly important when it mostly ravaged the gay community precisely because those lives were deemed not worthy grieving. Similarly, our tolerance towards gender violence, and attacks on trans people (mostly of colour), to name only two examples, are also rationalized through similar thought processes.
Sometimes, Butler argues, group bonds are themselves the outcomes of processes of violence, both to the self and to others. University fraternities, for example, haze so that, by subjecting their pledges to acts of violence, they supposedly strengthen the bond between these pledges - and put these pledges in line to themselves do future violence. Racism, sexism, and homophobia, too, are grounded on the dehumanization of the other as deserving of violence, such that, were racists, sexists, or homophobes to think of themselves as a group, the supposed unity they would have between them would only be a product of their view of themselves as doers of violence to others - even if they failed to recognize their acts as particularly violent.
Butler argues that the key to getting rid of this violence - what leads us to the ideal world of nonviolent radical equality, exists in our imagination. She therefore cites an ethical obligation to be unrealistic and imaginative in the face of this violence, just like Ono and Lennon similarly did. She wants us to avoid Realpolitik, arguing convincingly that when “reality” is invoked, it is often as a dismissing of more imaginative possibilities, sometimes as an outright mockery of the people who hold out hope for these radical possibilities as “naive” or “silly” - like I do with Ono and Lennon. When we say, “Bernie Sanders will never be president”, for example, what we are doing is we are automatically closing off that imaginative possibility, such that the person who believes Bernie can actually be president is then, in our view, unrealistic or deluded. To this person, Butler would say, “Please, be unrealistic!”. So too, to the persons like Ono and Lennon who hold on to the hope of a nonviolent world, Butler would say, “They may deride us and mock us, call us silly or childish, but we refuse to be unimaginative. We accept their mockery”.
Butler’s ideas in the book provide a refreshing discussion that the political left ought to have, regarding not just the goals they seek to achieve but also, perhaps equally as important, the necessity for a positive vision of what the world would look like if those goals were achieved. There may, however, be some concerns from some people on the left concerning Butler's actual commitment to the practical goals that the left seeks to achieve.
Butler seems to be all hazy vision and no practical undertakings. She, for instance, has said relatively little about and does not seem to particularly support the movements led by Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. She did, in fact, donate to Kamala Harris' campaign - Harris, whose track record as a prosecutor is not looked upon favourably among some leftists, and in some circles, whose work as a prosecutor - incarcerating mostly people of colour - is viewed as decidedly violent. What, these leftists therefore ask, is the practical bearing of Butler's hope for a nonviolent world if she not only doesn't support left mass movements that seek to create this world but also supports candidates who have rendered violent acts against marginalised communities, thereby clearly compromising the attainment of this vision?
These disagreements stem partly from the traditional calls for left purity, such that because Butler does not explicitly endorse some platforms or some ideas on the left, she is not viewed as leftist enough. That is a long debate to be had some other time. On the other (more interesting) hand, these leftist contentions are also a manifestation of something Butler has been accused of for a long time (Since at least 1998, when Martha Nussbaum published a piece in the New Republic that was critical of Butler): that Butler's politics are nothing more than performative, meant to elucidate the supposed shortcomings of the liberal world to itself, but never to actually overcome them or do anything meaningful about them. When Butler, for example, says that we should abandon Realpolitik, these leftists disagree. To them, an acknowledgement of reality is not the same thing as a restriction of the imagination - and is, in fact, a necessary step towards changing that reality. When, for example, Butler speaks about radical leftist positions not being taken seriously, the radical leftists ask: "By whom?" - for they indeed take these positions very seriously and work to transform them into actual real policies - even as they recognise the difficulty of their undertaking.
In the minds of these people on the left, therefore, Butler's writing is always aimed at liberals or at comfortable people, who supposedly have a "moral conscience" but not much actual experience living in the trenches, so to speak. It is certainly easy to issue proclamations such as the ones Butler does when you are a tenured professor whose books have sold millions of copies, and it is easy for the readers of Butler's work, often privileged and western educated liberals, such as myself, to say, "she makes a fair point; we really ought to imagine a nonviolent world". But what does it mean to be on the ground, actively fighting for that possible world, as Bernie Sanders does? And therefore, what does it mean for someone like Butler not to actively support the efforts of people like Bernie Sanders and the lived experiences of those marginalised people who support him?
These are valid criticisms, and it does not seem like Butler makes any serious effort to answer them. Her project, as she’s stated from the beginning, is a different one - it is simply to get us, firstly, to imagine. Movements of solidarity can take off from there.
It is important to therefore question what is original about Butler's project here: she is neither offering us a viable political project nor saying anything particularly new about what a utopian world may look like. But I think Butler's project, despite its unoriginality, is important nonetheless. It aims to refocus us, to remind us, self-professed practically minded leftists, of the virtues of the imagination. Its point is not to give us a new dream but to tell us that the old dream of a utopian peaceful world that Tolstoy had should still be vivid in our minds even as we pursue our practical projects.
Is there space on the left for such people? I certainly hope so. The left needs both the dreamers and the doers. This is, in my view, a timely and necessary yet, again, wholly unoriginal book. Despite its shortcomings, it makes a valiant attempt at reminding us of the wonders of being free from the unimaginative strictures of “realness”, and in doing so, it gives us a political hope that is remarkably trenchant. It says, “A better world is possible, do let us imagine it". Perhaps this, imagining, might not be enough for some people on the left, but to this, Butler would say, "Why don't you take it from here?"
Nevertheless, for some reason, the song always left me hopeful. It insisted on freeing my frame of thinking from the actual and relocating it to the possible. It said that to construct a utopian vision of the world - to abandon the “real” or the “realistic”- while seemingly a practically useless endeavour, was nonetheless an unfurling of horizons, a necessary precondition to creating a better world. The entire song was an acknowledgment that sometimes vision (or the lack of it) and the language we use to speak of it thereof shapes and even entrenches reality. It maintained that sometimes, some things are impossible precisely because we refuse to think of them as possible.
Recently, reading Judith Butler’s new book, “The Force of Nonviolence”, gave me a new vocabulary for thinking through my conflicted feelings about “Imagine”. It also made me much less of a skeptic regarding the political uselessness of songs like “Imagine” and of stances that might be termed “naïve idealism”.
Butler’s main argument in the book is that we need to entirely reimagine a whole new way for human beings to coexist with each other. She calls this world a world of ‘radical equality’. In this world, our realization that human beings are inextricably bound to each other would lead us to view violence, in all its manifestations, not just as an affront to the other but to the bond that binds us to one another, too, and thus to our very selves. In this world, we would have abandoned the individuation of liberalism, the view that our lives, our projects, and our goals are entirely our own. By so doing, and thereby understanding that we do not have Selbstständigkeit, Butler thinks that we would then recognize the interdependence of our lives, leading to us treating each other - and our environment -nonviolently.
To be clear, Butler’s call for nonviolence is not instrumentalist, not in the way that Martin Luther King’s or Mohandas Gandhi’s was. Her argument is not that nonviolence is the best way to achieve the political goals we would like to see - though I doubt she disagrees with this. Rather, she is arguing more in line with what supposed “realists” would deridingly call “Kumbaya,” something in the mould of Ono and Lennon. She’s articulating a possible world, not making arguments about the real one. And though that possible world may perhaps not seem realistic to many people, she doesn’t care.
Butler points out, quite accurately, that the liberal idea of the free-standing individual has always assumed as its subject the adult male, ideally (but not necessarily) well-off, heterosexual, and in the prime of his life. This adult male seems to have no needs he cannot find satisfaction for by himself - or by doing violence on another; no external dependencies he needs to concern himself with. He does not see himself, like the adult woman, as being tied to overpowering social expectations- sometimes to provide care, sometimes to look and act in certain ways, etc. He is not like the child: materially, developmentally, and emotionally wholly dependent on others. Nor is he like the queer person, whose desire has been politicized and whose various expressions of self are more often than not invitations for violence. He is also not like the old person, or the infirm person, or the disabled person, who is rendered physically dependent on another.
Unable to recognize his interdependence with others in the various ways that supersede his narrow conception of individuality (for example, he never thinks of himself as dependent on the Bangladeshi sweatshop workers who make his clothes or the Mexican farmers who grow his food or the doctors who heal his body, etc), this male does violence to others and to the environment. He fails to realize that in doing so, he is also doing violence not just to himself but also to the very bond of interrelationality that unites him with these others.
This male, because of his perceived independence, Butler also notes, is the one whose life is seen as most "grievable", thus more important than the female life, the queer life, or the disabled life. In creating this distinction, violence against those whose lives are seen as not worth grieving is legitimized. Thus, starting from President Reagan himself, the AIDS crisis was not considered particularly important when it mostly ravaged the gay community precisely because those lives were deemed not worthy grieving. Similarly, our tolerance towards gender violence, and attacks on trans people (mostly of colour), to name only two examples, are also rationalized through similar thought processes.
Sometimes, Butler argues, group bonds are themselves the outcomes of processes of violence, both to the self and to others. University fraternities, for example, haze so that, by subjecting their pledges to acts of violence, they supposedly strengthen the bond between these pledges - and put these pledges in line to themselves do future violence. Racism, sexism, and homophobia, too, are grounded on the dehumanization of the other as deserving of violence, such that, were racists, sexists, or homophobes to think of themselves as a group, the supposed unity they would have between them would only be a product of their view of themselves as doers of violence to others - even if they failed to recognize their acts as particularly violent.
Butler argues that the key to getting rid of this violence - what leads us to the ideal world of nonviolent radical equality, exists in our imagination. She therefore cites an ethical obligation to be unrealistic and imaginative in the face of this violence, just like Ono and Lennon similarly did. She wants us to avoid Realpolitik, arguing convincingly that when “reality” is invoked, it is often as a dismissing of more imaginative possibilities, sometimes as an outright mockery of the people who hold out hope for these radical possibilities as “naive” or “silly” - like I do with Ono and Lennon. When we say, “Bernie Sanders will never be president”, for example, what we are doing is we are automatically closing off that imaginative possibility, such that the person who believes Bernie can actually be president is then, in our view, unrealistic or deluded. To this person, Butler would say, “Please, be unrealistic!”. So too, to the persons like Ono and Lennon who hold on to the hope of a nonviolent world, Butler would say, “They may deride us and mock us, call us silly or childish, but we refuse to be unimaginative. We accept their mockery”.
Butler’s ideas in the book provide a refreshing discussion that the political left ought to have, regarding not just the goals they seek to achieve but also, perhaps equally as important, the necessity for a positive vision of what the world would look like if those goals were achieved. There may, however, be some concerns from some people on the left concerning Butler's actual commitment to the practical goals that the left seeks to achieve.
Butler seems to be all hazy vision and no practical undertakings. She, for instance, has said relatively little about and does not seem to particularly support the movements led by Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. She did, in fact, donate to Kamala Harris' campaign - Harris, whose track record as a prosecutor is not looked upon favourably among some leftists, and in some circles, whose work as a prosecutor - incarcerating mostly people of colour - is viewed as decidedly violent. What, these leftists therefore ask, is the practical bearing of Butler's hope for a nonviolent world if she not only doesn't support left mass movements that seek to create this world but also supports candidates who have rendered violent acts against marginalised communities, thereby clearly compromising the attainment of this vision?
These disagreements stem partly from the traditional calls for left purity, such that because Butler does not explicitly endorse some platforms or some ideas on the left, she is not viewed as leftist enough. That is a long debate to be had some other time. On the other (more interesting) hand, these leftist contentions are also a manifestation of something Butler has been accused of for a long time (Since at least 1998, when Martha Nussbaum published a piece in the New Republic that was critical of Butler): that Butler's politics are nothing more than performative, meant to elucidate the supposed shortcomings of the liberal world to itself, but never to actually overcome them or do anything meaningful about them. When Butler, for example, says that we should abandon Realpolitik, these leftists disagree. To them, an acknowledgement of reality is not the same thing as a restriction of the imagination - and is, in fact, a necessary step towards changing that reality. When, for example, Butler speaks about radical leftist positions not being taken seriously, the radical leftists ask: "By whom?" - for they indeed take these positions very seriously and work to transform them into actual real policies - even as they recognise the difficulty of their undertaking.
In the minds of these people on the left, therefore, Butler's writing is always aimed at liberals or at comfortable people, who supposedly have a "moral conscience" but not much actual experience living in the trenches, so to speak. It is certainly easy to issue proclamations such as the ones Butler does when you are a tenured professor whose books have sold millions of copies, and it is easy for the readers of Butler's work, often privileged and western educated liberals, such as myself, to say, "she makes a fair point; we really ought to imagine a nonviolent world". But what does it mean to be on the ground, actively fighting for that possible world, as Bernie Sanders does? And therefore, what does it mean for someone like Butler not to actively support the efforts of people like Bernie Sanders and the lived experiences of those marginalised people who support him?
These are valid criticisms, and it does not seem like Butler makes any serious effort to answer them. Her project, as she’s stated from the beginning, is a different one - it is simply to get us, firstly, to imagine. Movements of solidarity can take off from there.
It is important to therefore question what is original about Butler's project here: she is neither offering us a viable political project nor saying anything particularly new about what a utopian world may look like. But I think Butler's project, despite its unoriginality, is important nonetheless. It aims to refocus us, to remind us, self-professed practically minded leftists, of the virtues of the imagination. Its point is not to give us a new dream but to tell us that the old dream of a utopian peaceful world that Tolstoy had should still be vivid in our minds even as we pursue our practical projects.
Is there space on the left for such people? I certainly hope so. The left needs both the dreamers and the doers. This is, in my view, a timely and necessary yet, again, wholly unoriginal book. Despite its shortcomings, it makes a valiant attempt at reminding us of the wonders of being free from the unimaginative strictures of “realness”, and in doing so, it gives us a political hope that is remarkably trenchant. It says, “A better world is possible, do let us imagine it". Perhaps this, imagining, might not be enough for some people on the left, but to this, Butler would say, "Why don't you take it from here?"
September 21, 2020
God, I hate psychoanalysis. If I had known so much of this book was pure psychoanalysis I would not have purchased it. That aside, exposure to things you dislike is, from time to time, good for you, so I read it. That does, of course, grant me the privilege of complaining about it. If you like psychoanalysis, add a star to my review.
“We all live with a rage over a dependency which we cannot free ourselves from”
The premise of this book, under the posturing, is simple: the human (person/ego/self) is fully interdependent on a social network of people, things, and ecosystems. We are never, ever fully independent. Therefore, we can postulate that doing harm to the other is synonymous with harm to the self. She labels this "Substitution". It ties into the well-accepted idea that true altruism doesn't exist and that we are altruistic because the other a) could be us and b) we depend on the other. Non-violence is an obligation because we are bound to each other through social dependencies.
“The I and the you are not as distinct as we might have thought”
The author additionally adds some other concepts, such as her belief that aggressiveness and violence are built into human nature, that to create a world of nonviolence we must challenge the idea that it is unrealistic (the key to non-violence exists in the imagination), and that to create a movement of solidarity, one must first imagine it.
This book addresses several deep and meaningful topics, such as the issue of grievability (whose lives are worthy of grieving when they are lost?) To someone like me, all lives are grievable. But to many governments, this is clearly not the case. What would happen if the EU were to simply open its borders to any refugee (sorry Butler, there's no sense in using the whitewashed migrant)?Do we, in giving political and judicial forces the power to protect the "vulnerable", give those forces the power to subjugate them, e.g., as in the case with black and latinx populations?
It also fails to answer some of the most pressing questions in this topic. What is violence and non-violence? Butler adamantly refuses to address this, and instead waffles about on how persons in position of power and governments in positions of power abuse notions of violence and non-violence by framing them how they will –referring to certain political regions where a non-violent protest is framed as violent and where signing a petition is framed as violent. But she knows as well as any of us that true violence is harm to a living thing, all other forms of violence, including those against possessions (and yes, harming possessions, which could result in starvation or harm to the self of the living thing can be just as bad of violence) are secondary. Harm to the corporation, to the government, to the social construct can be construed as violence yes, but any rational being could weight that harm by leveraging a system of values that says "I value a person more highly than I value this leader". Failure to even address this question and to open the can of worms of morals and ethics it entails, in my view, a lack of spine that greatly detracts from the body of this work.
It's also interesting that this work systematically fails to even address the idea that non-violence is a privilege. Pacifism is theater, staged by those with the privilege of an audience. Is it not some silly bit of liberal nonsense to claim that non-violence could somehow be our moral obligation, simply because some of us have the privilege to engage in it?
Finally, why is almost a quarter of this book dedicated to Freud? I don't think anyone needs to read any more about theories which have been debunked time and time again. This does however allow me to step back and review the death drive in light of the world war. I wasn’t aware it had its basis in a war letter, and this forces me to reanalyze Freud’s motivations for theorizing it in the first place. This doesn't, of course, give those theories any more merit, only some perspective.
I'd like to give this 2.5 stars. This is not an option.
“We all live with a rage over a dependency which we cannot free ourselves from”
The premise of this book, under the posturing, is simple: the human (person/ego/self) is fully interdependent on a social network of people, things, and ecosystems. We are never, ever fully independent. Therefore, we can postulate that doing harm to the other is synonymous with harm to the self. She labels this "Substitution". It ties into the well-accepted idea that true altruism doesn't exist and that we are altruistic because the other a) could be us and b) we depend on the other. Non-violence is an obligation because we are bound to each other through social dependencies.
“The I and the you are not as distinct as we might have thought”
The author additionally adds some other concepts, such as her belief that aggressiveness and violence are built into human nature, that to create a world of nonviolence we must challenge the idea that it is unrealistic (the key to non-violence exists in the imagination), and that to create a movement of solidarity, one must first imagine it.
This book addresses several deep and meaningful topics, such as the issue of grievability (whose lives are worthy of grieving when they are lost?) To someone like me, all lives are grievable. But to many governments, this is clearly not the case. What would happen if the EU were to simply open its borders to any refugee (sorry Butler, there's no sense in using the whitewashed migrant)?Do we, in giving political and judicial forces the power to protect the "vulnerable", give those forces the power to subjugate them, e.g., as in the case with black and latinx populations?
It also fails to answer some of the most pressing questions in this topic. What is violence and non-violence? Butler adamantly refuses to address this, and instead waffles about on how persons in position of power and governments in positions of power abuse notions of violence and non-violence by framing them how they will –referring to certain political regions where a non-violent protest is framed as violent and where signing a petition is framed as violent. But she knows as well as any of us that true violence is harm to a living thing, all other forms of violence, including those against possessions (and yes, harming possessions, which could result in starvation or harm to the self of the living thing can be just as bad of violence) are secondary. Harm to the corporation, to the government, to the social construct can be construed as violence yes, but any rational being could weight that harm by leveraging a system of values that says "I value a person more highly than I value this leader". Failure to even address this question and to open the can of worms of morals and ethics it entails, in my view, a lack of spine that greatly detracts from the body of this work.
It's also interesting that this work systematically fails to even address the idea that non-violence is a privilege. Pacifism is theater, staged by those with the privilege of an audience. Is it not some silly bit of liberal nonsense to claim that non-violence could somehow be our moral obligation, simply because some of us have the privilege to engage in it?
Finally, why is almost a quarter of this book dedicated to Freud? I don't think anyone needs to read any more about theories which have been debunked time and time again. This does however allow me to step back and review the death drive in light of the world war. I wasn’t aware it had its basis in a war letter, and this forces me to reanalyze Freud’s motivations for theorizing it in the first place. This doesn't, of course, give those theories any more merit, only some perspective.
I'd like to give this 2.5 stars. This is not an option.
Read
June 26, 2020I had the strange fortune of picking this up immediately after finishing Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia’. A book which serves as a rich counterpoint to Butler’s deconstruction of systemic violence. More pressingly, I picked this up at a time when the cities are burning. When there is anger and mourning after acts of abhorrent state murder. When so many lives across the world are being treated as, to use her own words, ungrievable.
Butler’s work equips the reader with the rhetoric and understanding to see how violence manifests in contemporary social structures. She focuses upon our inherent interdependence, following an insightful dismantling of the self-sufficient man in his Hobbesian state of nature (as well the presuppositions of gender and age that form this view). The work calls our definition of the ‘self’ to the witness stand, asking what parameters this imposes to our concept of ‘self-defence’, and how this perpetuates a violent world. In the postscript, she highlights resistance against systemic violence as a truly powerful force, championing togetherness over individualism.
Butler posits a vision of utopic, radical equality. A fantasy, by definition, but nonetheless one that might shape the political and social structures which govern violence – how it is monopolised, used, and concentrated.
This book does not paint the whole picture. Nor does it negate the anger, fear and sadness of so many whose lives have been deemed ungrievable. It does not put out the burning cities. It does not finish every argument or answer every question. But it allows us to see how violence is used and manipulated, offering a pragmatic and powerful argument for its fierce and impassioned opposition.
Butler’s work equips the reader with the rhetoric and understanding to see how violence manifests in contemporary social structures. She focuses upon our inherent interdependence, following an insightful dismantling of the self-sufficient man in his Hobbesian state of nature (as well the presuppositions of gender and age that form this view). The work calls our definition of the ‘self’ to the witness stand, asking what parameters this imposes to our concept of ‘self-defence’, and how this perpetuates a violent world. In the postscript, she highlights resistance against systemic violence as a truly powerful force, championing togetherness over individualism.
Butler posits a vision of utopic, radical equality. A fantasy, by definition, but nonetheless one that might shape the political and social structures which govern violence – how it is monopolised, used, and concentrated.
This book does not paint the whole picture. Nor does it negate the anger, fear and sadness of so many whose lives have been deemed ungrievable. It does not put out the burning cities. It does not finish every argument or answer every question. But it allows us to see how violence is used and manipulated, offering a pragmatic and powerful argument for its fierce and impassioned opposition.
July 6, 2023
Deli Counter employee: What would you like to order?
Judith Butler: In the realm of gastronomical performativity, the act of ordering a sandwich from this establishment unveils the intricacies of societal norms and the manifold ways in which subjectivities of formal and informal violence are constructed. One is immediately confronted with a menu that bears witness to a matrix of ingredients, each assigned its own cultural value and coded within the confines of a culinary lexicon. This deli, as a microcosm of societal power dynamics, places upon the ordering subject the burden of navigating a phantasmagorical landscape fraught with the potential for misalignment between desire and expression and the approbated right to grieve the entire existence of the meal, from grain to excrement, dependent on the social standing of the bread therein which the sandwich is contained. It is at this juncture that the performative utterance emerges, the individual's embodiment of the sandwich, a linguistic act that simultaneously reinforces and challenges prevailing social norms and modes of being. Whether it be the audacity to challenge the hegemonic binary of meat or mercy or even the subversion of traditional condiments all together, the act of ordering a sandwich may become an act of resistance, a discursive battlefield where identities are forged and reimagined. Through this seemingly mundane transaction, this deli serves as a stage upon which spoken and unspoken, acted and unacted aggression unfolds, replaying the tension between parent and child and exposing the inherent malleability of social constructs while revealing the transformative potential that lies within the ordinary routines of our daily lives.
Employee: So turkey club then?
Butler: Yes, please.
Judith Butler: In the realm of gastronomical performativity, the act of ordering a sandwich from this establishment unveils the intricacies of societal norms and the manifold ways in which subjectivities of formal and informal violence are constructed. One is immediately confronted with a menu that bears witness to a matrix of ingredients, each assigned its own cultural value and coded within the confines of a culinary lexicon. This deli, as a microcosm of societal power dynamics, places upon the ordering subject the burden of navigating a phantasmagorical landscape fraught with the potential for misalignment between desire and expression and the approbated right to grieve the entire existence of the meal, from grain to excrement, dependent on the social standing of the bread therein which the sandwich is contained. It is at this juncture that the performative utterance emerges, the individual's embodiment of the sandwich, a linguistic act that simultaneously reinforces and challenges prevailing social norms and modes of being. Whether it be the audacity to challenge the hegemonic binary of meat or mercy or even the subversion of traditional condiments all together, the act of ordering a sandwich may become an act of resistance, a discursive battlefield where identities are forged and reimagined. Through this seemingly mundane transaction, this deli serves as a stage upon which spoken and unspoken, acted and unacted aggression unfolds, replaying the tension between parent and child and exposing the inherent malleability of social constructs while revealing the transformative potential that lies within the ordinary routines of our daily lives.
Employee: So turkey club then?
Butler: Yes, please.
Read
June 30, 2025Ich hab den Eindruck, Butler stellt die richtigen Fragen. In welchem Rahmen wird das Wort "Gewalt" verwendet? Was für ein "Selbst" wird in der Selbstverteidigung verteidigt? Wie muss Sozialität gedacht werden, damit Gewaltanwendung nicht mehr als eine plausible Lösung für ein Problem angewendet werden kann? Wohin mit Aggression und Körperlichkeit, wenn nicht zum Gewaltakt?
Die These scheint mir zu sein: Wir kommen nicht, wie bei den modernen Staatstheoretikern, als erwachsene, männliche Individuen auf die Welt, sondern sind von Anfang an abhängig. Diese Abhängigkeiten verbinden die Menschen so stark, dass eine Verletzung des Anderen einer Selbstverletzung gleichkommt. Daher macht Gewalt keinen Sinn. Die Gesinnung, welche dafür eingeübt werden muss, ist die Betrauerbarkeit eines jeden Lebens. Und weil der Mensch stets mit seinen eigenen Trieben ringen wird, muss sich die Aggressivität gegen die Gewalt selbst richten, nicht gegen den Anderen, denn dieser ist betrauerbar und ich bin auf ihn angewiesen. Ich glaube, Butler versteht diese These als ein Angebot für ein neues "political imaginary".
Butler baut das an der einen oder anderen Stelle noch etwas aus, aber das scheint mir die zentrale These zu sein. So weit, so einleuchtend. Allerdings finde ich, dass Butler sich kaum Mühe gibt, das argumentativ abzustützen. Vor allem etwas Empirie hätte diesem Text gutgetan. Neues "imaginary" hin oder her. Butler zieht immer wieder Figuren aus der Psychoanalyse heran, aber mir fehlt schlicht die Kenntnis in diesem Feld, um Butlers Ausführungen hier zu folgen bzw. sie zu bewerten. Abgesehen davon finde ich Butlers Argumentationsführung teils konfus und repetitiv.
Auch der Anlass des Buches ist mir nicht ganz klar geworden. Warum braucht es diesen Text genau jetzt (2020)?
Ein strengerer Editor wäre vielleicht hilfreich gewesen.
Highlights waren der Abschnitt über Walter Benjamins Gewaltbegriff und das gesamte vierte Kapitel, auch wenn das sehr psychoanalyse-lastig ist.
"Für diesen Kampf braucht es eine egalitäres Imaginäres, das für jede lebendige Bindung das Potenzial seiner Zerstörung mit bedenkt. In diesem Sinn ist Gewalt gegen den anderen Gewalt gegen uns selbst, was deutlich wird, wenn wir erkennen, dass sich Gewalt gegen die lebendige Interdependenz richtet, in der unsere soziale Welt besteht oder bestehen sollte."
Die These scheint mir zu sein: Wir kommen nicht, wie bei den modernen Staatstheoretikern, als erwachsene, männliche Individuen auf die Welt, sondern sind von Anfang an abhängig. Diese Abhängigkeiten verbinden die Menschen so stark, dass eine Verletzung des Anderen einer Selbstverletzung gleichkommt. Daher macht Gewalt keinen Sinn. Die Gesinnung, welche dafür eingeübt werden muss, ist die Betrauerbarkeit eines jeden Lebens. Und weil der Mensch stets mit seinen eigenen Trieben ringen wird, muss sich die Aggressivität gegen die Gewalt selbst richten, nicht gegen den Anderen, denn dieser ist betrauerbar und ich bin auf ihn angewiesen. Ich glaube, Butler versteht diese These als ein Angebot für ein neues "political imaginary".
Butler baut das an der einen oder anderen Stelle noch etwas aus, aber das scheint mir die zentrale These zu sein. So weit, so einleuchtend. Allerdings finde ich, dass Butler sich kaum Mühe gibt, das argumentativ abzustützen. Vor allem etwas Empirie hätte diesem Text gutgetan. Neues "imaginary" hin oder her. Butler zieht immer wieder Figuren aus der Psychoanalyse heran, aber mir fehlt schlicht die Kenntnis in diesem Feld, um Butlers Ausführungen hier zu folgen bzw. sie zu bewerten. Abgesehen davon finde ich Butlers Argumentationsführung teils konfus und repetitiv.
Auch der Anlass des Buches ist mir nicht ganz klar geworden. Warum braucht es diesen Text genau jetzt (2020)?
Ein strengerer Editor wäre vielleicht hilfreich gewesen.
Highlights waren der Abschnitt über Walter Benjamins Gewaltbegriff und das gesamte vierte Kapitel, auch wenn das sehr psychoanalyse-lastig ist.
"Für diesen Kampf braucht es eine egalitäres Imaginäres, das für jede lebendige Bindung das Potenzial seiner Zerstörung mit bedenkt. In diesem Sinn ist Gewalt gegen den anderen Gewalt gegen uns selbst, was deutlich wird, wenn wir erkennen, dass sich Gewalt gegen die lebendige Interdependenz richtet, in der unsere soziale Welt besteht oder bestehen sollte."
February 20, 2025
Ich stimme Butler darin zu, dass Gewalt so viel Leid verursacht, dass die Frage, in welchen Situationen sie gerechtfertigt ist und in welchen nicht, unbedingt ernst genommen werden sollte und dass dieses Thema unbedingt einer differenzierten und kritischen Reflexion bedarf.
Leider ist jedoch eine differenzierte Betrachtung der Realität Butlers Sache nicht - dafür aber eine möglichst radikal klingende Theoretisierung, aus der, nähme man alle Thesen des Buches ernst und bezöge sie auf die Realität, mitunter schreckliche Konsequenzen folgen würden.
------
Besonders schrecklich finde ich Butlers Positionen zur Selbstverteidigung.
Butler lehnt nicht nur in den meisten Fällen Gewalt ab – das wäre an sich noch nachvollziehbar. Doch radikal, wie Butler nun einmal sein möchte, muss jede Form von Gewalt für moralisch verwerflich erklärt werden - selbst Gewalt zur Selbstverteidigung in Notsituationen.
Denn, so Butler, wenn sich eine Gruppe verteidigt, müssen die Gruppenmitglieder entscheiden, wer zu dieser Gruppe gehört und wer nicht - wer also zu dem zu verteidigenden selbst gehöre. Bereits diese Unterscheidung sei allerdings moralisch zutiefst verwerflich.
Was für ein - vielleicht klug klingender, aber in seiner Konsequenz schrecklicher - Unsinn! Wenn eine Gruppe migrantischer Jugendlicher von Neonazis überfallen und verprügelt wird, dann handeln diese Jugendlichen selbstverständlich nicht moralisch verwerflich, wenn sie sich verteidigen! Laut Butler jedoch schon, da sie in diesem Moment eine ungerechtfertigte Unterscheidung zwischen der eigenen Gruppe und der Angreifergruppe vornehmen würden. Wie absurd!
(Butler legt aus meiner Sicht insgesamt zu viel Augenmerk darauf, mit welcher Gruppe sich ein Individuum identifiziert. Häufig genug ist die Fremdidentifikation der gewaltvollen Umwelt ungleich relevanter als die Selbstidentifikation: Die migrantischen Jugendlichen können sich so deutsch fühlen, wie sie wollen – wenn die Neonazis auf „Ausländer“ einprügeln möchten und diese jene als solche „lesen“, ist die Selbstidentifikation nicht das relevante. Dasselbe gilt für die Menschen, die von den Nationalsozialisten als Juden fremdidentifiziert wurden: Sie konnten sich so deutsch fühlen, wie sie wollten – die Fremdzuschreibung als jüdisch durch die Nazis bedeutete für viele von ihnen dennoch das Todesurteil. Wie sich ein Individuum selbst sieht oder mit welchen Gruppen es sich identifiziert, ist – besonders in Situationen, in denen Selbstverteidigung nötig ist – häufig nicht das Entscheidende.)
--------
Noch absurder wird es, wenn Butler in Sachen Radikalität noch einen draufsetzt und nicht nur kollektive Selbstverteidigung, sondern auch die Selbstverteidigung von Individuen als moralisch verwerflich ablehnt.
Butlers Argumentation lautet, dass auch hier eine unzulässige Unterscheidung zwischen Selbst und Nicht-selbstgetroffen wird, was Butlers Meinung nach moralisch nicht zulässig sei.
Was für ein gefährlicher Unsinn!
Wenn mein Großvater meine Großmutter sturzbetrunken mit einer Axt angegriffen hat und sie nur überlebt hat, weil sie sich mit einem Gegenangriff mit einem Stuhl verteidigen konnte, dann soll sie nach Butler moralisch verwerflich gehandelt haben?! Nur weil sie - angeblich ungerechtfertigt - zwischen sich selbst und ihrem Angreifer unterschieden habe?! Sag mal, gehts noch?!
Wie realitätsfern, empathielos, und grundfalsch kann wohlgemeinte Theorie bitteschön sein?
------
Butlers problematische Argumentation zur Selbstverteidigung (und auch der gesamten Gewaltkritik) basiert auf einer obskuren Logik:
Butler stellt richtig fest, dass Menschen soziale Lebewesen sind und voneinander abhängig sind.
Daraus schließt Butler jedoch unvermittelt und für mich unzulässigerweise, dass durch diese Abhängigkeit bewiesen sei, dass es unmöglich sei, trennscharf zwischen Individuen zu unterscheiden – also zwischen Selbst und Nicht-Selbst.
Folglich sei jede Gewalt (auch Selbstverteidigung) eigentlich eine Gewalt gegen sich selbst. Meine Großmutter hätte also laut Butler sich selbst Gewalt angetan und deshalb falsch gehandelt, als sie sich, um ihr Leben zu retten, gegen ihren Mann verteidigte? Ah ja.
------
Doch nicht nur auf Selbstverteidigung bezogen finde ich Butlers Argumentation falsch, dass Gewalt
gegen andere vorallem deshalb verwerflich sei, weil es eigentlich Gewalt gegen einen selber sei.
Was für eine egozentrische Argumentation! Ich würde im Gegenteil behaupten: Gewalt gegen andere ist, wenn sie verwerflich ist, dann aus dem Grund moralisch verwerflich, dass man eben einem anderen (!) Lebewesen Gewalt und Leid zufügt und nicht weil man sich dabei vorallem selber Gewalt zufüge.
--------
Ein zentrales Konzept des Buches ist neben dem der Abhängigkeit das Konzept der grievability (etwa der Betrauerbarkeit).
Hier war ich äußerst positiv überrascht: Butler formuliert für mich eindeutig einen universalistischen moralischen Anspruch, der besagt, dass jeder Tod – unabhängig davon wer der verstorbene Mensch ist – gleichermaßen betrauerbar sein sollte.
Diese Position steht in starkem Gegensatz zu der von vielen von Butlers Anhänger:innen vertretenen, die jeglichen Universalismus, einschließlich dem der Menschenrechte, aufs schärfste als normativ-westlich-kolonial-hegemonialen Diskurs kritisieren. Für diese Kritiker:innen sind Menschenrechte kein moralisches Fundament zur Verurteilung von Schrecklichkeiten, sondern ausschließlich (!) ein gewaltvolles Machtinstrument zur Unterdrückung nicht-westlicher PoC.
Sie wendet sich – vielleicht ungewollt? – gegen diese Butler-Fans und formuliert eine Moral mit normativem universalistischen Anspruch: Jeder Tod - egal von wem - sollte gleichermaßen grievable sein! Und jeder Mensch sollte sich durch das Vertrauen darauf, das sein Tod grievable ist, sicher sein können, dass sein Leben genau so viel wert sei, wie das eines jeden anderen!
Was ist das anderes als eine akzentuierte Umformulierung des ersten Artikels der – von Butler-Fans so kritisierten – Menschenrechte? Zumal Butler in diesem Buch, ebenso wie die Menschenrechte es tun, großen Wert auf Egalität legt.
------
Ich stimme Butler darin zu, dass mit einer bloßen Deklaration moralischer Normen wenig gewonnen ist.
Um diese Normen zu verwirklichen, braucht es politische Veränderungen, die errungen werden müssen.
-----
Butlers Überlegungen zur Macht der Gewaltlosigkeit fand ich nur bedingt überzeugend, denn Butler legt lediglich dar, dass in Gewaltlosigkeit in manchen Situationen auch Macht liegt, schafft es aus meiner Sicht mir jedoch nicht einleuchtend zu vermitteln, dass diese Macht stark genug sei, um sich im Notfall mit ihr gegen Gewalt durchsetzen zu können.
-----
Das letzte Viertel des Buches besteht aus einem Essay über Freud.
Ähnlich wie bei anderen psychoanalytischen Passagen von Butler ging es mir auch hier: Ich finde Freud im Original spannend und lese häufig auch gerne Texte von Autor:innen, die sich mit Freud auseinandersetzen – allerdings nicht, wenn Butler es tut.
Vielleicht liegt es an ihrem Schreibstil. Vielleicht liegt es daran, dass uns an Freuds Denken grundsätzlich unterschiedliche Aspekte interessieren. Vermutlich liegt es an beidem. Resultat war jedenfalls, dass ich mich, so sehr ich mich auch bemüht habe, dieses Kapitel spannend zu finden, letztlich erneut nur gelangweilt habe.
-----
Insgesamt ist der Schreibstil in diesem Buch deutlich (!) angenehmer zu lesen als in früheren Werken von Butler – aber immer noch sehr frustrierend.
Ich musste mehrfach innehalten und mir eingestehen, dass ich aus den letzten Seiten rein gar nichts Interessantes mitgenommen habe.
Es fehlt für meinen Geschmack viel zu häufig ein klar erkennbarer roter Faden. Butlers Text durchziehen weiterhin zu viele linguistische Sprachspielereien und zu viel Platz wird darauf verwendet, Trivialitäten in bedeutungsschwerer Sprache als gewichtige Erkenntnisse zu verkaufen. Desweiteren scheint sich Butler in einigen Textstellen selbst zu widersprechen, was ich allerdings nicht mit Sicherheit sagen kann, denn, und das ist und bleibt mein größter Kritikpunkt an ihrem Stil, drückt Butler sich an vielen Stellen davor, klar zu formulieren, worauf diese sehr vage formulierten Textstellen eigentlich hinaus wollen, was einer wirklich produktiven Auseinandersetzung mit dem Inahlt des Textes im Wege steht.
-----
Fazit: Ein für Butler-Verhältnisse relativ okay lesbares Buch zu einem enorm wichtigen Thema. Leider propagiert es aus meiner Sicht zum Teil schreckliche Positionen. Und die Inhalte, denen ich zustimmen würde, sind in unnötig langatmigen Ausführungen eingebettet, von denen ich nicht behaupten kann, dass sich ihre Lektüre für mich lohnend angefühlt hätte.
----
Lieblingszitat:
"When nonviolence becomes the desire for the other’s desire to live, a way of saying, “You are grievable; the loss of you is intolerable; and I want you to live; I want you to want to live".
Leider ist jedoch eine differenzierte Betrachtung der Realität Butlers Sache nicht - dafür aber eine möglichst radikal klingende Theoretisierung, aus der, nähme man alle Thesen des Buches ernst und bezöge sie auf die Realität, mitunter schreckliche Konsequenzen folgen würden.
------
Besonders schrecklich finde ich Butlers Positionen zur Selbstverteidigung.
Butler lehnt nicht nur in den meisten Fällen Gewalt ab – das wäre an sich noch nachvollziehbar. Doch radikal, wie Butler nun einmal sein möchte, muss jede Form von Gewalt für moralisch verwerflich erklärt werden - selbst Gewalt zur Selbstverteidigung in Notsituationen.
Denn, so Butler, wenn sich eine Gruppe verteidigt, müssen die Gruppenmitglieder entscheiden, wer zu dieser Gruppe gehört und wer nicht - wer also zu dem zu verteidigenden selbst gehöre. Bereits diese Unterscheidung sei allerdings moralisch zutiefst verwerflich.
Was für ein - vielleicht klug klingender, aber in seiner Konsequenz schrecklicher - Unsinn! Wenn eine Gruppe migrantischer Jugendlicher von Neonazis überfallen und verprügelt wird, dann handeln diese Jugendlichen selbstverständlich nicht moralisch verwerflich, wenn sie sich verteidigen! Laut Butler jedoch schon, da sie in diesem Moment eine ungerechtfertigte Unterscheidung zwischen der eigenen Gruppe und der Angreifergruppe vornehmen würden. Wie absurd!
(Butler legt aus meiner Sicht insgesamt zu viel Augenmerk darauf, mit welcher Gruppe sich ein Individuum identifiziert. Häufig genug ist die Fremdidentifikation der gewaltvollen Umwelt ungleich relevanter als die Selbstidentifikation: Die migrantischen Jugendlichen können sich so deutsch fühlen, wie sie wollen – wenn die Neonazis auf „Ausländer“ einprügeln möchten und diese jene als solche „lesen“, ist die Selbstidentifikation nicht das relevante. Dasselbe gilt für die Menschen, die von den Nationalsozialisten als Juden fremdidentifiziert wurden: Sie konnten sich so deutsch fühlen, wie sie wollten – die Fremdzuschreibung als jüdisch durch die Nazis bedeutete für viele von ihnen dennoch das Todesurteil. Wie sich ein Individuum selbst sieht oder mit welchen Gruppen es sich identifiziert, ist – besonders in Situationen, in denen Selbstverteidigung nötig ist – häufig nicht das Entscheidende.)
--------
Noch absurder wird es, wenn Butler in Sachen Radikalität noch einen draufsetzt und nicht nur kollektive Selbstverteidigung, sondern auch die Selbstverteidigung von Individuen als moralisch verwerflich ablehnt.
Butlers Argumentation lautet, dass auch hier eine unzulässige Unterscheidung zwischen Selbst und Nicht-selbstgetroffen wird, was Butlers Meinung nach moralisch nicht zulässig sei.
Was für ein gefährlicher Unsinn!
Wenn mein Großvater meine Großmutter sturzbetrunken mit einer Axt angegriffen hat und sie nur überlebt hat, weil sie sich mit einem Gegenangriff mit einem Stuhl verteidigen konnte, dann soll sie nach Butler moralisch verwerflich gehandelt haben?! Nur weil sie - angeblich ungerechtfertigt - zwischen sich selbst und ihrem Angreifer unterschieden habe?! Sag mal, gehts noch?!
Wie realitätsfern, empathielos, und grundfalsch kann wohlgemeinte Theorie bitteschön sein?
------
Butlers problematische Argumentation zur Selbstverteidigung (und auch der gesamten Gewaltkritik) basiert auf einer obskuren Logik:
Butler stellt richtig fest, dass Menschen soziale Lebewesen sind und voneinander abhängig sind.
Daraus schließt Butler jedoch unvermittelt und für mich unzulässigerweise, dass durch diese Abhängigkeit bewiesen sei, dass es unmöglich sei, trennscharf zwischen Individuen zu unterscheiden – also zwischen Selbst und Nicht-Selbst.
Folglich sei jede Gewalt (auch Selbstverteidigung) eigentlich eine Gewalt gegen sich selbst. Meine Großmutter hätte also laut Butler sich selbst Gewalt angetan und deshalb falsch gehandelt, als sie sich, um ihr Leben zu retten, gegen ihren Mann verteidigte? Ah ja.
------
Doch nicht nur auf Selbstverteidigung bezogen finde ich Butlers Argumentation falsch, dass Gewalt
gegen andere vorallem deshalb verwerflich sei, weil es eigentlich Gewalt gegen einen selber sei.
Was für eine egozentrische Argumentation! Ich würde im Gegenteil behaupten: Gewalt gegen andere ist, wenn sie verwerflich ist, dann aus dem Grund moralisch verwerflich, dass man eben einem anderen (!) Lebewesen Gewalt und Leid zufügt und nicht weil man sich dabei vorallem selber Gewalt zufüge.
--------
Ein zentrales Konzept des Buches ist neben dem der Abhängigkeit das Konzept der grievability (etwa der Betrauerbarkeit).
Hier war ich äußerst positiv überrascht: Butler formuliert für mich eindeutig einen universalistischen moralischen Anspruch, der besagt, dass jeder Tod – unabhängig davon wer der verstorbene Mensch ist – gleichermaßen betrauerbar sein sollte.
Diese Position steht in starkem Gegensatz zu der von vielen von Butlers Anhänger:innen vertretenen, die jeglichen Universalismus, einschließlich dem der Menschenrechte, aufs schärfste als normativ-westlich-kolonial-hegemonialen Diskurs kritisieren. Für diese Kritiker:innen sind Menschenrechte kein moralisches Fundament zur Verurteilung von Schrecklichkeiten, sondern ausschließlich (!) ein gewaltvolles Machtinstrument zur Unterdrückung nicht-westlicher PoC.
Sie wendet sich – vielleicht ungewollt? – gegen diese Butler-Fans und formuliert eine Moral mit normativem universalistischen Anspruch: Jeder Tod - egal von wem - sollte gleichermaßen grievable sein! Und jeder Mensch sollte sich durch das Vertrauen darauf, das sein Tod grievable ist, sicher sein können, dass sein Leben genau so viel wert sei, wie das eines jeden anderen!
Was ist das anderes als eine akzentuierte Umformulierung des ersten Artikels der – von Butler-Fans so kritisierten – Menschenrechte? Zumal Butler in diesem Buch, ebenso wie die Menschenrechte es tun, großen Wert auf Egalität legt.
------
Ich stimme Butler darin zu, dass mit einer bloßen Deklaration moralischer Normen wenig gewonnen ist.
Um diese Normen zu verwirklichen, braucht es politische Veränderungen, die errungen werden müssen.
-----
Butlers Überlegungen zur Macht der Gewaltlosigkeit fand ich nur bedingt überzeugend, denn Butler legt lediglich dar, dass in Gewaltlosigkeit in manchen Situationen auch Macht liegt, schafft es aus meiner Sicht mir jedoch nicht einleuchtend zu vermitteln, dass diese Macht stark genug sei, um sich im Notfall mit ihr gegen Gewalt durchsetzen zu können.
-----
Das letzte Viertel des Buches besteht aus einem Essay über Freud.
Ähnlich wie bei anderen psychoanalytischen Passagen von Butler ging es mir auch hier: Ich finde Freud im Original spannend und lese häufig auch gerne Texte von Autor:innen, die sich mit Freud auseinandersetzen – allerdings nicht, wenn Butler es tut.
Vielleicht liegt es an ihrem Schreibstil. Vielleicht liegt es daran, dass uns an Freuds Denken grundsätzlich unterschiedliche Aspekte interessieren. Vermutlich liegt es an beidem. Resultat war jedenfalls, dass ich mich, so sehr ich mich auch bemüht habe, dieses Kapitel spannend zu finden, letztlich erneut nur gelangweilt habe.
-----
Insgesamt ist der Schreibstil in diesem Buch deutlich (!) angenehmer zu lesen als in früheren Werken von Butler – aber immer noch sehr frustrierend.
Ich musste mehrfach innehalten und mir eingestehen, dass ich aus den letzten Seiten rein gar nichts Interessantes mitgenommen habe.
Es fehlt für meinen Geschmack viel zu häufig ein klar erkennbarer roter Faden. Butlers Text durchziehen weiterhin zu viele linguistische Sprachspielereien und zu viel Platz wird darauf verwendet, Trivialitäten in bedeutungsschwerer Sprache als gewichtige Erkenntnisse zu verkaufen. Desweiteren scheint sich Butler in einigen Textstellen selbst zu widersprechen, was ich allerdings nicht mit Sicherheit sagen kann, denn, und das ist und bleibt mein größter Kritikpunkt an ihrem Stil, drückt Butler sich an vielen Stellen davor, klar zu formulieren, worauf diese sehr vage formulierten Textstellen eigentlich hinaus wollen, was einer wirklich produktiven Auseinandersetzung mit dem Inahlt des Textes im Wege steht.
-----
Fazit: Ein für Butler-Verhältnisse relativ okay lesbares Buch zu einem enorm wichtigen Thema. Leider propagiert es aus meiner Sicht zum Teil schreckliche Positionen. Und die Inhalte, denen ich zustimmen würde, sind in unnötig langatmigen Ausführungen eingebettet, von denen ich nicht behaupten kann, dass sich ihre Lektüre für mich lohnend angefühlt hätte.
----
Lieblingszitat:
"When nonviolence becomes the desire for the other’s desire to live, a way of saying, “You are grievable; the loss of you is intolerable; and I want you to live; I want you to want to live".
August 12, 2024
"اللاعنف ليس مجرد غياب العنف؛ بل هو قوة إيجابية يمكنها أن تخلق أشكالاً جديدة من المجتمع والتضامن."
عن صعوبة وضع مفهوم محدد عن العنف واللاعنف وما يفصل بينهما بشكل دقيق ، فهما قطبان مترابطان بطرق مختلفة ما يشكل تحدي للكاتب ذاته . يقول بتلر : السبب الذي يمنعنا من البدء بتحديد نوع العنف المبرر وغير المبرر هو أن "العنف" يُعرَّف منذ البداية ضمن أطر معينة ويأتي إلينا دائمًا مُفسَّرًا بالفعل، "مُعاد صياغته" بواسطة إطاره."
يستكشف الكاتب من خلال مادة الكتاب الفروق الدقيقة المحيطة بالمقاومة اللاعنفية.
و يناقش عدداً من الحجج وهي:
اللاعنف كموقف أخلاقي وسياسي. "إذا كان للاعنف أن يكون له معنى كموقف أخلاقي وسياسي، فإنه لا يمكنه ببساطة قمع العدوان أو التخلص من واقعيته؛ بل يبرز اللاعنف كمفهوم ذي معنى على وجه التحديد عندما يكون التدمير أكثر احتمالية أو يبدو أكثر تأكيدًا.……."اللاعنف ليس مسألة نية خالصة بل ظروف اجتماعية وسياسية معقدة.
تحدي ثنائية العنف/اللاعنف: "غالبًا ما تفترض مسألة ما إذا كان ينبغي استخدام العنف أم لا خيارًا خاطئًا بين شكلين من أشكال القوة."……"العنف يولد العنف، واللاعنف يولد اللاعنف، لكن هذه ليست سلاسل سببية بسيطة."
الترابط والقابلية للحزن: عن مشكلة النزعة الفردية. ودور الروابط الاجتماعية والتبعية المتبادلة في فهم تفسير اللاعنف. "يزعم باتلر أن القدرة على اللاعنف تنشأ من فهم الضعف المشترك وقابلية جميع الأرواح للحزن."
اللاعنف كممارسة جماعية : اللاعنف ليس في المقام الأول عملاً فرديًا بل ممارسة جماعية." ….."أن تكون ضعيفًا لا يعني فقط التعرض للأذى ولكن أيضًا الانفتاح على الاتصال."
ناقش الكاتب عدداً من الآراء والرؤى ل مفهوم اللاعنف لعدد من المفكرين المؤثرين من مثل : ألبرت آينشتاين، فرانتز فانون، كانط، وسيغموند فرويد، ميلاني كلاين، فالتر بنيامين، روبرت كوفر، باليبار، وآخرون .
الكاتب يتحدث بالمجمل من خلال تحليلاته الاجتماعية والسياسية المختلفة والمعقدة، عن كيف يمكننا كذوات غيرية أن نصنع تغييراً في البنى الاجتماعية بترابطنا ومقاومتنا اللاعنيفة في تغيير المجتمع وإعادة تشكيل تفكيره نحو الأفضل، وكذلك التأثير على الأنظمة والقوانين السياسية للسلطة للحد من العنف السياسي ، والموجه نحو الفرد والجماعة والآخر ( ك - اللاجئون والمهاجرون. )
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May 30, 2024Abandoning after about 100 pages. Butler is an intelligent and cogent thinker, but I have several issues with this book that limit its usefulness for me. Simply put, I think her partisan commitments distort her ability to think objectively or abstractly about the attendant issues, and it reads much more like a political polemic than a work of philosophy. It's too reductive, too dualistic, too simplistic in its frame, and assumes too much commonality of worldview from the reader. I get the impression she's trying to write for a wider audience than her usual circle - if that's so, I think it's a failure.
February 17, 2020
An aimless-feeling and unfinished work. Should really have been called "musings on nonviolence". So many arguments are shied away from or shelved for another time that the reader has no way to shepherd themselves through to any kind of transformation in how to view the world. You can come away from this book (as I did) thinking that nonviolence has power, but that the power of violence will always trump it--that those who enact and support a politics of nonviolence will always be subject to those who enact and support a politics of violence.
Not that convincing readers that nonviolence trumps violence was Butler's specific goal. But if the goal was simply to affirm the value of nonviolence, I struggle to see the value of this book. Many have extolled the virtues of nonviolent practice (and the author quotes a lot of them), so in this context Butler's work winds up redundant and derivative.
Not that convincing readers that nonviolence trumps violence was Butler's specific goal. But if the goal was simply to affirm the value of nonviolence, I struggle to see the value of this book. Many have extolled the virtues of nonviolent practice (and the author quotes a lot of them), so in this context Butler's work winds up redundant and derivative.
July 8, 2024
phenomenal. A must read for students of political science and philosophy.
October 11, 2022
Es durillo de leer, muchos conceptos en frases muy largas.
A la vez, en vista de lo que sucede estos días en Irán, en Ucrania, en el mundo... es terrorífico.
El capítulo de la ética y la política me ha costado mucho.
Merece muchas más estrellas, pero personalmente no puedo ponerle más, como suele decirse, no es él, soy yo.
A la vez, en vista de lo que sucede estos días en Irán, en Ucrania, en el mundo... es terrorífico.
El capítulo de la ética y la política me ha costado mucho.
Merece muchas más estrellas, pero personalmente no puedo ponerle más, como suele decirse, no es él, soy yo.
April 16, 2023
نقد خشونت به مثابه نقد رادیکال نابرابری. و نقد رادیکال نابرابری به مثابه دادخواهی برای تمام حیاتهای دادپذیر.
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February 20, 2020Once again, Judith Butler surprised me with a very insightful and complex seminal work about the forces of nonviolence. This book is more than philosophical reasoning, as it presents theoretical and pragmatic thinking linked to a passionate engagement with pressing political and moral matters of our time, e.g. violence done to vulnerable groups (which should get rid of its paternalist aspects) such as migrants, people with various sexual orientations, groups suppressed by dictators, etc. Butler's main argument is grounded on the fact that ambivalence and aggression is part of human nature. She argues that this relationship is the foundation on which the necessity of a commitment to non-violence can be built. Such a commitment arises when we begin to recognise our social bond which is, on the one hand, rooted in violence and, on the other, in the vulnerability and interdependence of all living beings. This thesis brings Butler to the notion that neither non-violence nor vulnerability equates with passivity; on the contrary, these two moments of a continuum can help foster resistance against systemic violence, destruction, war, and all other "death driving" (Freud) forces. This book is a reminder not only to the ongoing discussions about an open society (Popper) but also to the human condition that is a characterised by ambivalence between both love and hate on an individual level and a wish for a peaceful world on a global level.
January 20, 2024
This is sooo incisive! Highly recommend to anyone who cares about being human.
Radical equality must include equal grievability, all lives are grievable.
A critique of self-defense: what is the self (me, my family, my people, my nation, etc) that is worthy of being violently defended, at the expanse of other lives ... if that is every possible, then what makes our lives grievable and therefore defendable, even if at the expanse of destroying other lives or living processes...
Radical equality must include equal grievability, all lives are grievable.
A critique of self-defense: what is the self (me, my family, my people, my nation, etc) that is worthy of being violently defended, at the expanse of other lives ... if that is every possible, then what makes our lives grievable and therefore defendable, even if at the expanse of destroying other lives or living processes...
November 30, 2025
Creo que junto con Zambrano esta es la autora más difícil que he leído. Judith Butler, presenta unas ideas muy buenas, las que he podido entender, y otras que escapan a mi comprensión por falta de conocimiento técnico que trata en el texto. Igualmente creo haver entendido correctamente la idea final de la necesidad de una valoración y consideración de los demàs y del mundo como una pieza clave en nuestro yo por tsl de emplear correctamente una fuerza de la no-violencia con la que combatir las violencias vigentes en nuestra sociedad, fruto de las desigualdades. Realmente ideas muy bellas aunque realmente me gustaria haver sido capaz de entender más aún.
April 9, 2020
A very good if not always an easy read! Butler starts by investigating the concept of violence, something that a recent ‘angelic’ writer felt was not needed. She then goes on to criticize the ‘state of war’ in ‘Leviathan’, criticisms that are not new, but ones that need repeating time and time again as Hobbes represents a political stance that is still at the core of virtually all international relations. There is lots more with Butler teasing out the differences between independent and interdependent, violence and non-violence, and finally moving on to Freud’s Melancholia and Mania, and Freud’s discussions with Einstein. A fantastic ride even if it is one that sadly never wholly convinces even when you want it too. I can’t help totally missing Derrida at this moment. I’m sure a lengthy book review from him would have helped get us over the bumps. But maybe I just need to read it again. What a good idea. ‘The Force of Nonviolence’ is a book that really deserves to be read just for the mental stimulation it provides.
August 14, 2023
Butler's prose is characteristically dense, demanding a focused and engaged reading experience. She grounds her arguments in a comprehensive understanding of political theory and philosophy, weaving together concepts from thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Frantz Fanon, and Mahatma Gandhi, among others. Through this academic tapestry, Butler constructs a nuanced examination of how nonviolence operates as a force of change in various political contexts.
One of the book's strengths lies in Butler's willingness to challenge prevailing narratives and scrutinize the potential pitfalls of nonviolence as a strategy for social change. She tackles difficult questions, such as the tension between nonviolence and state power, and the limitations of pacifism in the face of systemic oppression. By doing so, Butler avoids a simplistic glorification of nonviolent resistance and instead encourages readers to assess its ethical implications critically.
While the depth of analysis and cross-referencing of ideas enrich the book, they might also prove daunting for readers less familiar with the subject matter. The writing's density could potentially alienate those seeking a more accessible introduction to the topic of nonviolence. Nevertheless, for those willing to invest the effort, the text offers a gratifying intellectual challenge and ample material for contemplation.
One aspect that stands out is Butler's engagement with contemporary events, demonstrating the book's relevance to real-world scenarios. She reflects on the Arab Spring, Occupy movement, and Black Lives Matter protests, highlighting the complexity of nonviolence in modern contexts. Applying theory to practice enhances the book's significance and makes it a worthwhile read for individuals interested in the intersection of ethics, politics, and activism.
While its complexity might pose a challenge for some readers, the insights gained from grappling with its ideas are undoubtedly rewarding.
One of the book's strengths lies in Butler's willingness to challenge prevailing narratives and scrutinize the potential pitfalls of nonviolence as a strategy for social change. She tackles difficult questions, such as the tension between nonviolence and state power, and the limitations of pacifism in the face of systemic oppression. By doing so, Butler avoids a simplistic glorification of nonviolent resistance and instead encourages readers to assess its ethical implications critically.
While the depth of analysis and cross-referencing of ideas enrich the book, they might also prove daunting for readers less familiar with the subject matter. The writing's density could potentially alienate those seeking a more accessible introduction to the topic of nonviolence. Nevertheless, for those willing to invest the effort, the text offers a gratifying intellectual challenge and ample material for contemplation.
One aspect that stands out is Butler's engagement with contemporary events, demonstrating the book's relevance to real-world scenarios. She reflects on the Arab Spring, Occupy movement, and Black Lives Matter protests, highlighting the complexity of nonviolence in modern contexts. Applying theory to practice enhances the book's significance and makes it a worthwhile read for individuals interested in the intersection of ethics, politics, and activism.
While its complexity might pose a challenge for some readers, the insights gained from grappling with its ideas are undoubtedly rewarding.
September 28, 2025
I was sitting in the University of Washington bookstore considering the implications of a university run store having a section explicitly labelled as anarchist and pro-Palestine given the (then) recent crackdown on student organization for Palestinian freedom from the genocidal settler-colonial apartheid state of Israel when I saw this book sitting there. Which was fortunate because I was wavering in my commitment to non-violence.
Judith always says the exact right thing in the exact words. Her establishing of an aggressive and resistant non-violence on the basis that all lives are equal and therefore equally grievable if lost is exactly right.
Also I watched this morning a great conversation between James Baldwin and Reinhold Neibuhr on non-violent resistance of the white supremacist and segregationist USA that I recommend.
Judith always says the exact right thing in the exact words. Her establishing of an aggressive and resistant non-violence on the basis that all lives are equal and therefore equally grievable if lost is exactly right.
Also I watched this morning a great conversation between James Baldwin and Reinhold Neibuhr on non-violent resistance of the white supremacist and segregationist USA that I recommend.
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March 28, 2024I didn't really understand a lot of this (book uses a lot of psychoanalytical jargon), so I won't rate it/ say much. The question still interests me though: is violence ever useful? Can violence end violence? Butler seems to think that it is not useful or necessary for change. Sadly I dont know much more of what she thought beyond that.
December 13, 2024
This is not really a book about non/violence as a tactic, no matter how much it insists that it is. If anything this book is trying to establish a theoretical framework from psychoanalysis for why all violence is immoral. However, it is not incredibly convincing if you are not a pacifist and are trying to understand that perspective. This seems more meant for people to have a "theory" to fall back on after they've already decided that there is no justification for violence.
Aside from not serving it's overall premise very well, there are also some frustrating points in this book where SJ language is used to slide in morally ambiguous stances as obviously correct. E.g., self defense, even of an extended group, is individualistic and unjustified because you are always making a value judgement about who is worth protecting. At best, this point is just too consumed in its own framework. I do think the whole discussion is slightly moot in a world almost totally devoid of genuine mass political movements, but I'll just say that it is very easy to opt yourself out of community self defense, and instead promote glorified performance art, when you are not part of the group who needs defending from State-sanctioned violence.
Really, there's just not enough to ground this text in the real, material world. It is almost condescending in its most theoretical musings, and borders on ahistorical when it tries to apply that theory.
Aside from not serving it's overall premise very well, there are also some frustrating points in this book where SJ language is used to slide in morally ambiguous stances as obviously correct. E.g., self defense, even of an extended group, is individualistic and unjustified because you are always making a value judgement about who is worth protecting. At best, this point is just too consumed in its own framework. I do think the whole discussion is slightly moot in a world almost totally devoid of genuine mass political movements, but I'll just say that it is very easy to opt yourself out of community self defense, and instead promote glorified performance art, when you are not part of the group who needs defending from State-sanctioned violence.
Really, there's just not enough to ground this text in the real, material world. It is almost condescending in its most theoretical musings, and borders on ahistorical when it tries to apply that theory.
June 30, 2024
"To link a practice of nonviolence with a force or strength that is distinguished from destructive violence...is to refute the characterisation of nonviolence as a weak and useless passivity".
April 17, 2020
3.5 stars
May 2, 2022
I wish Butler would have left Freud and Klein alone and stuck to her own actually compelling arguments in this one.
April 5, 2021
I picked this up in an indie bookstore in Hong Kong (an increasingly rare thing) at a time when there was a lot of debate about whether violence on the part of protesters was justified even in self-defense, whether destroying property counts as violence, etc. There was also debate of a similar nature in the US when it came to things like how to best respond to the rise of fascism there (for example, if someone on a street corner is spouting Nazi rhetoric or ideas, is it morally acceptable to punch his lights out?). Does responding to state violence with violence make you a hypocrite, or at least morally no better? What is the argument for non-violence when one side is resorting to violence more frequently? This book from Judith Butler sort of addresses these questions, but mostly in the form of a theoretical intellectual thought exercise rather than a tactical debate guide.
Her argument, more or less, is that in order to pursue a truly non-violent ethos, we have to break out of the traditional definitions of violence vs non-violence, which in turns means breaking out of the frameworks that shape those definitions. The idea is to stop thinking of non-violence as an individual choice and more in relational terms with everyone else – which in turn requires us to pursue a new framework of what she calls “radical equality” at the political and institutional level (not just as individuals) to ensure that all lives really do matter. Or, as Butler puts it, “the practice of nonviolence requires an opposition to biopolitical forms of racism and war logics that regularly distinguish lives worth safeguarding from those that are not.”
I’m not doing her argument justice, in large part because Butler is a heavy-duty intellectual riffing on the likes of Freud, Einstein, Foucault, Fanon, Benjamin, Kant, Hegel, and Melanie Klein to make her case. Consequently, it’s rooted in dense philosophy, ethics studies, gender studies, psychoanalysis and other disciplines, which also means it’s written in the kind of dense academic discourse that is accessible mainly to academics who live and breathe this stuff for a living. For everyone else who doesn’t, it’s a hard slog even if you’re reasonably well educated. Or, hey, it could very well be my problem. Either way, it’s the sort of book that I think is great for philosophy majors to kick around as an intellectual argument, but of little practical use in terms of addressing the above questions (which, to be fair, Butler herself acknowledges). If that’s for you, have at it.
Her argument, more or less, is that in order to pursue a truly non-violent ethos, we have to break out of the traditional definitions of violence vs non-violence, which in turns means breaking out of the frameworks that shape those definitions. The idea is to stop thinking of non-violence as an individual choice and more in relational terms with everyone else – which in turn requires us to pursue a new framework of what she calls “radical equality” at the political and institutional level (not just as individuals) to ensure that all lives really do matter. Or, as Butler puts it, “the practice of nonviolence requires an opposition to biopolitical forms of racism and war logics that regularly distinguish lives worth safeguarding from those that are not.”
I’m not doing her argument justice, in large part because Butler is a heavy-duty intellectual riffing on the likes of Freud, Einstein, Foucault, Fanon, Benjamin, Kant, Hegel, and Melanie Klein to make her case. Consequently, it’s rooted in dense philosophy, ethics studies, gender studies, psychoanalysis and other disciplines, which also means it’s written in the kind of dense academic discourse that is accessible mainly to academics who live and breathe this stuff for a living. For everyone else who doesn’t, it’s a hard slog even if you’re reasonably well educated. Or, hey, it could very well be my problem. Either way, it’s the sort of book that I think is great for philosophy majors to kick around as an intellectual argument, but of little practical use in terms of addressing the above questions (which, to be fair, Butler herself acknowledges). If that’s for you, have at it.
April 11, 2020
L'introduction du livre m'a définitivement accroché dès le début, toutes les questions, observations qui sont posées au départ en sont toutes auquel je réfléchis couramment dans ma posture de non-violence. L'importance de définir la question de qu'est-ce que la violence, même la violence dans une posture de défense, ou encore la fausse violence: celle dont on accuse des gens d'avoir, alors qu'il n'y en a pas (les immigrants, la critique d'un système, les manifestants, etc.) comme une forme de gaslighting (mes mots, pas les siens).
Toutefois, cet essai n'est pas tant une proposition de nouvelles théories sur la non-violence, sinon qu'une révision, vulgarisation de plus vieilles théories (Benjamin, Foucault, Freud, Melanie Klein, etc.) avec des enjeux contemporains: Black Lives Matter, le système carcéral, l'immigration, la violence envers les femmes et les personnes trans, etc.
Le dernier chapitre est particulièrement démonstratif de la tendance de l'ouvrage à n'être qu'une immense vulgarisation de la théorisation de l'idée de violence destructrice chez l'homme par Freud à travers tout son oeuvre. N'étant pas fan de psychanalyse et n'y trouvant absolument aucune rigidité scientifique, j'ai passé beaucoup trop de temps à savoir ce que pensait Freud de X et Y chose et d'appliquer ces notions sur des objects contemporains.
C'est un ouvrage très intéressant de vulgarisation que ce soit sur le biopouvoir, le phantasm, et plein d'autres concept de la fameuse "French Theory", mais très peu innovant sinon qu'en appliquant le sujet d'études à des cas contemporains et dénoncer l'idéologie de violence derrière le capitalisme.
Toutefois, cet essai n'est pas tant une proposition de nouvelles théories sur la non-violence, sinon qu'une révision, vulgarisation de plus vieilles théories (Benjamin, Foucault, Freud, Melanie Klein, etc.) avec des enjeux contemporains: Black Lives Matter, le système carcéral, l'immigration, la violence envers les femmes et les personnes trans, etc.
Le dernier chapitre est particulièrement démonstratif de la tendance de l'ouvrage à n'être qu'une immense vulgarisation de la théorisation de l'idée de violence destructrice chez l'homme par Freud à travers tout son oeuvre. N'étant pas fan de psychanalyse et n'y trouvant absolument aucune rigidité scientifique, j'ai passé beaucoup trop de temps à savoir ce que pensait Freud de X et Y chose et d'appliquer ces notions sur des objects contemporains.
C'est un ouvrage très intéressant de vulgarisation que ce soit sur le biopouvoir, le phantasm, et plein d'autres concept de la fameuse "French Theory", mais très peu innovant sinon qu'en appliquant le sujet d'études à des cas contemporains et dénoncer l'idéologie de violence derrière le capitalisme.
February 27, 2021
"¿De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de violencia? Cuando tratamos de responder a esta pregunta no hay un concepto unívoco en el que podamos refugiarnos. Muy al contrario, encontramos diversas formas de entender la violencia que derivan de diversos marcos, que a su vez regulan lo que entendemos por «vida», y concretamente por vidas dignas de duelo, en cuyos márgenes encontramos las vidas que pueden ser objeto de violencia de forma legítima. Sin embargo, por mucho que estos marcos parezcan inamovibles por su función apriorística en las condiciones de aparición de la vida misma, son en realidad históricos. Es decir: contingentes. Por ello, Butler propone repensar la categoría de «no violencia» desde una igualdad radical fundada en el concepto de interdependencia, que es el núcleo de la propuesta butleriana: porque somos cuerpo, somos vulnerables, y esta vulnerabilidad implica que las vidas tienen condiciones que las sostienen. Asegurar esas condiciones para todas las vidas sería precisamente la finalidad de esa igualdad radical en la que la no violencia se ancla, y que implica romper con todos aquellos marcos que generan estructuras de desigualdad marcando determinadas vidas como vidas que no merecen ser lloradas. Contra toda conceptualización individualista, la no violencia sería precisamente esa obligación ética a la que nos vemos empujades por el hecho de estar vinculades a les otres. Porque, como ya escribió en Vida Precaria, «aunque luchemos por los derechos de nuestros propios cuerpos, los cuerpos por los que luchamos nunca son lo suficientemente nuestros»." Clara Fernández de Lis
November 29, 2020
Was ist eigentlich Gewalt? Diese Frage, so die Hauptthese von Judith Butlers neuem Buch, muss zunächst einmal beantwortet werden, bevor sich über Gewaltlosigkeit als Prinzip politischen Handels streiten lässt. Ausgehend von aktuellen Auseinandersetzungen und Konflikten – von „Black Lives Matter“ bis zu den europäischen Flüchtlingsdebatten – zeigt die an der Universität Berkeley in Kalifornien lehrende Philosophin, dass heute oft schon die bloße Anwesenheit bestimmter Menschen zum falschen Zeitpunkt am falschen Ort als Gewalt oder sogar Terrorismus dargestellt wird. Eine solche Interpretation dient den Machthabern dann als Legitimation, um diese Menschen zu verletzen, einzusperren oder sogar zu töten. In Weiterentwicklung ihrer These, dass sich soziale Ungleichheit daran misst, welche Menschen „betrauerbar“ sind und welche nicht, wessen Leben und Gesundheit als schützenswert gilt und wessen nicht, plädiert Butler dafür, die Verletzlichkeit lebendiger Körper und die Abhängigkeit der Menschen von anderen und der Natur ernster zu nehmen als bisher: ein Appell, mit den „Unbetrauerbaren“ solidarisch zu sein und ungerechten Verhältnissen aktiv zu widerstehen.
(Rezension erschien in Publik Forum, 20.22.2020)
Zusatz: Insgesamt fand ich aber wie oft bei Butler: sehr viele Wörter für eine zwar zutreffende, aber doch eigentlich eher einfache These.
(Rezension erschien in Publik Forum, 20.22.2020)
Zusatz: Insgesamt fand ich aber wie oft bei Butler: sehr viele Wörter für eine zwar zutreffende, aber doch eigentlich eher einfache These.
September 20, 2020
A very badly written and a very boring book.
The language somehow gets better when the author makes political statements and/or described present-day events, but overall the language is deliberately confusing and aimed at giving an impression of the author's skill of using fancy words, rather than presenting the argument.
The logic itself is very vague and Utopian. Additionally, scattered over the text references to Marxist philosophers do not reinforce the image.
The most disappointing thing is that the actual analysis of the peaceful protests' logic, ethics, practice and philosophy are given almost zero attention. On the other hand, a most of the book is dedicated to constructing an image of an ideal world (an idea that in itself is proven to be devastating so many times), moreover a highly fragile and self-contradictory image.
Generally, I had had much higer expectations of this book, be it a high class demagoguery, legitimate, evidence-based left-wing critique of the extant order, or even an example of a great philosophical argument. The book turned out to be failing all of those expectations. It a huge loss of time.
The language somehow gets better when the author makes political statements and/or described present-day events, but overall the language is deliberately confusing and aimed at giving an impression of the author's skill of using fancy words, rather than presenting the argument.
The logic itself is very vague and Utopian. Additionally, scattered over the text references to Marxist philosophers do not reinforce the image.
The most disappointing thing is that the actual analysis of the peaceful protests' logic, ethics, practice and philosophy are given almost zero attention. On the other hand, a most of the book is dedicated to constructing an image of an ideal world (an idea that in itself is proven to be devastating so many times), moreover a highly fragile and self-contradictory image.
Generally, I had had much higer expectations of this book, be it a high class demagoguery, legitimate, evidence-based left-wing critique of the extant order, or even an example of a great philosophical argument. The book turned out to be failing all of those expectations. It a huge loss of time.
March 26, 2020
In this book, Judith Butler has created a masterpiece of philosophy for the 21st Century.
Drawing together her life's work in varied areas from language to feminism, from trans rights to racism, she has constructed a concrete, legible and intense theory of collaborative existence that draws from all of these ideas to create a powerful, insightful book.
Two stand-out points dominate a theory that in few words has drawn together a lifetime of thought. (1) That a life has little value if it is not deemed to be worth grieving ("grievability") and (2) that violence is justified within the extent to how much we grieve a loss. This grievability is extended to all living things, from person to person, from society to society, from people to other organisms. And the clarity with which Butler has uncovered and shared all of this is spellbinding.
A book for the ages.
A brilliant, more in-depth review in light of the COVID-19 pandemic by Jennifer Carlson is worth a read too: https://jdawncarlson.com/2020/03/11/t...
Drawing together her life's work in varied areas from language to feminism, from trans rights to racism, she has constructed a concrete, legible and intense theory of collaborative existence that draws from all of these ideas to create a powerful, insightful book.
Two stand-out points dominate a theory that in few words has drawn together a lifetime of thought. (1) That a life has little value if it is not deemed to be worth grieving ("grievability") and (2) that violence is justified within the extent to how much we grieve a loss. This grievability is extended to all living things, from person to person, from society to society, from people to other organisms. And the clarity with which Butler has uncovered and shared all of this is spellbinding.
A book for the ages.
A brilliant, more in-depth review in light of the COVID-19 pandemic by Jennifer Carlson is worth a read too: https://jdawncarlson.com/2020/03/11/t...
May 19, 2020
"It may be, however, that the most persuasive reasons for the practice of nonviolence directly imply a critique of individualism and Twitter that we rethink the social bonds that constitute us as living creatures...
"It is not only those who are disabled who require support in order to move, to be fed, or indeed, to breathe. All of these basic human capacities are supported on one way or another. No one moves out breathes it finds good who is not supported by a world that provides an environment but for passage, that prepares and distributes did so that it makes its way to our mouths, a world that sustains the environment that makes possible air if a quality that we can breathe."
"It is not only those who are disabled who require support in order to move, to be fed, or indeed, to breathe. All of these basic human capacities are supported on one way or another. No one moves out breathes it finds good who is not supported by a world that provides an environment but for passage, that prepares and distributes did so that it makes its way to our mouths, a world that sustains the environment that makes possible air if a quality that we can breathe."
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