Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?

by Judith Butler

Frames of War begins where Butler’s Precarious Lives left off: on the idea that we cannot grieve for those lost lives that we never saw as lives to begin with. In this age of CNN-mediated war, the lives of those wretched populations of the earth—the refugees; the victims of unjust imprisonment and torture; the immigrants virtually enslaved by their starvation and legal disenfranchisement—are always presented to us as already irretrievable and thereby already lost. We may shake our heads at their wretchedness but then we sacrifice them nonetheless, for they are already forgone.

By analyzing the different frames through which we experience war, Butler calls for a reorientation of the Left toward the precarity of those lives. Only by recognizing those lives as precarious lives—lives that are not yet lost but are ever fragile and in need of protection—might the Left stand in unity against the violence perpetrated through arbitrary state power.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Theory, War, Academic, Feminism

193 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

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

Reviews

[Zala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very interesting ideas, but the writing is so overwrought.

[Fleur · Rating 5 out of 5]

She lost me a bit in the last chapter with all the talk about ego, psychoanalysis is just not my thing. But the rest of the book was super interesting. In true butler style it was incredibly detailed and well thought through, but luckily it was much more pleasant to read than bodies that matter.

Especially the chapters on photography (2) and the one about the neoliberal discourse of sexual liberation as the supposed meter of modernity (3) where cool and inspiring.

Because this book's subtitle is: " when is life grievable?" I was surprised that the book was so little concerned with analysing the power structures that make some bodies more grievable than others. I was hoping to find this for a paper, but I have to look elsewhere.

Nevertheless very interesting, especially if your looking for theory to understand the war on terror and other civilising mission, the framing of religious minorities, like Muslims and how we talk about war and violence.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chapter 2 was a standout.

[Steffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ugh. Tough one. Bigger picture: the book, from what I understand (as always, Butler lost me at times), calls, among other things, for a reconceptualization of the left united in opposing and resisting interventionist military action and violence. This is probably one of the more important philosophical projects of our time.

Today's mainstream 'centre-left' of Democrats/Labour/Social Democracy by and large support 'humanitarian or human rights based military interventions' 'R2P' etc. There is little point, philosophically speaking, in making the case against interventionist military action purely on the grounds of their failed effectiveness, e.g., that the taliban is just as strong as 2001 or that the Iraq and Syria wars have essentially created ISIS, that the whole region is on fire. Nor just on the grounds that they work in the interest of the wrong guys aka imperialists.

The five essays written between 2004 and 2008 aim to 'deconstruct' or 'critically analyse' how popular assent to war is cultivated and how war waging acts upon the senses so that war can be thought of being 'inevitable', 'good' and even 'morally satisfactory'.
The opposition to war has to take place, in part, through remaking the conditions of its possibility and probability.

Indeed it would help the anti-war left if the what I call 'uncritical Left' actually deconstructed modern wars and violence (torture, secret prisons but also certain immigration policies and links with the weapons industry) in that way rather than wholesale adopting the humanitarian interventionist con and being unable to understand the direct link between, say, the US air base Ramstein in Germany and German weapon exports and escalating conflicts in other parts of the world.

While I - courtesy either Butler's peculiar language and/or my own limited cognitive abilities - did not understand everything, a key concept is that of 'precarious life'. Butler aims to revive the 'discourse of life' for the left (not an unproblematic one for the left which favours reproductive freedoms as pro-choice etc). According to Butler, there's no life without the conditions of life, and those conditions are pervasively social and, as such, precarious. To say that 'life is precarious' is to say that the possibility of being sustained relies fundamentally on social and political conditions. This mode of 'social ontology' of life has concrete political implications. Our (ethical, political) obligations are to the conditions that make life possible, not to life itself, to provide those basic supports that seek to minimize precariousness in 'egalitarian ways' (the focus on egalitarian / differential distribution of precariousness is key here).

Second: We cannot easily recognize life outside the 'frames' in which it is given, and those frames not only structure how we come to know and identify life but constitute sustaining conditions for those very lives.
Within certain frames some lives are recognized as lives and, as such, grievable (eg victims of Assad or victims of a terrorist attack in Paris) and some are not recognized as lives per se (eg hundreds of thousand casualties since the beginning of the Iraq war, thousands of refugees drowned, millions dying from famine).

Wars attempt to maximize precariousness for others, while minimize precariousness for the power in question. The differential distribution of precariousness is both material and perceptual since those whose lives are not 'regarded' as potentially grievable are made to bear the burden of starvation, underemployment and differential exposure to violence and death.
The shared human condition of precariousness leads not to reciprocal recognition, but to a specific exploitation of targeted populations, of lives that are not quite lives, populations that are 'lose-able' or can be forfeited precisely because they are cast as threats to human life as we know it rather than as living populations in need of protection from illegitimate state violence, famine or pandemics. A critique of war must start with deconstructing these frames.

Yeah, sounds a little WTF. I realize, as I am writing this, that there is little to no point in isolating a few key thoughts without reproducing the wider theoretical/conceptual framework. You'll just have to read the whole book, wrestle the beast (unless you are very familiar with her overall work and used to the fucking painful language it does, at times, feel a bit like a struggle).

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

found the essays to be pretty repetitive at times, but still another absolute banger by JB

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find the concept of grievable lives very interesting, which is why I started this book. Butler, however, makes the book unnecessarily difficult to read by trying to make it more 'academic'. I wish she did not do this because it is an important book/topic that more people should read! That being said, particularly chapter 2 stood out to me and I am happy I finished it.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Butler argues from a we're all, that is, ALL, precarious beings. Recognition of the vulnerability of our lives is a great place to begin her protest against humans engaging in war. Fabulous book so far. More to write when I finish.

[Erdem Tasdelen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well articulated as always, but quite repetitive. Didn't really make me think about anything I hadn't already thought about.
The two essays "Sexual Politics, Torture and Secular Time" and "Non-Thinking in the Name of the Normative" were great. The other ones aren't really necessary to read if you've already read Precarious Life.

[Vinicius Sarralheiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Judith Butler é, com certeza, uma das pessoas que eu gostaria de tomar um café e bater um papo sobre a vida.

[Kay Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We judge a world we refuse to know, and our judgement becomes one means of refusing to know that world.”

sooo dense, but soooo good.

[tessa]

read this for my ba thesis and it fits perfectly with my topic thank you judith bae i love you kiss kiss

[Rodney Likaku · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read a few comments below of people suggesting that this book is undigestable, convoluted, and written for a specific audience. Which could be certainly true, I guess when you are a professor you can get away with making references to people like Hegel and Hobbes under the presupposition that your readers know that you are speaking of sections from the leviathan and/or the master-slave dialect.

Two reservations on my part are that the entire construction of the book can do with some logical restructuring: that is to say that a few minor instances where without realising Butler contradicts herself: so, for example, a lot of reference ego psychologists (Freud, Klein) and individualism in photographic theory (Sontag etc) dismiss her writing position which is obviously sociological and could do with references that she no doubt has read and either ignores or just does see the benefit of adding to an already robust theoretical angle. But simply put there is the tension of her reading the notion of individual (non) violence (a point that she makes in her final essay) versus her position on war crimes, torture, mournability, precarity etc. Basically, one cannot go to war with themselves in international terms and yet her theoretical position is cultural in its disposition by acknowledging this de facto and yet individual theoretically (how can we mourn the/a body says Freud?). This is somewhat rectified in her third essay where she looks at sociology in light of torture. The second is the lack of cohesion with theorists that she engages to make her argument where she does--so the mention of Althuisser, and absolute obliteration where she does not--in a particular she makes a rather compelling argument on language and morphology without necessarily citing any sources or when she speaks "against interpretation". Then leads into a reading of form and content vis-a-vis framing of the photograph and war. The result is an inter-text of material that causes one not too familiar with such heavy-headed servings of 20th-century theory, writing, and subject matter to easily dismiss what is perhaps a really good work.

Despite these basic issues from someone who is a really prominent thinker, the collection is a powerful meditation on the role of who is mournable by consideration. Butler extends her previous position on precarious lives and the way that they are seen arguing that there are different levels of mournability based off of framing (a point that she locates neatly in her thoughts of photographs) and the ethical duties of mourning. Finally in "The claim of non-violence" she argues that resistance can itself be a violent act if only as a way of going against interpretation. It is reframing, or the frame, by the notion of non-participation and so it can only be a claim. If one goes to these essays and reads a section hoping to understand Butler's position they are doing themselves a disservice, it is a connection of thought that one must trace rather clearly and in defence of her writing, it really is a question of questions with different ways of reframing for to have found one frame with which to engage mournability or precarity would be in itself an ego position of violence.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Each of these essays had been published previously. (Sometimes this makes a book less cohesive, or repetitive.) There are good ideas here, but unfortunately the academic jargon limits the number of readers who will find them accessible. A discussion of the Abu Ghraib photographs (as a locus of the homophobia of the U.S. military, Islam's shaming of homosexual acts, and viewable and re-viewable pornography) was highly readable, as was one on a Dutch policy that asked immigration applicants to look at pictures of two men kissing and state whether they found the pictures offensive. (Approval of homosexuality being a sign of modernity, a requirement for anyone who wanted to join in society. The policy has since been abandoned.)

[Kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wicked smart.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took a bit of a break between two of the essays but this was a good book, just as good as Precarious Life and essentially the same topic.

[Malin H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Under vilka omständigheter är krig legitimt?
Svara inte.
Ställ dig nu istället frågan: vilka omständigheter får dig att tro att den frågan är legitim?

- Representationen av krig -
Judith Butlers bok handlar om krig och representation, om hur krig (framför allt krig som har förts av USA) implicit legitimeras genom kommunikationsplattformar kontextuellt och historiskt färgade ramar, normer och maktstrukturer. Hon skriver om hur journalistiska krigsberättelser i form av ord, bild och ljud, blir en del av kriget, om hur kameror och inspelningsmikrofoner “both frame and form the human and non-human target” (s.64) och refererar till Susan Sontags böcker.

Butler använder sig av begreppet “embedded reporting”, för att beskriva hur media på ett problematiskt vis rapporterar om krig från ett visst, på förhand bestämt, perspektiv. Med det sagt menar inte Butler att mediala representationer av krig inte är viktigt, utan tvärtom skriver hon om att det i vissa fall, vissa typer av berättelser är centrala för att skapa opinion mot krigföring, såsom den ocensurerade poesi från Guantánamo-fångar eller tortyrbilder från Abu Graib. Apropå denna dubbelhet skriver hon: "The photos have functioned in several ways: as an incitement to brutality within the prison itself, as a threat of shame for the prisoners, as a chronicle of a war crime, as a testimony to the radical unacceptability of torture, and as archival and documentary work made available on the internet or displayed in museums in the US, including galleries and public spaces in a host of venues." (p.92)

De mediala ramar styr alltså vår epistemologiska förståelse av krigföring, dvs den kunskap vi får om krig. Men ramarna styr också den ontologiska förståelsen och ger ontologiska effekter, dvs de formar synen av vad ett “riktigt” liv är och vilket liv (och vilken död) som leder till politiska förändringar.

- Om prekära/osäkra liv -
Butler använder sig av begreppen “precarious lives, “livable lives” och “socially dead” för att beskriva processen av hur människor i länder drabbade av krig avhumaniseras, delvis till följd av deras extremt prekära levnadssituation. (Butler understryker att alla människor lever prekära liv, i och med att alla är beroende av sociala nätverk för sin överlevnad, men att vissa människor lever mer prekära liv än andra, på grund av till exempel krig eller fattigdom.) Därför föreställs motparten i kriget som en plats där människor inte “lever” sina liv; liven är prekära/osäkra, fördrivna, ovärdiga, och därför sörjs dessa liv inte på samma sätt som “levande liv” i länder väst/globala norr: “Those we kill are not quite human, and not quite alive, which means that we do not feel the same horror and outrage over the loss of their lives as we do over the loss of those lives that bear national or religious similarity to our own.” (s.42). Hon exemplifierar genom kriget mellan Israel och Palestina: "Even if there are significantly fewer Israelis who have died from this conflict than Palestinians, it remains true not only for Israelis but for most every public media, that the graphics of Israeli life, death, and detention are more vibrant; it conforms to the norm of human life already established, is then more of a life, is life, whereas Palestinian life is either no life, a shadow-life, or a threat to life as we know it." (introduktion, s.333).

- Misogyni och homofobi som en del av krigföring -
I kombination med att människor i “andra länder vi krigar med” framställs som omänskliga, framställs de även som misogyna och homofoba (särskilt i muslimska länder). Butler har dedikerat ett kapitel åt detta där hon beskriver hur sexuella och feministiska progressiva värden används som ett legitimerande skäl för krigföring. Detta är ett enormt hyckleri, vilket inte minst visas genom de misogyna och homofoba tortyrmetoder som används av amerikansk militär: "The scene of torture that includes coerced homosexual acts, and seeks to decimate personhood through that coercion, presumes that for both torturer and tortured, homosexuality represents the destruction of one’s being.” (s. 90); “If we want to speak about “specific cultures,” then it would make sense to begin with the specific culture of the US army, its emphatic masculinism and homophobia, and ask why it must, for its own purposes, cast the predominantly Islamic population against which it wages war as a site of primitive taboo and shame.” (s.128); “What kind of encounter is this, then, at the scene of torture, in which a violent homophobia and misogyny exploit the presumptive homophobia and misogyny of its victims?" (s.131).

- Kritiska frågor vägen framåt -
Butler menar på att motståndet mot krigföring måste ske genom ett ifrågasättande av de premisser som den offentliga diskursen om krig bygger på: "[...]the opposition to war has to take place, in part, through remaking the conditions of its possibility and probability. Similarly, if war is to be opposed, we have to understand how popular assent to war is cultivated and maintained." (s.57).
Vi måste kritiskt granska krigsramarna, upprepa-med-skillnad, skriva Andra berättelser som motstånd, och försöka tala om krig utan ramar. Så tillbaka till frågan: vilka omständigheter får oss att tro att det är legitimt att leta efter argument för att legitimera dödandet av Andra människor?

- Fler frågor från Butler att fortsätta grubbla på: -
“As we watch video or see an image, what kind of solicitation is at work? Are we being invited to take aim? Are we conscripted into the trajectory of the bullet or missile?” (s. 173)
“How do we begin to think about ways to assume responsibility for the minimization of precarity?” (s.33)
“But what are the implicit frames of recognizability in play when I “recognize” someone as ‘like’ me? What implicit political order produces and regulates “likeness” in such instances?” (s.36)
“In these contexts, have feminism and the struggle for sexual freedom become, horrifyingly, a ’sign’ of the civilizational mission in progress? Can we even begin to understand the torture if we cannot account for the homophobia in the military as it acts on populations who are formed religiously through a taboo on homosexuality?” (s.131)

[Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once I waded through the slightly convoluted language, there was so much to take away from this book. Grievability and the differential recognition of subjects as lives worth protecting are heavily pertinent in our current geopolitical context, and despite being written 15 years ago, the arguments here are perhaps even more relevant today than during the time of writing. Frames of War forces the reader to question why certain populations are more easily "lose-able" than others, why our responsibility to grieve others only applies when those "others" are like us, why victims of violence and war in seemingly faraway lands do not count as "lives," as living, as losses to us. This book burrows deep to grasp at the humanity that Butler reminds us is within each of us, most crucially in readers from the West, and wrenches it to the surface - tangible and inescapable.

[Ross McAdams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book full of fascinating ideas; Butler’s prowess and creativity are both on display throughout. Although the book, at times, can be dense and hard to parse, it is a major improvement from previous work of theirs I’ve read (Gender Trouble), in terms accessibility to a less academic audience. Slight note, I feel this could have benefited from a more thorough edit/proof read, as I feel there were occasional mistakes left in; like sentences that sounded janky and couldn’t really be made sense of when read, or potentially missing punctuation like full stops, however this is minor and may be unique to the edition I read (I also could just be wrong). Overall an interesting and much needed addition to the development of a new politics for the left.

[Jacob biscuits · Rating 4 out of 5]

This philosophy seems both new and not particularly new, to me. I suppose its claims are quite particular - but the whole concept seems lifted almost directly from phenomenology - although it’s been focused, directed, and given a political motive here. I liked it. These insights seem necessary. Particularly so these days, I feel, but maybe just generally they’re necessary. I do think Butler has quite an annoying tendency to be quite tediously loquacious. I don’t mind

[hanita · Rating 4 out of 5]

resonant work on grievability, precarity, how the body is unbound, manufacturing consent for state sanctioned deaths, and so much more. i really enjoy judith butler’s writings on bodies and vulnerability (also loved pandemic phenomenology) so maybe biased lol

[Darcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

[Greg Florez · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Sexual Politics, Torture, and Secular Time” is an incredible essay, my favourite from the collection really.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s good with excellent prose but the analysis doesn’t actually reach that deep in my opinion. Ch4 was the real stuff, the rest isn’t that great. Butler is obviously correct here but the general pitch of this book (eg its intro) communicates the ideas about the same as the full thing

[Juliette · Rating 5 out of 5]

read for the thesis but I’ll log here hahaha such an interesting perspective

[Yvonne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Frames of War is a very important book that is definetely worth engaging with. It gives valuable insight into politics and its connection to aesthetics, with "Torture and Ethics of Photography: Thinking with Sontag" as the strongest chapter in my opinion. Sometimes the connection between the individual chapters is a little bit too forced (as some of the chapters had been published as articles before). However, I advise everyone interested in politics, ethics or the representation strategies of the media in general, to read this book.

[John Larkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Building on the idea of the apprehended life in Precarious Life, and the notion of oneself defined in relational terms from Giving an Account of Oneself, Frames of War posits both the frames through which power structures, culture and politics support precarity as well as further elaborating on the concept of the differential allocation of grievability.

After Gender Trouble, I like Precarious Life, Giving an Account of Oneself and Frames of War as a collective read, and wouldn't mind seeing them bound in a single collection.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Typical dense prose ... but if she loosens it up, peppers them with relevant anecdotes, then the book will be 1000pages long ...
or she could leave thoughts undeveloped, as Barthes did, giving her writing an aphoristic quality, then that's not Butler any more.
What a dilemma!
Anyway, She is still my hero. the arch-deity in my pantheon XD

[Sevim Tezel Aydın · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kitapta ABD güdümlü savaşlarda, savaş algısının nasıl yönetildiği üzerine beş makale var. Yer yer tekrarlar olsa da, Judith Butler'in şiddet ve kültür üzerine yazdıkları düşündürücü. En çok "Cinsiyet Siyaseti, İşkence ve Seküler Zaman" makalesini sevdim, bana "modernlik" nediri sorgulattı… Kendime not "kitabı orijinal dilinde okumak daha iyi bir seçim olabilirdi"...

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the ideas in this book are in Precarious Life, just not developed so well. These two books should have been one, more carefully developed, collection of essays.

[Justiina Dahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is rocking my hybrid PhD theoretical framework.