Precarious Life Quotes

“Precisely because a living being may die, it is necessary to care for that being so that it may live. Only under conditions in which the loss would matter does the value of the life appear. Thus, grievability is a presupposition for the life that matters.”
― Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?

“The depths of life are not revealed through faith in eternity. Rather, our spiritual commitments proceed from caring for what will be irrevocably lost and remaining faithful to what gives no final guarantee. Secular faith will always be precarious, but in its fragility it opens the possibility of our spiritual freedom. (36)”
― Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom

“I argue that even as the war is framed in certain ways to control and heighten affect in relation to the differential grievability of lives, so war has come to frame ways of thinking multiculturalism and debates on sexual freedom, issues largely considered separate from "foreign affairs.”
― Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?