Judith Butler

What is the contemporary legacy of Gramsci's notion of Hegemony? How can universality be reformulated now that its spurious versions have been so thoroughly criticized? In this ground-breaking project, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek engage in a dialogue on central questions of contemporary philosophy and politics. Their essays, organized as separate contributions that respond to one another, range over the Hegelian legacy in contemporary critical theory, the theoretical dilemmas of multiculturalism, the universalism-versus-particularism debate, the strategies of the Left in a globalized economy, and the relative merits of post-structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis for a critical social theory. While the rigor and intelligence with which these writers approach their work is formidable, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality benefits additionally from their clear sense of energy and enjoyment in a revealing and often unpredictable exchange.

I Krigets ramar undersöker Judith Butler hur olika sätt att se på mänskligt liv har varit avgörande för att legitimera och rationalisera krigföring och statligt våld. Genom att framställa vissa mänskliga liv som mindre än mänskliga, som omöjliga att sörja som osörjbara , blir det möjligt att utsätta hela befolkningar för ett våld som annars hade upplevts som oacceptabelt. I analyser av bland annat de läckta bilderna av torterade fångar i Abu Ghraib-fängelset in Irak samt kopplingen mellan tortyr och sexualpolitik, visar Butler hur distinktionen mellan olika kategorier av människoliv har blivit central för den samtida krigföringen. För att kunna mobilisera ett effektivt motstånd mot krig gäller det att uppmärksamma de mekanismer som får oss att reagera med upprördhet och sorg inför förlusten av somliga liv men med likgiltighet inför förlusten av andra. Judith Butler är professor vid Institutionen för retorik och komparativ litteratur vid University of California. Bland hennes tidigare utgivna böcker återfinns Genus ogjort, Genustrubbel och Precarious Life.

Bildband von Xanten und seinen Ortsteilen, der zum 775 jährigen Jubiläum der Stadt herausgegeben wurde. Der Bildband zeigt neben Bekanntem, wie dem Viktordom, der mittelalterlichen Stadt, dem Freizeitzentrum Xanten und dem Archäologischen Park auch noch zahlreiche andere, weniger vertraute Sehenswürdigkeiten.

Im November 2002 hat Judith Butler mit überwältigendem Erfolg die Adorno-Vorlesungen an der Universität Frankfurt gehalten, die nun in einer deutlich erweiterten Fassung als Taschenbuch erscheinen. In ihrer Kritik der ethischen Gewalt geht sie der Frage nach, wie man angesichts einer Theorie des Subjekts, dessen Entstehungsbedingungen sich nie restlos klären lassen, dennoch die Möglichkeit von Verantwortung und Rechenschaft bewahren kann. In Auseinandersetzung mit Adorno, Cavarrero, Foucault, L?vinas und der Psychoanalyse zeigt Butler, daß jede dieser Theorien etwas ethisch Bedeutsames enthält, das sich aus den Grenzen ergibt, die jedem Versuch gezogen sind, Rechenschaft von sich selbst abzulegen: Noch in demjenigen, das wir "ethisches Scheitern" nennen, steckt eine ethische Wertigkeit und Bedeutsamkeit, und die Frage der Ethik erscheint genau an den Grenzen unserer Systeme der Verständlichkeit.

När Gender Trouble kom ut 1990 slog den ner som en bomb i feministkretsar. Sedan dess har Judith Butler kommit att bli den mest uppmärksammade genusteoretikern i USA. Boken har tvingat genusforskare att reflektera över sin begreppsanvändning och sina teoriers politiska implikationer på ett nytt sätt. Kön som normalt sett framstår som det mest uppenbara och självklara visar sig i Butlers analys vara ett tilltrasslat problemkomplex och en ofrånkomlig källa till konflikter. Hennes intervention syftar till att rubba de föregivet stabila och naturgivna könskategorierna. Butler kritiserar feminismen för att projicera ett enhetligt, totaliserande och universellt subjekt som gör anspråk på att representera hela kvinnokönet. Denna representationslogik tar inte hänsyn till faktiska skillnader mellan arbetarklasskvinnor och medelklasskvinnor, mellan svarta och vita kvinnor, mellan kvinnor i olika delar av världen, mellan heterosexuella kvinnor och bisexuella eller lesbiska kvinnor. Även om feminismen som politisk rörelse behöver kategorin »kvinna», manar Butler till uppmärksamhet inför de exkluderingsmekanismer som alltid gör sig gällande. Begreppet »kvinna» är något som ständigt skapas och ombildas. Det är med nödvändighet instabilt och provisoriskt och går inte att slutgiltigt avgränsa med avseende på dess potentiella betydelser. Judith Butler, född 1956, är professor i retorik och jämförande litteraturvetenskap vid University of California i Berkeley. Boken är försedd med en inledning av Ellen Mortensen, professor i litteraturvetenskap i Bergen och föreståndare för Senter for kvinne- og kjønnsforskning vid samma universitet.

One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent.

What does it mean to lead a moral life? In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practice—one responsive to the need for critical autonomy and grounded in a new sense of the human subject. Butler takes as her starting point one’s ability to answer the questions “What have I done?” and “What ought I to do?” She shows that these question can be answered only by asking a prior question, “Who is this ‘I’ who is under an obligation to give an account of itself and to act in certain ways?” Because I find that I cannot give an account of myself without accounting for the social conditions under which I emerge, ethical reflection requires a turn to social theory. In three powerfully crafted and lucidly written chapters, Butler demonstrates how difficult it is to give an account of oneself, and how this lack of self-transparency and narratibility is crucial to an ethical understanding of the human. In brilliant dialogue with Adorno, Levinas, Foucault, and other thinkers, she eloquently argues the limits, possibilities, and dangers of contemporary ethical thought. Butler offers a critique of the moral self, arguing that the transparent, rational, and continuous ethical subject is an impossible construct that seeks to deny the specificity of what it is to be human. We can know ourselves only incompletely, and only in relation to a broader social world that has always preceded us and already shaped us in ways we cannot grasp. If inevitably we are partially opaque to ourselves, how can giving an account of ourselves define the ethical act? And doesn’t an ethical system that holds us impossibly accountable for full self-knowledge and self-consistency inflict a kind of psychic violence, leading to a culture of self-beratement and cruelty? How does the turn to social theory offer us a chance to understand the specifically social character of our own unknowingness about ourselves? In this invaluable book, by recasting ethics as a project in which being ethical means becoming critical of norms under which we are asked to act, but which we can never fully choose, Butler illuminates what it means for us as “fallible creatures” to create and share an ethics of vulnerability, humility, and ethical responsiveness.

What does it mean to lead a moral life? In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practice—one responsive to the need for critical autonomy and grounded in a new sense of the human subject. Butler takes as her starting point one’s ability to answer the questions “What have I done?” and “What ought I to do?” She shows that these question can be answered only by asking a prior question, “Who is this ‘I’ who is under an obligation to give an account of itself and to act in certain ways?” Because I find that I cannot give an account of myself without accounting for the social conditions under which I emerge, ethical reflection requires a turn to social theory. In three powerfully crafted and lucidly written chapters, Butler demonstrates how difficult it is to give an account of oneself, and how this lack of self-transparency and narratibility is crucial to an ethical understanding of the human. In brilliant dialogue with Adorno, Levinas, Foucault, and other thinkers, she eloquently argues the limits, possibilities, and dangers of contemporary ethical thought. Butler offers a critique of the moral self, arguing that the transparent, rational, and continuous ethical subject is an impossible construct that seeks to deny the specificity of what it is to be human. We can know ourselves only incompletely, and only in relation to a broader social world that has always preceded us and already shaped us in ways we cannot grasp. If inevitably we are partially opaque to ourselves, how can giving an account of ourselves define the ethical act? And doesn’t an ethical system that holds us impossibly accountable for full self-knowledge and self-consistency inflict a kind of psychic violence, leading to a culture of self-beratement and cruelty? How does the turn to social theory offer us a chance to understand the specifically social character of our own unknowingness about ourselves? In this invaluable book, by recasting ethics as a project in which being ethical means becoming critical of norms under which we are asked to act, but which we can never fully choose, Butler illuminates what it means for us as “fallible creatures” to create and share an ethics of vulnerability, humility, and ethical responsiveness.

Judith Butler är en av vår tids mest uppmärksammade politiska filosofer. Hennes banbrytande texter om queerteori och genusvetenskap har väckt debatt både i vetenskapssamhället och i den större offentligheten. För feministisk teori och praktik har det närmast inneburit ett paradigmskifte. Genom att göra upp med den heterocentriska feminismen och kategorin "kvinna" tvingade Butler feminister till nytänkande. Queerperspektivet har öppnat ett helt nytt forskningsfält och fungerat som utgångspunkt för en rad studier av hur av identitet och normalitet produceras på olika områden. Butler ger oss verktyg för att förhålla oss till oss själva, heteronormen och vår egen kultur. Hennes tänkande har fungerat som en forskningsgenererande inspirationsexplosion inom såväl filosofi och litteraturvetenskap som historia, sociologi och psykologi. Könet brinner samlar för första gången Butlers texter på svenska i ett rikt urval. Här finns texter om kön/genus-distinktionen, om heteronormativitet, genusmyteri och performativitet, men också om relationen mellan queerteori, marxism och psykoanalys. Tiina Rosenberg har försett texterna med utförliga introduktioner och förklarande noter. Det gör Könet brinner till en oundgänglig bok för den som vill bekanta sig med ett av det senaste decenniets viktigaste kulturkritiska författarskap. Översättning Karin Lindeqvist Judith Butler är en av vår tids mest uppmärksammade politiska filosofer. Hon är professor i litteraturvetenskap vid University of California, Berkeley. För urval, utförliga introduktioner och förklarande noter står Tiina Rosenberg, docent i teater- och genusvetenskap vid Stockholms universitet samt författare till Byxbegär och Queerfeministisk agenda.

Undoing Gender constitutes Judith Butler's recent reflections on gender and sexuality, focusing on new kinship, psychoanalysis and the incest taboo, transgender, intersex, diagnostic categories, social violence, and the tasks of social transformation. In terms that draw from feminist and queer theory, Butler considers the norms that govern--and fail to govern--gender and sexuality as they relate to the constraints on recognizable personhood. The book constitutes a reconsideration of her earlier view on gender performativity from Gender Trouble. In this work, the critique of gender norms is clearly situated within the framework of human persistence and survival. And to "do" one's gender in certain ways sometimes implies "undoing" dominant notions of personhood. She writes about the "New Gender Politics" that has emerged in recent years, a combination of movements concerned with transgender, transsexuality, intersex, and their complex relations to feminist and queer theory.

Undoing Gender constitutes Judith Butler's recent reflections on gender and sexuality, focusing on new kinship, psychoanalysis and the incest taboo, transgender, intersex, diagnostic categories, social violence, and the tasks of social transformation. In terms that draw from feminist and queer theory, Butler considers the norms that govern--and fail to govern--gender and sexuality as they relate to the constraints on recognizable personhood. The book constitutes a reconsideration of her earlier view on gender performativity from Gender Trouble. In this work, the critique of gender norms is clearly situated within the framework of human persistence and survival. And to "do" one's gender in certain ways sometimes implies "undoing" dominant notions of personhood. She writes about the "New Gender Politics" that has emerged in recent years, a combination of movements concerned with transgender, transsexuality, intersex, and their complex relations to feminist and queer theory.

Women and Social Transformation brings three women from different countries together into dialogue. Judith Butler is the most referenced author in current feminist literature, and we find the latest developments of her work in this book; L dia Puigvert has recently reached international relevance with her contribution about the other women , who have not yet had a voice in feminism; and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim complements this debate with her work about immigrant women. The authors argue the need to open feminism to the plurality of all women's voices, especially those who are in the margins. Women and Social Transformation is a debate, and speaks about transforming gender relations, taking a distance from postmodern stances, and insisting on the need for egalitarian dialogue among women. This book gives back the meaning of the feminist struggle.

What is a promise? What are the consequences of the act of promising? In this bold yet subtle meditation, the author contemplates the seductive promise of speech and the seductive promise of love. Imagining an encounter between Molière's Don Juan and J. L. Austin, between a mythical figure of the French classical theater and a twentieth-century philosopher, she explores the relation between speech and the erotic, using a literary text as the ground for a telling encounter between philosophy, linguistics, and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. In the years since the publication of this book (which the author today calls "the boldest, the most provocative, but also the most playful" she has written), speech act theory has continued to play a central and defining role in the theories of sexuality, gender, performance studies, post-colonial studies, and cultural studies. This book remains topical as readers increasingly discover how multiply relevant the speaking body is. Moving beyond the domain of formal linguistic analysis to address these questions, the author has written a daring and seductive book.

What is a promise? What are the consequences of the act of promising? In this bold yet subtle meditation, the author contemplates the seductive promise of speech and the seductive promise of love. Imagining an encounter between Molière's Don Juan and J. L. Austin, between a mythical figure of the French classical theater and a twentieth-century philosopher, she explores the relation between speech and the erotic, using a literary text as the ground for a telling encounter between philosophy, linguistics, and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. In the years since the publication of this book (which the author today calls "the boldest, the most provocative, but also the most playful" she has written), speech act theory has continued to play a central and defining role in the theories of sexuality, gender, performance studies, post-colonial studies, and cultural studies. This book remains topical as readers increasingly discover how multiply relevant the speaking body is. Moving beyond the domain of formal linguistic analysis to address these questions, the author has written a daring and seductive book.

Taking stock of a century of pervasive loss - of warfare, disease, and political strife - this eloquent book opens a new view on both the past and the future by considering 'what is lost' in terms of 'what remains'. Such a perspective, these essays suggest, engages and reanimates history. Plumbing the cultural and political implications of loss, the authors - political theorists, film and literary critics, museum curators, feminists, psychoanalysts, and AIDS activists - expose the humane and productive possibilities in the workings of witness, memory, and melancholy. Among the sites of loss the authors revisit are slavery, apartheid, genocide, war, diaspora, migration, suicide, and disease. Their subjects range from the Irish Famine and the Ottoman slaughter of Armenians to the aftermath of the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa, problems of partial immigration and assimilation, AIDS, and the re-envisioning of leftist movements. In particular, "Loss" reveals how melancholia can lend meaning and force to notions of activism, ethics, and identity.

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

In Prejudicial Appearances noted legal scholar Robert C. Post argues modern American antidiscrimination law should not be conceived as protecting the transcendental dignity of individual persons but instead as transforming social practices that define and sustain potentially oppressive categories like race or gender. Arguing that the prevailing logic of American antidiscrimination law is misleading, Post lobbies for deploying sociological understandings to reevaluate the antidiscrimination project in ways that would render the law more effective and just. Four distinguished commentators respond to Post’s provocative essay. Each adopts a distinctive perspective. K. Anthony Appiah investigates the philosophical logic of stereotyping and of equality. Questioning whether the law ought to endorse any social practices that define persons, Judith Butler explores the tension between sociological and postmodern approaches to antidiscrimination law. Thomas C. Grey examines whether Post’s proposal can be reconciled with the values of the rule of law. And Reva B. Siegel applies critical race theory to query whether antidiscrimination law’s reshaping of race and gender should best be understood in terms of practices of subordination and stratification. By illuminating the consequential rhetorical maneuvers at the heart of contemporary U. S. antidiscrimination law, Prejudical Appearances forces readers to reappraise the relationship between courts of law and social behavior. As such, it will enrich scholars interested in the relationships between law, rhetoric, postmodernism, race, and gender.

In Prejudicial Appearances noted legal scholar Robert C. Post argues modern American antidiscrimination law should not be conceived as protecting the transcendental dignity of individual persons but instead as transforming social practices that define and sustain potentially oppressive categories like race or gender. Arguing that the prevailing logic of American antidiscrimination law is misleading, Post lobbies for deploying sociological understandings to reevaluate the antidiscrimination project in ways that would render the law more effective and just. Four distinguished commentators respond to Post’s provocative essay. Each adopts a distinctive perspective. K. Anthony Appiah investigates the philosophical logic of stereotyping and of equality. Questioning whether the law ought to endorse any social practices that define persons, Judith Butler explores the tension between sociological and postmodern approaches to antidiscrimination law. Thomas C. Grey examines whether Post’s proposal can be reconciled with the values of the rule of law. And Reva B. Siegel applies critical race theory to query whether antidiscrimination law’s reshaping of race and gender should best be understood in terms of practices of subordination and stratification. By illuminating the consequential rhetorical maneuvers at the heart of contemporary U. S. antidiscrimination law, Prejudical Appearances forces readers to reappraise the relationship between courts of law and social behavior. As such, it will enrich scholars interested in the relationships between law, rhetoric, postmodernism, race, and gender.