The question of Judith Butler's ‘politics’ and their normative justification has been raised by critics and supporters alike for some time. The number of recent texts dedicated to this topic suggests that it remains an unresolved and still pressing question. I argue that in order to identify and evaluate the political implications of Butler's work, we must first recognize the relationship and distinction between four vectors of her thinking: her diagnosis of the human condition, her expression of specific normative aspirations, (...) her defense of a distinct ethical comportment and finally her theory of political engagement. I conclude that Butler implicitly counsels the cultivation of certain ethical dispositions, including generosity, humility, patience and restraint, as part of a practice of preparing to engage in a kind of politics that breaks radically with the mastery- and sovereignty-seeking variety all too familiar to us in contemporary times. (shrink)

Anarchists and homosexuals have periodically occupied similar positions in relation to US laws and policies: both have functioned as the needed outside against which the proper inside of political order can be established and maintained. Both have blurred the relation of words to deeds, speaking words that are forbidden because the words themselves are seen as dangerous deeds. Examining the deportation case of anarchist John Turner in 1903 and the 1993 Pentagon ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military, and (...) utilizing the intellectual tools provided by Judith Butler in her analysis of speech acts, this article investigates the process of criminalizing an identity category as well as the political context from which that criminalization can be challenged. My goals are to make use of Butler’s arguments about insurrectionary speech to understand anarchism’s historical role in the American political imaginary, and to supplement Butler’s analysis with greater attention to the histories of anarchist struggle. (shrink)

Judith Butler’s meditations on precarity have received considerable attention in recent years. This article proposes that an undertheorized strain of her argument offers productive resources for theorizing violence. The question extends beyond material acts, to ask how certain groups are rendered eligible for heightened, regularized violence – and, by extension, how liberal subjects are rendered complicit with policies at odds with their universalist commitments. At stake is a politics of sensibility that complicates and enriches juridico-institutionalist models. That said, when Butler’s (...) account is brought to bear on a wider range of cases, it encounters a set of questions it is not prepared to answer on its own terms. Accordingly, I propose some directions the argument would need to be expanded to do justice to its own normative intuitions. (shrink)

The question of Judith Butler's ‘politics’ and their normative justification has been raised by critics and supporters alike for some time. The number of recent texts dedicated to this topic suggests that it remains an unresolved and still pressing question. I argue that in order to identify and evaluate the political implications of Butler's work, we must first recognize the relationship and distinction between four vectors of her thinking: her diagnosis of the human condition, her expression of specific normative aspirations, (...) her defense of a distinct ethical comportment and finally her theory of political engagement. I conclude that Butler implicitly counsels the cultivation of certain ethical dispositions, including generosity, humility, patience and restraint, as part of a practice of preparing to engage in a kind of politics that breaks radically with the mastery- and sovereignty-seeking variety all too familiar to us in contemporary times. (shrink)