Judith Butler Wants Us to Reshape Our Rage

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“We have to get beyond the idea of calculating the value of lives, in order to arrive at a different, more radical idea of social equality.” An interview with the academic Judith Butler, from 2020.

,” 2012). Butler is the Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has taught since 1993. She lives in the Bay Area with her partner, the political theorist Wendy Brown..” It is a slim volume that makes an outsized argument: that our times, or perhaps all times, call for imagining an entirely new way for humans to live together in the world—a world of what Butler calls “radical equality.

You begin with a critique of individualism “as the basis of ethics and politics alike.” Why is that the starting point? Acknowledging dependency as a condition of who any of us happens to be is difficult enough. But the larger task is to affirm social and ecological interdependence, which is regularly misrecognized as well.

In “The Force of Nonviolence,” you repeatedly stress the importance of counter-realism, even an “ethical obligation” to be unrealistic. Can you explain that? I am talking about how the term “reality” functions in social-political discourse. Sometimes “reality” is used to debunk as childish or unknowledgeable points of view that actually are holding out a more radical possibility of equality or freedom or democracy or justice, which means stepping out of a settled understanding. We see how socialist ideals, for instance, are dismissed as “fanciful” in the current election.

Most of the time, when we ask moral questions—like “What would you do?” or “How would you conduct yourself, and how would you justify your actions?” if such-and-such were the case—it’s framed as a hypothetical in which one person is offering a justification to another person, with the aim of taking individual responsibility for a potential action. That way of thinking rests on the notion that individual deliberation is at the core of moral action.

Once social equality becomes the framework, I’m not sure we are deliberating as individuals trying to come up with a fully rational position, consistent and complete and comprehensive for all circumstances.

I think many positions assume that nonviolence involves inhabiting the peaceful region of the soul, where you are supposed to rid yourself of violent feelings or wishes or fantasy. But what interests me is cultivating aggression into forms of conduct that can be effective without being destructive.The physical blow cannot be the only model for thinking about what violence is.

I think, as many people do, that Trump has licensed the overt violence of white supremacy and also unleashed police violence by suspending any sense of constraint. Many people thrill to see embodied in their government leader a will to destruction that is uninhibited, invoking a kind of moral sadism as its perverse justification. It’s going to be up to us to see if people can thrill to something else.

 

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Yes, but does her ‘value of lives’ include the thousands & hundreds of thousands of MEN killed/injured in senseless wars, in dangerous occupations, law enforcement, from physical/emotional abuse in their homes schools & workplaces? Valuing these mens lives would indeed be radical

🌿👏🏻🌿👍🏼👍🏼🌿👏🏻🌿

DeniseDresserG Sigo lúcido bellybarrs

I couldn't care less what Judith Butler wants!

I don’t believe in equality. There is no equality.

→ Judith Butler = 💩

Is that the best you can do - the 'academic' Judith Butler? Not much of a tease.

I love Judith Butler, she is one of the greatest minds of our time and this is a terrific article. Masha Geesen is always a pleasure to read and if you have never read Butler or only know her through propaganda then this article gives a great sense of who she is.

ps9714 Serious eugenics vibe

A Mr. Richard Feder from Ft. Lee, New Jersey, writes, 'What is that thing on your nose?'

Hard pass, Butler is the worst.

13

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