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Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

Book by Judith Butler · 3 quotes · Administrative, Executives, Given

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Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence Quotes

“Law itself is either suspended, or regarded as an instrument that the state may use in the service of constraining and monitoring a given population; the state is not subject to the rule of law, but law can be suspended or deployed tactically and partially to suit the requirements of a state that seeks more and more to allocate sovereign power to its executive and administrative powers. The law is suspended in the name of "sovereignty" of the nation, where "sovereignty" denotes the task of any state to preserve and protect its own territoriality.”

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Book:Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
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“D'altra parte, sbaglieremmo a credere che il primo mondo sia qui e il terzo mondo là, che ci sia un secondo mondo altrove e che la subalternità sia sottesa a questa suddivisione. Queste topografie sono ormai saltate, e quello che veniva percepito come un confine, qualcosa che delimita e contiene, ora è un luogo densamente popolato, se non addirittura la definizione stessa di nazione, nella quale le identità si confondono in una direzione che pare del tutto auspicabile. Perché se io sono confusa da te, tu sei già parte di me, e io non sono in nessun luogo senza di te.”

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Book:Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
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“It is not as if an 'I' exists independently over here and then simply loses a 'you' over there, especially if the attachment to 'you' is part of what composes who 'I' am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who 'am' I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost 'you' only to discover that 'I' have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost 'in' you, that for which I have no vocabulary, is a relationality that is composed neither exclusively of myself nor you, but is to be conceived as *the tie* by which those terms are differentiated and related.”

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Book:Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
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