“Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act... a "doing" rather than a "being". There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.” IfsDoeSaidCharacterTurnsSexResultsBehindsIdentityExpressionConsequenceGenderDistinctionConstructsBeing ThereGender IdentitySex And Gender Author:Judith Butler
“We're not in control [of circumstances], but that does not mean we don't exercise a certain kind of conditioned agency. That's what it means to live in a community. That's what it means to live in society.” KindMeanDoeCertainCommunityCircumstancesExerciseAgency Author:Judith Butler
“I don't think there's any way that war can have a place in peace. I think that peace is the active and difficult resistance to the temptation of war; it is the prerogative and the obligation of the injured. Peace is something that has to be vigilantly maintained; it is a vigilance, and it involves temptation, and it does not mean we as human beings are not aggressive. This is a mistaken way of understanding non-violence.” ThinkingWayHumansMeanDoeWarDifficultUnderstandingHuman BeingsViolenceActiveObligationResistanceTemptationAggressiveMistakenInjuredNon ViolenceVigilancePrerogative Author:Judith Butler
“It's not my concern. It's your concern. I just keep working. I keep posing certain questions and I think there are times when people think "What happened to the Judith Butler I used to know?" or "She's not doing gender trouble. Does that mean she refuses it or she's disavowed it?" And I would say no. I have not refused or disavowed anything.” PeopleThinkingKnowsMeanDoeUsedCertainHappenedTroubleConcernRefuseGenderButlersPosing Author:Judith Butler
“If we are trying to account for mobilization, we have to ask, under what conditions do outraged forms of knowing lead to social mobilizations and movements? So awareness alone does not suffice, and neither does outrage.” IfsTryingDoeFormAsksSocialKnowingConditionsAwarenessMovementAccountsOutrageOutragedMobilization Author:Judith Butler
“I wonder whether I might have meant "terrify us" but perhaps as well there was a less than conscious effort to show that the suppression of debate about Palestine and about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement - within many academic circles - does seek to establish those who would address such issues in speech as already collaborating with "terrorist" regimes, although now only Hamas is officially terrorist according to the US government and its allies.” WellsDoeShowsGovernmentMightEffortWonderIssuesMovementSpeechConsciousDebateCirclesTerroristAddressesAlliesRegimesAcademicPalestineSanctionsSuppressionHamasBoycottCollaborating Author:Judith Butler
“It is true that one was not allowed at the time to really ask, what would lead people to do this, from what sense of political outrage or injury? And in that way, the possibility of sympathetic identification was foreclosed. That does not mean that some people took quiet pleasure in certain icons of US capitalism coming down, even though they would oppose such action on moral and political grounds.” PeopleWayMeanDoeActionPoliticalCertainAsksPleasureMoralPossibilityQuietCapitalismInjuryIconsSympatheticOutrageIdentification Author:Judith Butler
“What does it mean then to live with one another? It can be unhappy, it can be wretched, it can be ambivalent, it can even be full of antagonism, but all of that can play out in the political sphere without recourse to expulsion or genocide. And that is our obligation, to stay in the sphere with whatever murderous rage we have, without acting on it.” MeanDoePlayPoliticalActingRageUnhappyObligationGenocideSpheresWretchedAntagonismRecourseAmbivalentExpulsion Author:Judith Butler
“I know that some subjective experiences of sex are very firm and fundamental, even unchangeable. They can be so firm and unchanging that we call them "innate". But given that we report on such a sense of self within a social world, a world in which we are trying to use language to express what we feel, it is unclear what language does that most effectively. I understand that "innate" is a word that conveys the sense of something hired-wired and constitutive. I suppose I would be inclined to wonder whether other vocabularies might do the job equally well.” KnowsWorldFeelsTryingWellsDoeSelfUseMightWould BeJobsLanguageGivenSocialSexWonderFundamentalsFirmReportsVocabularySubjectiveInnateSense Of SelfUnchangingUnchangeableUnclear Author:Judith Butler
“One of the things that neoliberalism does is, it relies on flexible workforces who are hired and fired at will and who are basically disposable labor. You can use them. You can get rid of them. They have no rights; they have no security. Their lives and well-being are made and unmade at the whim of those who are exercising the calculus. So, instead of looking at the institution and objecting to that kind of organization, people just go, "I'm a failure;"; "I'm not working hard enough"; or, "I'm not as smart as the next person."” PeopleWellsKindPersonsDoeMadeHardEnoughUseNextRightsSecurityExerciseSmartLaborOrganizationInstitutionsWell BeingRelyFlexibleWhimWorkforceCalculusDisposableNeoliberalism Author:Judith Butler
“Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact.” IfsDoeSeemsFacesDesireGriefCasesMissingUndoneMissing Something Book:Undoing Gender Source: Undoing Gender
“Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act… a doing rather than a being.” DoeGenderGender Identity Author:Judith Butler
