“When we say gender is performed, we usually mean that weve taken on a role or were acting in some way and that our acting or our role playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world.” WorldWayMeanActingRolesTakenGenderCrucialRole Playing Author:Judith Butler
“To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.” MenWayMeanLittlesDifferentSpeakWalksEffectsProduceSeriesGenderImpressionBeing A Woman 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
“"Gender trouble" is old. I mean, you know, in New York, it is old. I mean it's sweet. I mean people are really kind about it but it's like a former love affair you had and you're done.” PeopleKnowsKindMeanDoneTroubleNew YorkSweetAffairGenderFormerLove AffairMean PeopleFormer Love 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
“I have simply taken some of the same questions and reposed them in new ways. But, you see, I must live. Right? I mean I can't stay the same for everyone to be consumed as the author of "Gender trouble". I have to continue to live and that means I have to "reposer les questions".” WayMeanI CanTakenTroubleGenderNew WaysConsumed Author:Judith Butler
“We set the actors on the scene through the banal discourse of "conflict" in ways that fully deflect from the history and struggle of colonial resistance, refusing as well by that means to link the resistance to other forms of colonial resistance, their rationale, and their tactics.” WayWellsMeanFormActorsStruggleSceneConflictResistanceLinksDiscourseTacticsRationale Author:Judith Butler
“I do not mean to say that such institutions act unilaterally on psychic life, or that they determine certain psychic outcomes. Rather, they exploit forms of fear and insecurity that are there for any population - no political organisation of life could ever fully do away with fear and insecurity; but some work to intensify, accelerate, and make more acute forms of fear, and to provide ideological focus for such intensified fears, at which point critical thinking has a fierce rival. The critical analysis that shows precisely how those forms of fear are promulgated, and for what purpose.” ThinkingMeanShowsFormPoliticalPurposeCertainFocusInstitutionsPopulationDetermineCriticalAnalysisOutcomesInsecurityFiercePsychicsRivalsExploitsCritical ThinkingIdeologicalOrganisationAccelerateCritical Analysis Author:Judith Butler
“I certainly don't mean to suggest that all investigative journalism prior to 9/11 in the US was praiseworthy. But there were more examples to which one could point, and there were at last some activist photographers who understood that getting information into the public sphere in spite of military censorship was a right and obligation within democracy. That strain in war journalism did nearly vanish during that time.” MeanWarLastsDemocracyMilitaryInformationExampleUnderstoodPhotographerObligationJournalismSpiteActivistSpheresCensorshipStrainPraiseworthyInvestigative Journalism 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
“I was born a Zionist, because I didn't have a choice about that. It was the ether of my family life, but I certainly broke with it as I asked more questions about it. And that doesn't mean I want to see the destruction of a people, it means I want to see a state structure that might embody more substantially the basic principles of democracy.” PeopleWantMeanStatesMightChoicesBornPrinciplesDemocracyMy FamilyDestructionStructureBrokeFamily LifeZionistBasic Principles Author:Judith Butler
“Although the history of dispossession and exile for Jews is very different from the history of dispossession and exile for Palestinians, they both have recent and searing experiences which might allow them to come to a common understanding on the rights of refugees, or what it might mean to live together with resonant histories of that kind.” KindMeanDifferentMightTogetherUnderstandingCommonRightsJewPalestinianRefugeeExile Author:Judith Butler
“All of those who inhabit the world have a right to be here by virtue of their being here at all. To be here means you have a right to be here.” WorldMeanVirtue 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
“What would it mean if we lived in a world in which no one held out for the possibility of substantial political equality, or for a full cessation of colonial practices - if no one held out for those things because they were impossible?” IfsWorldMeanPoliticalPracticeImpossiblePossibilityPolitical Equality Author:Judith Butler
“The problem with Antigone is that she stood up to the despot Creon, but in such a way that she ended up dying. So she bought her defiance with her death. The real question I ended up asking was, "What would it mean for Antigone to have stood up to Creon and lived?" And the only way she could have lived is if she had had a serious social movement with her. If she arrived with a social movement to take down the despot, maybe it would have taken 18 days only, like in Egypt. It's really important to be able to re-situate one's rage and destitution in the context of a social movement.” IfsWayMeanImportantRealProblemAbleSocialTakenDyingMovementSeriousAskingRageEgyptDefianceStood UpSocial MovementsDespotsReal QuestionsAntigone Author:Judith Butler
“I did not mean to argue that gender is fluid and changeable (mine certainly is not). I only meant to say that we should all have greater freedoms to define and pursue our lives without pathologization, de-realization, harassment, threats of violence, violence, and criminalization. I join in the struggle to realize such a world.” WorldMeanRealizingStruggleViolenceThreatGenderArguingHarassment Author:Judith Butler
