“You could protect a religious minority against gays and lesbians. Or you could protect gays and lesbians against a religious minority. And then, it seems to me something political is happening. Because we're not really looking at the kind of speech that is injurious.” KindSeemsPoliticalReligiousGayProtectSpeechHappeningsMinorities Author:Judith Butler
“We are more often than not asked, for instance, to regard Israel and Palestine as in a conflict of this kind, a framing that sets each of them on equal footing, and implicitly analogies the political situation to a fist fight, a soccer match, or a domestic quarrel. So if, then, the only two intelligible political positions are "pro-Palestinian" or "pro-Israeli," the presumption is that one's position is determined by a sentiment that wants one side to win over the other.” IfsWantKindTwoPoliticalFightingWinningSidesSituationPositionConflictEqualRegardIsraelDeterminedInstanceSoccerSentimentsPalestinianPalestineFistsQuarrelsIsraeliAnalogiesPresumptionFramingIf Then Author:Judith Butler
“There are doubtless all kinds of ways of explaining why people want security, but I do not think we can start with the psychological explanations. Even psychological states like fear or desire for safety are conditioned by social and political forms of intimidation and scare-mongering that intensify those emotions, and even work to persuade people that nothing less than their survival is at stake.” PeopleThinkingWayWantKindStatesFormPoliticalDesireSocialEmotionSecuritySurvivalSafetyPsychologicalAll KindsExplanationScareStakesExplainingIntimidation 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 am sorry to be so blunt, but I do not see much ambiguity here. [Barack] Obama was late to affirm the Egyptian revolution as a democratic movement, and even then he was eager to have installed those military leaders who were known for their practices of torture. And now he is quick to make allies with the Muslim Brotherhood for tactical reasons as well (though earlier that same administration stoked Islamophobic fear about that very political party).” WellsReasonPoliticalPartyKnownLeaderPracticeMilitaryMovementRevolutionLateDemocraticSorryAdministrationBarackTortureAlliesBrotherhoodPolitical PartiesAmbiguityBluntEgyptianI Am SorryAm SorryTacticalMilitary LeaderMuslim BrotherhoodEgyptian Revolution 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
“We need a legal and political understanding of the right of the refugee, whereby no solution for one group produces a new class of refugees - you can't solve a refugee problem by producing a new, potentially greater refugee problem.” NeedsProblemPoliticalUnderstandingClassGreaterGroupsProduceSolutionsSolveRefugeeNew Class 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
“Intersectionality has made an important contribution to social and political analysis, asking all of us to think about what assumptions of race and class we make when we speak about "women" or what assumptions of gender and race we make when we speak about "class." It allows us to unpack those categories and see the various kinds of social formations and power relations that constitute those categories.” ThinkingKindMadeImportantPoliticalSpeakSocialRaceClassRelationAskingVariousGenderAnalysisAssumptionContributionCategoriesFormationIntersectionalityImportant Contributions Author:Judith Butler
“What we need is a political and joyous alternative to the behaviorist discourse, the Christian discourse on evil or sin, and the convergence of the two in forms of gender policing that [is] tyrannical and destructive.” NeedsTwoChristianFormPoliticalEvilSinGenderAlternativesDestructiveDiscourseJoyousConvergence Author:Judith Butler
“We have to find a way of understanding how one category of sex can be "assigned" from both and another sense of sex can lead us to resist and reject that sex assignment. How do we understand that second sense of sex? It is not the same as the first - it is not an assignment that others give us. But maybe it is an assignment we give ourselves? If so, do we not need a world of others, linguistic practices, social institutions, and political imaginaries in order to move forward to claim precisely those categories we require, and to reject those that work against us?” IfsWorldWayNeedsGivingFirstsMovingPoliticalOrderSocialSexUnderstandingPracticeClaimsInstitutionsMoving ForwardRejectsCategoriesAssignmentsSocial Institutions Author:Judith Butler
“I think there is a demand. The demand is for a radical economic and political restructuring of the world. And most people would say that's impossible. And it may or may not be achieved, but I think that's less important than articulating what a just and fair world can be.” PeopleThinkingWorldMayImportantPoliticalImpossibleEconomicDemandFairsRadicalRestructuringArticulating Author:Judith Butler
