“The United States are such a large place. And there are some states and some cities where the questions of gender or sexuality would not be asked, or where scholars or academics are working in small little corners of the universities trying to raise these questions and being told that either that they're strange or not appropriate or being actively opposed. There are other places where there is very active scholarship going on. Certainly on gender.” TryingLittlesStatesUnitedCitiesUnited StatesStrangeRaisesUniversityCornersGenderActiveSexualityAppropriateScholarScholarship Author:Judith Butler
“In the meantime, what is lost is any sense that the Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonial rule is waged from a situation of occupation or expulsion, that there is a military order that controls the boundaries of what would be a sovereign Palestinian state, that the land on which that state is now thinkable has been radically diminished by an ongoing practice of land confiscation and appropriation.” Has BeensStatesWould BeOrderLostSituationPracticeLandMilitaryBoundariesResistanceOccupationPalestinianSovereignOngoingIsraeliAppropriationExpulsionThinkable Author:Judith Butler
“If you speak [ about violence against Israelis], you are in an unspeakable place, have become a Nazi or its moral equivalent (if there is a moral equivalent). It certainly terrifies, but perhaps also it is a linguistic permutation of state terrorism, an assault that stops one in one's tracks, and secures the continuing operation of the regime and its monopoly on politically intelligible speech.” IfsStatesSpeakMoralViolenceSpeechTrackTerrorismOperationsRegimesContinuingNaziAssaultMonopolyUnspeakable Author:Judith Butler
“Maybe we need to start with the rethinking of what is "west" and what is "non-west." It seems to me that there are any number of populations who already cross that divide, and we could probably point to several existing states that belong exclusively neither to one category nor to the other. Do we use these terms to designate geographical realities, geopolitical ones, or perhaps sites of power, exploitation, orientalism that move through space and time in ways that have to be tracked historically.” WayNeedsStatesUseRealitySeemsMovingTermSpaceNumbersCrossesWestPopulationCategoriesDividesExploitationSiteTime And SpaceGeopoliticalOrientalismRethinking Author:Judith Butler
“The state or global forms of power that seek to protect populations considered in danger may well extend their own power through those acts of protection.” WellsMayStatesFormDangerProtectPopulationProtection 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
“We have to be able track the ways in which fear, for instance, is monopolized by state and media institutions, ways in which fear is actually promoted and distributed as a way of bolstering the need for greater security and militarization.” WayNeedsStatesAbleGreaterSecurityMediaInstitutionsTrackInstance Author:Judith Butler
“If you are asking whether states and state actors can only respond through revenge, then you are suggesting that diplomatic solutions are hopeless.” IfsStatesActorsSolutionsAskingRevengeHopelessSuggestingDiplomatic Author:Judith Butler
“I wonder about economic sanctions, though, since that is a way that states engage in boycotts against one another.” WayStatesWonderEconomicSanctionsBoycottEconomic Sanctions Author:Judith Butler
“Because Al-Qaeda has been a non-state centered organisation, many of these scenarios do not exactly apply. These are not wars between states. And yet, it seems to me that we make a mistake if we accept the view that states are fighting terrorism, since we have abundant evidence for accepting the idea of state terrorism, and what is most urgent is to track and expose how state terrorism operates under the rubric of "democracy."” IfsHas BeensIdeasWarStatesSeemsFightingViewsMistakeAcceptingDemocracyEvidenceTrackTerrorismAlsUrgentScenariosOrganisationAl QaedaFighting TerrorismRubrics Author:Judith Butler
“I do situate myself in this problem of being a Jew who doesn't want to be represented by the state of Israel, a state that claims to represent all Jewish people and make me into a potential citizen.” PeopleWantStatesProblemCitizensClaimsJewIsrael Author:Judith Butler
“Very often, if you just get the question: "Well, are you a Zionist?" if you say no, it's assumed that you want the destruction of the state of Israel and that you're involved in some actual or potential violent attack. But actually, you could say: "Not on this basis".” IfsWantWellsStatesInvolvedDestructionBasesIsraelViolentZionist 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
“People who have been made stateless by military occupation are entitled to repatriation, and then the question is to which state, or to what polity or area? Those who have had their goods taken away are entitled to compensation of some kind. These are basic international laws.” PeopleKindHas BeensMadeStatesLawTakenMilitaryAreasInternationalGoodsOccupationEntitledCompensationInternational Law Author:Judith Butler
“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.” MayStatesUseLawNamesGivenNationsSubjectsProtectTasksInstrumentsPopulationSuitsPreservesExecutivesRequirementsSovereignSovereigntyRule Of LawSuspendedAdministrativeMonitoring Book:Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence Source: Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
“Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.” TryingStatesFeelingsLove IsVisionLongingGhostDisposition Author:Judith Butler
“Do we need recourse to a happier state before the law in order to maintain that contemporary gender relations and the punitive production of gender identities are oppressive?” NeedsStatesLawOrderIdentityRelationProductionsGenderContemporaryRecourseGender Identity Book:Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity Source: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
“I do not deny certain kinds of biological differences. But I always ask under what conditions, under what discursive and institutional conditions, do certain biological differences - and they're not necessary ones, given the anomalous state of bodies in the world - become the salient characteristics of sex.” WorldKindStatesBodyCertainAsksGivenSexDifferencesConditionsDenyCharacteristics Author:Judith Butler
