“I think we won't be able to understand the operations of trans-phobia, homophobia, if we don't understand how certain kinds of links are forged between gender and sexuality in the minds of those who want masculinity to be absolutely separate from femininity and heterosexuality to be absolutely separate from homosexuality.” IfsThinkingWantMindKindAbleCertainGenderSexualityOperationsLinksHomosexualityMasculinityFemininityTransHomophobiaForgedPhobiaHeterosexualityGender And Sexuality Author:Judith Butler
“I think we are affected by others in all kinds of ways. I do understand what it's like to wish to control the conditions under which we can be affected by other human beings, but none of us really are.” ThinkingWayHumansKindWishHuman BeingsConditionsAll KindsAffected 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
“I think that public grieving is a good thing. People need to be grieved; loss needs to be acknowledged publicly, because it helps to confer a sense of reality on the loss but also because it makes it known that this was a real life.” PeopleThinkingNeedsRealHelpingRealityLossKnownGood ThingsReal LifeGrieving Author:Judith Butler
“I think I never expected "Gender trouble" to have any particularly revolutionary effect so whatever effects it has, I'm always surprised.” ThinkingTroubleEffectsGenderExpectedRevolutionary Author:Judith Butler
“I think we have to ask, not, what "Gender trouble" is today but where "Gender trouble" is today.” ThinkingTodayAsksTroubleGender Author:Judith Butler
“For instance, when "Gender trouble " is translated into Japanese, it produces a problem of vocabulary and a way of thinking about a quality for instance that is somewhat controversial in academic circles and also outside of the academy. In other places, "Gender trouble" is old.” ThinkingWayProblemQualityTroubleProduceGenderCirclesInstanceAcademicVocabularyWay Of ThinkingAcademyControversial Author:Judith Butler
“I do think it's important that we experiment with new vocabularies. That new words help us conceptualize our social existence in a different way.” ThinkingWayImportantDifferentHelpingSocialExistenceExperimentsDifferent WaysVocabularyNew Words Author:Judith Butler
“I think maybe it's more important to know the traditional concepts we have for thinking about how bodies are feminine or masculine or how sexuality is, straight or gay. These categories very often fail to describe the complexity of who we are.” ThinkingKnowsImportantBodyFailingGayConceptsSexualityTraditionalComplexityWho We AreFeminineCategoriesMasculine Author:Judith Butler
“It's not like it's a brand new vocabulary that permits to have a new reality. It's rather a new vocabulary that lets us see that our lives have always been more complex than traditional categories allow. So, I think, you know, maybe the introduction of new words permits us to rethink what we've taken for granted about what forms bodies take, what the name is for certain kinds of sexual, intimate relations, how we think of a life.” ThinkingKnowsKindBodyRealityFormCertainNamesTakenOur LivesRelationComplexesTraditionalBrandsGrantedIntimateCategoriesPermitVocabularyIntroductionBrand NewTaken For GrantedNew Words Author:Judith Butler
“If we think about sexual life for a gender life, it seems to me that we have to allow for certain kinds of changes or certain kinds of ways of reconceptualizing ourselves.” IfsThinkingWayKindSeemsCertainGender Author:Judith Butler
“Let me say one thing to clarify my position. I think we can take distance from norm but I think we are also mired in norm, "empêtrés", I think you say in French. And I think the choices we can make are only in a certain struggle with the norms out of which we're constituted.” ThinkingCertainChoicesStruggleOne ThingPositionLet MeDistanceNorm Author:Judith Butler
“I think it's important to live with a certain danger and a certain risk.” ThinkingImportantCertainRiskDanger Author:Judith Butler
“I think we need a politics that allows us to risk what is intelligible. To be maybe slightly unintelligible, too be slightly "illisible". To take the risk of suggesting that the human form might take another form.” ThinkingNeedsHumansMightFormRiskSuggestingHuman Form 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 think, what I want to say is that yes, my ideas have travelled into popular culture they also emerged from popular culture in a way, or from the general public as you put it. But not as a program.” ThinkingWayWantIdeasCultureProgramPopular CultureGeneral Public Author:Judith Butler
“The important thing is to think about theory in life in that way. And I think we don't have to be theorists, we don't have to have gone to the academy, or to the university to learn theory and to be a theorist of gender.” ThinkingWayImportantGoneTheoryImportant ThingsUniversityGenderAcademyTheorists Author:Judith Butler
“If you have a conversation "Why is it you think masculinity is linked with heterosexuality? Or why is it you think masculinity is linked with sexual dominance or the sexually active position in the sex act?" If you start to ask people those questions, then they realize "Maybe gender is not one thing. Maybe I have collected a number of things under one category and I've made a mistake".” PeopleIfsThinkingMadeAsksSexRealizingNumbersMistakeOne ThingPositionConversationGenderActiveCategoriesLinkedMasculinitySexuallyMade A MistakeDominanceHeterosexuality Author:Judith Butler
“I do think we need to allow for there to be room for subversive and ironic speech. We need to be able to put out plays in which we make fun of ourselves or in which we interrogate the words that injure us. And maybe give them another meaning.” ThinkingNeedsGivingPlayAbleFunRoomsSpeechIronicSubversive Author:Judith Butler
“We need to be I think equally sensitive to the injurious power of certain kinds of speech acts but also to the subversive and possibly liberatory effects of certain kinds of play.” ThinkingNeedsKindPlayCertainEffectsSpeechSensitiveSubversive Author:Judith Butler
“I think there is no one answer. It is still a struggle, there are tensions and I'm sure there are many people who would like to see these questions laid to rest or cease to be posed altogether.” PeopleThinkingStillsAnswersStruggleCeaseTension Author:Judith Butler
“There are surely many ways that [media select and contextualise events determine the boundaries of public thinking] happens, but we can note at the most obvious level the way in which forms of resistance or violence get cast as "conflicts" that assume two sides that are fighting only against one another.” ThinkingWayTwoHappensFormFightingSidesLevelsViolenceMediaEventsConflictAssumingNotesCastsDetermineObviousBoundariesResistanceSelectTwo Sides Author:Judith Butler
“I think something happens only when people find that they are moved with others, find themselves linked or allied in new ways, showing up or speaking out in ways that resonate with one another. That resonating can be very compelling and lead to moving and speaking more emphatically and with sharper focus.” PeopleThinkingWayHappensMovingFocusMovedThings HappenCompellingNew WaysLinkedShowing UpSpeaking OutResonating 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 not sure that I know enough about the pre-history of 9/11 to agree or disagree. But I did think at the time that the [George W.] Bush administration took a number of cues from the Israeli government, not only by drawing on and intensifying anti-Arab racism, but by insisting that the attack on US government and financial buildings was an attack on "democracy" and by invoking "security at all costs" to wage war without a clear focus (why the Taliban?), and by suspending both constitutional rights and the regular protocol for congressional approval for declaring war.” ThinkingKnowsWarEnoughGovernmentNumbersDemocracyClearFocusRightsSecurityBuildingCostRacismAgreeFinancialDrawingAdministrationNot SureDisagreeApprovalIsraeliTalibanDeclaringInsistingProtocolConstitutional RightsDeclaring War Author:Judith Butler
“I think maybe the destructive pleasure got turned into the destructive pleasure of war (something we see still in the images of US soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban soldiers). Something of the pleasure in destruction gets unleashed, and then becomes part of war effort rationalised first as revenge (or justice defined as revenge). But then it takes new forms, as we see now.” ThinkingFirstsStillsWarBodyFormJusticePleasureEffortDestructionSoldierRevengeDefinedDestructiveArt Of WarTalibanUnleashed Author:Judith Butler
“I think that many of the mobilizations against the wars waged by the US and its allies since 2001 have been non-violent and massive. We have seen them throughout European capitals and in the US, and in many other parts of the world as well. So it is not only imaginable, but already actual.” ThinkingWorldWellsHas BeensWarViolentMassiveAlliesNon ViolentMobilization Author:Judith Butler
“I'm trying to think of what happens if we take expulsion off the table for everyone, and instead think about the rights of those who have been expelled already, which would include the various rights of refugees who came to Israel in the aftermath of WWII, but also those from other countries, and what rights the Palestinians have who have been dispossessed of their lands and homes.” IfsThinkingTryingHas BeensCountryHomeHappensRightsLandTablesVariousIsraelPalestinianOther CountriesRefugeeWwiiAftermathExpulsion Author:Judith Butler
“I think we have to accept a wide variety of positions on gender. Some want to be gender-free, but others want to be free really to be a gender that is crucial to who they are.” ThinkingWantAcceptingPositionGenderWideVarietyCrucial 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
“Some trans people thought that in claiming that gender is performative that I was saying that it is all a fiction, and that a person's felt sense of gender was therefore "unreal." That was never my intention. I sought to expand our sense of what gender realities could be. But I think I needed to pay more attention to what people feel, how the primary experience of the body is registered, and the quite urgent and legitimate demand to have those aspects of sex recognized and supported.” PeopleThinkingFeelsPersonsBodyRealitySexFeltPayAttentionFictionNeededDemandAspectIntentionGenderPrimariesUrgentUnrealTrans 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
“Indeed, it would be great if we could all be liberated through reason, but I think it only gets us part of the way. After all, someone may have a very logical view, but for other reasons we may still fail to hear what that person says, or we may turn their words around so that they are understood to say the opposite. The task is really to find ways of addressing deep-seated forms of fear and aggression that make it possible to hold to manifestly inconsistent views without quite acknowledging them.” ThinkingReasonFailingLogicalAggressionInconsistent Author:Judith Butler
“Whether or not we continue to enforce a universal conception of human rights at moments of outrage and incomprehension, precisely when we think that others have taken themselves out of the human community as we know it, is a test of our very humanity.” ThinkingKnowsHumansMomentsHumanityCommunityTakenRightsTestsUniversalHuman RightsConceptionOutrageIncomprehension Author:Judith Butler
“When I was twelve, I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate in education and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said that I either wanted to be a philosopher or a clown, and I understood then, I think, that much depended on whether or not I found the world worth philosophizing about, and what the price of seriousness might be.” ThinkingWorldSaidMightWantedFoundGrewGrew UpUnderstoodPhilosopherCandidatesTwelveClownSeriousness Book:Undoing Gender Source: Undoing Gender
“Sexual harassment law is very important. But I think it would be a mistake if the sexual harassment law movement is the only way in which feminism is known in the media.” IfsThinkingWayImportantWould BeLawMistakeKnownFeminismMediaMovementFeministHarassment Author:Judith Butler
“I think that every sexual position is fundamentally comic.” ThinkingPositionComic Author:Judith Butler
