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Quote by 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.”

Quote by Judith Butler

Author

Judith Butler is a renowned philosopher, born on February 24, 1956. Her research focuses on issues of gender, identity, and power, having a profound impact on postmodernism and gender theory. more

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“You're an evolving and transforming person, right? And how do we capture that dynamics of sexuality in that complex sense? There may be times when someone feels oneself more overly masculine or maybe more feminine, or where the terms themselves become confused, where passivity and activity also don't maintain their usual meaning.”

Feels May Persons Term Activity Complexes Oneself Sexuality Evolve Confused Feminine Capture Usual Masculine Transforming Dynamics Passivity

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.”

Ifs Thinking Way Kind Seems Certain Gender

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.”

Thinking Certain Choices Struggle One Thing Position Let Me Distance Norm

Author:Judith Butler

“When I was young there were lesbians who said "Oh, I will free myself of all norms of masculinity, all norms of heterosexuality ". And then, they ended up in very complex relationships that were maybe full of heterosexual power dynamics or full of lesbian forms of masculinity and they became very confused.”

Said Form Young Complexes Confused Masculinity Norm Dynamics Heterosexuality Complex Relationships

Author:Judith Butler

“It wasn't possible just to rid oneself, simply, of the norms through which one is constituted.”

Author:Judith Butler

“One struggles always with these norms. So one doesn't construct oneself freely without respect to norm but one works with one's historical situation and sees where there might be some play. Where there might be some freedom to move.”

Play Might Moving Situation Struggle Historical Oneself Constructs Norm

Author:Judith Butler

“I think it's important to live with a certain danger and a certain risk.”

Thinking Important Certain Risk Danger

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.”

Thinking Needs Humans Might Form Risk Suggesting Human Form

Author:Judith Butler

“We have to ask how we can stretch and how sometimes we can break the norms that determine what's intelligible and readable and what is not.”

Sometimes Asks Break Determine Norm

Author:Judith Butler

“The real question is how do you survive at the same time you pose those risks? Because you need to survive. And it seems to me that you survive in community or in solidarity, with others who are taking the risk with you.”

Needs Real Seems Community Risk Solidarity Real Questions

Author:Judith Butler