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Quote by 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.”

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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“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.”

Way Needs States Use Reality Seems Moving Term Space Numbers Crosses West Population Categories Divides Exploitation Site Time And Space Geopolitical Orientalism Rethinking

Author:Judith Butler

“It is true that non-governmental organisations working within strong human rights frameworks are now confounded by securitarian forms of logic and power that extend the paternalistic bias of their work in new ways.”

Way Humans Form Strong Rights Logic Human Rights New Ways Bias Framework Organisation

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.”

Wells May States Form Danger Protect Population Protection

Author:Judith Butler

“Where is democratic process or popular sovereignty for the endangered population? It cannot be "given" or "allocated" by some other power without that same power claiming the right to withdraw what it gives.”

Giving Given Process Democratic Population Sovereignty Democratic Process Popular Sovereignty

Author:Judith Butler

“Popular sovereignty has to be given by a people to itself, and this is the important meaning of self-determination.”

People Important Self Given Determination Self Determination Sovereignty Popular Sovereignty

Author:Judith Butler

“The question is whether NGOs that bring protection or aid or reparation therapies are furthering the possibility of self-determination or extending a form of managerial power and paternalism.”

Self Form Possibility Determination Protection Aids Therapy Self Determination Extending Reparations Paternalism

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.”

People Thinking Way Want Kind States Form Political Desire Social Emotion Security Survival Safety Psychological All Kinds Explanation Scare Stakes Explaining Intimidation

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.”

Way Needs States Able Greater Security Media Institutions Track Instance

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.”

“I do not follow closely anymore, since there is a limit to how much heartsickness one can bear.”

Author:Judith Butler