Home / Quotes / Quote by Judith Butler

Quote by Judith Butler

“It is not as if an 'I' exists independently over here and then simply loses a 'you' over there, especially if the attachment to 'you' is part of what composes who 'I' am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who 'am' I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost 'you' only to discover that 'I' have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost 'in' you, that for which I have no vocabulary, is a relationality that is composed neither exclusively of myself nor you, but is to be conceived as *the tie* by which those terms are differentiated and related.”

Quote by Judith Butler

Book:Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

Work

Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

This book delves into the psychological and social aspects of mourning, examining how it intersects with acts of violence. It investigates the impact of loss and grief on individuals and communities, and the ways in which mourning can be both a source of healing and a catalyst for violence. more

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

You May Also Like

“It is time to teach society on how to be empathetic with people grieving.”

Grieving Loss Of A Child Grieving Parents Parental Bereavement

Book:Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple

Source: Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple

“But we are not going to talk about that right now, because to talk about it I'll have to think about it, and I've thought it to death over the last year. There are parts of my brain that are still tirelessly thinking about it, about her, an entire research and development department wholly dedicated to finding new ways to grieve and mourn and feel sorry for myself. And let me tell you, they're good at what they do down there. So I'll leave them to it.”

Death Grieving Mourning Sadness Lonelyness

Book:How To Talk To A Widower

Source: How To Talk To A Widower

“A four-year-old has so little past, and he remembers almost none of it, neither the father he once had nor the house where he once lived. But he can feel the absences – and feel them as sensation, like a texture that was once at his fingers every day but now is gone and no matter how he gropes or reaches his hand he cannot touch what’s no longer there.”

Love Grief Childhood Youth Experience Grieving Childhood Trauma

Book:Let Him Go

Source: Let Him Go

“There need not be a purpose to a person's death, other than that they have lived the length of their days on this Earth and now begin the longer part of their existence.”

Grief Self Help Grieving Bereavement

Book:What Are You Crying About? Defeating Grief for Christians

Source: What Are You Crying About? Defeating Grief for Christians

“You don’t get to sit in my living room unless you wipe your feet and chip in for the rum.”

Life Lessons Relationship Quotes Life Quotes And Sayings Women Empowerment Daily Quotes Empowering Quotes For Women Elena Levon Boundaries Quotes Elena Levon Quotes

Author:Elena Levon

“Grief is such a lonely thing. There is no-one in it with you - others may grieve for the same soul, but they do not grieve exactly for what you also grieve. No-one has lost precisely what you have lost. Not exactly, never exactly. We are in it alone.”

Book:The Silver Dark Sea

Source: The Silver Dark Sea

“Long past the moment when her neck begins to stiffen and ache, she continues to stare into the darkness, even though none of the human secrets she needs to know are to be found in the stars but rather closer to the earth her boots stand upon.”

Love Grief Sadness Determination Longing Grieving Grit Fierceness

Book:Let Him Go

Source: Let Him Go

“When my late father died — now I'm in mourning for my late mother — that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that I thought were important, externals, etc., all of that is irrelevant. You lose a parent, you suddenly realize what a slender thing life is, how easily you can lose those you love. Then out of that comes a new simplicity and that is why sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times, "I will not let you go until you bless me.”

Life Joy Loss Grief Importance Simplicity Parents Grieving Mourning Bereavement Relevance

Author:Jonathan Sacks

“...grieving needs space, and it needs so much time. And it needs to be done; it cannot be trodden round or not looked in the eye.”

Book:The Silver Dark Sea

Source: The Silver Dark Sea

“I am not, anymore, a Christian, but I am lifted and opened by any space with prayer inside it. I didn’t know why I was going, today, to stand in the long cool darkness of St. John of the Divine, but my body knew, as bodies do, what it wanted. I entered the oddly small door of the huge space, and walked without hesitating to the altar I hadn’t consciously remembered, a national memorial for those who died of AIDS, marked by banners and placards. My heart melted, all at once, and I understood why I was there. Because the black current the masseuse had touched wanted, needed, to keep flowing. I’d needed to know I could go on, but I’d also been needing to collapse. Which is what I did, some timeless tear span of minutes sitting on the naked gray stone. A woman gave me the kind of paper napkins you get with an ice cream cone. It seemed to me the most genuine of gifts, made to a stranger: the recognition of how grief moves in the body, leaving us unable to breathe, helpless, except for each other.”

Love Spirit Prayer Loss Grief Kindness Sadness Aids Grieving Mourning Hiv

Book:Heaven's Coast: A Memoir

Source: Heaven's Coast: A Memoir