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Quote by 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.”

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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“We are more often than not asked, for instance, to regard Israel and Palestine as in a conflict of this kind, a framing that sets each of them on equal footing, and implicitly analogies the political situation to a fist fight, a soccer match, or a domestic quarrel. So if, then, the only two intelligible political positions are "pro-Palestinian" or "pro-Israeli," the presumption is that one's position is determined by a sentiment that wants one side to win over the other.”

“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 Beens States Would Be Order Lost Situation Practice Land Military Boundaries Resistance Occupation Palestinian Sovereign Ongoing Israeli Appropriation Expulsion Thinkable

Author:Judith Butler

“We set the actors on the scene through the banal discourse of "conflict" in ways that fully deflect from the history and struggle of colonial resistance, refusing as well by that means to link the resistance to other forms of colonial resistance, their rationale, and their tactics.”

Way Wells Mean Form Actors Struggle Scene Conflict Resistance Links Discourse Tactics Rationale

Author:Judith Butler

“Visual renditions of war not only establish what can be seen, and the audio-track established what can be heard, but the photographs also "train" us in ways of focusing on targets, ways of regarding suffering and loss.”

Way War Suffering Loss Heard Train Photograph Track Visuals Target Audio

Author:Judith Butler

“Photographs can be forms of recruitment, ways of bringing the viewer into the military, as it were. In this way, they prepare us for war, even enlist us in war, at the level of the senses, establishing a sensate regime of war.”

Way War Form Levels Military Photograph Senses Regimes Viewers Recruitment

Author:Judith Butler

“Perhaps we have to remember that there are forms of outrage that do not lead to any sort of mobilization, and there are ways of "registering the facts" that do not lead to outrage.”

Way Facts Remember Form Outrage Mobilization

Author:Judith Butler

“If we are trying to account for mobilization, we have to ask, under what conditions do outraged forms of knowing lead to social mobilizations and movements? So awareness alone does not suffice, and neither does outrage.”

Ifs Trying Doe Form Asks Social Knowing Conditions Awareness Movement Accounts Outrage Outraged Mobilization

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.”

People Thinking Way Happens Moving Focus Moved Things Happen Compelling New Ways Linked Showing Up Speaking Out Resonating

Author:Judith Butler

“I wonder whether I might have meant "terrify us" but perhaps as well there was a less than conscious effort to show that the suppression of debate about Palestine and about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement - within many academic circles - does seek to establish those who would address such issues in speech as already collaborating with "terrorist" regimes, although now only Hamas is officially terrorist according to the US government and its allies.”

“The idea that speaking at all on the topic, demanding public space in which to have that debate, is itself an act of complicity with violence, and violence against Israelis, understood as synonymous with Jews, and so violence against Jews, clearly stops the speech with an unspeakable allegation.”

Ideas Space Violence Speech Understood Jew Debate Topics Unspeakable Complicity Allegations

Author:Judith Butler