Judith Butler

[astroboomboy]

Butlers theories is what I would say is "future-theory". It's truth and validity comes only when culture has completely removed the biological, which is inevitable in the future. There will come a time when we will start changing our biology, and start moving towards a "trans-human" state. At that time gender will truly be a social construct, and something completely elusive and ever-changing. I think Butler's thoughts are describing that world.

[floppykid]

@astroboomboy

What a horrible hypothetical world that would be.

[axilea67]

@astroboomboy A total loss of who we are, a psychotic world, the end of sex, gender, identity and, I suppose, of life and language. There is no freedom without the structure. Our arrogance and stupidity keep proving this. Nothing is fixed? Ok, we changed the rules of nature and see what we've got. As dissociated individual, we will probably end in some kind of psychosis. Of course, the machines will monitor us and do the rest. And that will be the end of freedom and "fluidity".

[astroboomboy]

@axilea67 It will not be a loss, but an enhancement of who we are. We can finally choose who we want to be in more aspects than ever imagined. It is inevitable, as nothing can stop technological progress (with the exception of the destruction of mankind). Technology will eventually lead to artificial intelligence that quickly will outperform us, and force us to enhance our biology. This enhancement will let us transcend the tyranny of our genetics.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@astroboomboy

'We can finally choose who we want to be in more aspects than ever imagined'

'We'? Who's 'we'?

Haven't you noticed YET humans are NOT becoming more free AT ALL, they are not becoming more vigorous and healthy, and certainly not happier, more intelligent, more adept at using critical thinking skills and enjoying their humanity in a general sense.

Perhaps your idolatry of technology has blinded you to the fact that society has already turned into a degraded, ...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@astroboomboy

...pornographic sewer that is activating all the worse human qualities and few of the best.

A.I. hasn't lived up to the promises that were made since over half a century.

'Enhance our biology'?

Why don't you focus a bit more on the constant attack on our biology from science?

Science's genetic experiments have exclusively led to insane monstrosities and utterly irresponsible 'experiments' so there's really no reason to cheer...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@astroboomboy

'We can finally choose who we want to be'...

Amazing statement considering for only one thing that tens of millions of kids in the West are today put on toxic pills, apparently to control their psychiatric disorders. Where's the choice here? I sure don't see it.

Could you give ONE example of technology 'enhancing' biology? Just one.

Don't you understand lad, that our biologies are EMINENTLY ADAPTED to our environment & that interference per definition is aberrant?

[astroboomboy]

@suddenlyitsobvious You can't think of one technological enhancement to our biology? Your understanding is very poor. My grandparents would both be dead if it wasn't for their pacemakers. I would be dead if it wasn't for modern medicine, and so would probably 80% of the worlds population.

Yes there is still poverty, but it is far less than 100 years ago. Generally everything is better, but of course no perfect. You seem to be deluded.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@astroboomboy

'You can't think of one technological enhancement to our biology? Your understanding is very poor. My grandparents would both be dead if it wasn't for their pacemakers.'

OK, I see your 'argumen't. by the same token we are to consider contact lenses or any prosthesis an 'enhancement to our biology'? I assumed your enthusiasm and certainly your PHRASEOLOGY -'ENHANCING BIOLOGY'- was indicative of some more ambitious thinking, but then again, perhaps 'thinking' is not..

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@astroboomboy

...your forte, as exemplified by your redundant statement 'Yes there is still poverty, but it is far less than 100 years ago'.

And what's THIS, Socrates: 'Generally everything is better, but of course no perfect'?

As far as pacemakers go, perhaps you ought to see one to get an inkling of what an atrocity it is. You have no way of knowing your grandparents would have died without pacemakers.

Seem deluded? Your OPINION has been noted.

[astroboomboy]

@suddenlyitsobvious What is it that you are trying to say exactly? Biological enhancement is fairly basic now, but will develop exponentially in the future. We will enhance most of our biology at some point.

My grandmother would have certainly died as her heart can barely pump, and without the electronics in her heart it would stop, as it did before they put it there.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@astroboomboy

Your use of the phrase 'biological enhancement' is, to put it mildly, confusing, and considering the elated context of your glorification of technology, quite unsound.

Indeed enhancement means/webster:

'especially: to increase or improve in value, quality, desirability, or attractiveness'

Coupling this term to 'biology' (Webster: 'the life processes especially of an organism or group') suggests an improvement in design, when you are in reality merely glorifying...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@astroboomboy

...some questionable 'plumming' interventions on unsound/sick organisms.

I suggest you use more reasonable terms, 'enhancing biology' is grossly inadequate for what you are referring to...

[astroboomboy]

@axilea67 We changed the rules of nature? And how did we do that? The laws of nature can't be broken, we just change our environments. What has that led to? Unimaginable wealth, technology, medicine that saves millions of lives on a daily basis, freedom from the tyranny of feudal lords. It would be impossible for us to even have this conversation without changing the world. Don't be so narrow.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@astroboomboy

'It would be impossible for us to even have this conversation without changing the world.'

Oh right, the great argument: we're using a computer so technology is marvellous.

Unimaginable wealth? 1 billion starving in the world though nature is PLENTIFUL.

Medicine that saves? You have got to be joking. All pills are toxic and the medical system has a profound investment in people being sick.

Why are untold millions sick in the West today even though food is...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@astroboomboy

...plentiful.

You can of course compare the current situation to serfdom in the middle ages with its high mortality due to poor nutrition, poor hygiene and execrable circumstances.

The reason countless people haven't figured out yet how utterly depraved and toxic the med system is is precisely for this reason: the comparison with an even worse standard.

'Look how far we've come, how much longer we live today'.

Pfft! Of course. We have food now, food mind you...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@astroboomboy

...any animal finds in nature.

'Wealth?'

Haven't you noticed society is swamped in DEBT? That money IS debt? That people are increasingly going to have to obey and work like slaves to PAY OFF the debt to their masters?

What wealth is there but nature, sound minds? Your little paper bills are trash and so are most of the things you buy with it.

And yes, I do have a computer, because it's the only way to figure out where this nightmare is heading.

[astroboomboy]

@suddenlyitsobvious So your opinion is that things are worse now than ever? That all are efforts in increasing life expectancy, creating modern medicine, understanding the world, technology, etc. is no way an indication that we have moved towards better lives than the cavemen lived?

[jlikea]

Is Butler saying that her theory is only exemplified by extremists? That makes her theory less meaningful, less universal....

[jlikea]

Is Butler saying that her theory is only exemplified by extremists. That makes her theory less meaningful, less universal....

[GODLIKEizRAW]

Some of the self righteous crap people say here is ridiculous. @briot13 with your 'It is so difficult to speak about women's issues with men because they often hold the belief, "well I'm not like those men" and so they feel they are not oppressors' statement, just because men dont go around parading womens rights you believe they're oppressors? There was other but that one really took the cake for me. OT however, Butlers story is indeed an accurate reflection of gender norms amongst commoners.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

Actually, I just checked some comments, and noticed that her cheap technique worked pretty well: many think it's great what she says, becos killing a gay is BAD,

and Butler says it's BAD, so what she says must be GOOD.

Pretty representative of ambient levels of "thinking"...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

The full title of Butler's famous book was: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Few people realize that she is actually calling for this subversion. The means: semantic manipulation, reapropriating terms and

such techniques. Hardly straightforward, is it?

Butler doesn't tell her fans WHERETO she is pushing sexuality. Her only focus is THE EVIL OTHER, a positionality vis-a-vis the normative.

What this ultimately means, is that her program will strip identities of ESSENCE

[Aureleann]

@suddenlyitsobvious

We don't need Butler to strip anybody of their essence

Darwin started with humankind not being an empire within an empire, not radically seperated from the rest of animal creation. So briefly, having no essence of our own...

And well French philosophers such as Sartre and De Beauvoir pushed the thing further with their existentialist philosophy, explicitely stating that there is no preexisting essence in the subject.

Well this is just the sequel...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@Aureleann

Referring to Darwin, Sartre and De Beauvoir and pointing out Butler poduces a sequel to their assessment of human essence, is strange besides being highly simplistic.

Basically what you're saying is any monstrous assessment about anything is perfectly fine, as long as someone else previously made a monstrous claim, opening the way for more...

Of course, a philosophy or theory should be processed for WHAT IT CLAIMS.

Just a sequel? Well, why not PROCESS what this sequel says?

[suddenlyitsobvious]

She certainly talks very differently than she(?) writes...Well at least we were spared the discursive resignifications bullocks and the usual pretentious obfuscating rhetoric that so impresses a desexualized fringe minority of the queer jungle.

I do think it's a bit easy to bring on the hate crime to command attention, and needing two minutes to point out the difference between the terms gender compliance and gender coercion fails to impress.

She'd do well to tell us what gayness is first.

[rjenman]

its really sad that she talks in such a Heideggerian, deep way that is really beautiful and useful to queers but she shouldn't take it to a universal level.

You can't argue with her because the argument creates itself and as soon as you try and solidy a counterargument you just seem like a bad person.

[GreatGrumbledook]

Has anyone ever told her that she is a giggling imbecile?

[mff8785]

Why do mass media and universities value ideological speakers who ignore philosophical issues that pertain to "knowledge": metaphysics, epistemology, ontology, teleology and so forth? While listening to Miss Butler and Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann I get this queasy feeling in my gut... Like I'm being sold something. Their answers seem part of the bigger problem of Modernity. Just wondering... What are these Transcendental Egos getting at? Do they want me to join their side?

[MartinRussellSchmidt]

Here, here mff8785, Judith Butler's prominence is a firm testament to the decadence of our society. Though, sadly widespread acclaim received by such accursed sophists is not unique to our age. Witness Protagoras, who if Plato is to be believed (and I don't see why not), accrued a sizable circle of followers. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, why all the pretentious verbiage when "people can be bastards" is sufficient to describe the great bulk of mankind's evil deeds?

[mff8785]

MartinRussellSchmidt,

"My dear Euthyphro, being laughed at is perhaps no matter. For in fact the Athenians, as it seems to me, do not much care about someone who appears to be clever, unless he is a skillful teacher of his own wisdom."

In comparison with a handful of UC-System professors(a deserved name) who are floating around our educational system and youtube Judith Butler appears sensible!

[Fpiet]

@MartinRussellSchmidt

'why all the pretentious verbiage when "people can be bastards" is sufficient to describe the great bulk of mankind's evil deeds?'

Because the entire things-just-are-the-way-they-a­re-attitude is a big part of why that boy got thrown off that bridge.

[MartinRussellSchmidt]

@Fpiet

There is a difference between acceptance of the grim reality that some people are evil and apt to do evil and that the eradication thereof is a pernicious utopian fantasy, and being complicit to the evils of this world. Anyone who fails to see the distinction is beneath refutation.

[drwe25]

Wow, i heard this in a class last year, and hearing it again, it is even more impactfull. Anyone who has anything negative to say about this is the opressor. Judith is an amazing human, who has made me think in ways i never knew possible, but hoped existed. She is so abstract, that it makes me feel more comfortable when im off on a tangent with my ideas. If she is right or wrong is for you to decide (shes right), but how can you not appreciate the power of words. and her ability to command them.

[GreatGrumbledook]

I'm afraid not, Butler! Unfortunately, most of the sane people think that you're an utter prat! Ask them who they'd prefer to meet: Judith Butleror the man who cleans out the public toilets in Aberdeen, and they'd go for Wee Jock "Poo-Pong" McPlop, every time.

[michelangeli23]

Normal walking people also get killed for no reason. She lacks the ability to think logically. Who knows why they killed the walker? You can't just jump to some radical conclusion on the basis of such a small sample.

[briot13]

Well she provides you with the foreknowledge that he lived there his entire life and had previously been harassed by the same boys. It is implied (although you lack the ability to understand metaphor) that he was killed on the basis that he was effeminate.

[sabo968]

Some of these comments are unbelievably ignorant.. I doubt that some of you even know who Judith Butler is when you make such comments. Someone is definitely lacking the ability to think logically and it's not Butler. How can you not get the connections she's making?? But I'm sure you're a privileged person (male, white, middle class, heterosexual) and with that mentality I doubt you'll ever be able to understand these issues.. wow!

[briot13]

@sabo968 well said . It is so difficult to speak about women's issues with men because they often hold the belief, "well I'm not like those men" and so they feel they are not oppressors. But male privilege, varying in degree based on things like race and sexual orientation, is something all men receive. While most men would probably not openly exclaim that they enjoy a stratified society, one has to wonder why they don't then challenge the patriarchy.

[sabo968]

I absolutely agree briot13, what most men don't realize is that that's how the hegemonic powers want the system to work. Men have more privileges not because they're superior but because that's what benefits the system. They are being used just like everybody else. The argument of "I'm not like those men" is a ridiculous excuse to continue benefiting from their male privilege and not challenging it one bit.

[newfan7]

I think she has no clear identity and may be she is lesbian which is her problem.

But women like her are exceptional and have not the right to set normative rules.

[rajasmasala]

what are you saying, we should kill guys who don't walk properly?

[khtervola]

Manliness is an achievement while womanliness is more like a priviledge. Most men and boys, not even the women and girls, don't understand that womanliness cares for the ground for manly achievements. In women's cultures and ways which we learn at an early age there is a huge mass of cultural wisdom about how to do well in life. One should cultivate the characteristics of both sexes while in outer appearance reaching for either manly achievement or womanly wisdom of life -giving best achievement

[jackbox1971]

I wish she wrote as clearly and as succinctly as she can evidently talk.

[aharper12]

That's nearly impossible because you must write in a dialogue that creates images and a clear thesis because your not there to interpret it for the person...

[almesaries]

Gender Trouble is definitely a difficult text and one that you could read many times to absorb more.

I have been told that Butler writes in this way to reposition your thinking. It is difficult because you have to buck ideas ingrained in us from childhood. It's a revolution in thinking and revolution are necessarily difficult.

[eleanor7rigby]

i LoVE YOU JUDITH BUTLER

[rosyhappyalways]

is she lesbian or straight?

[rockattack89]

the point is that she doesn't accept labels like straight or gay..

[Iberianwildwolf]

the point is who cares? why care? are we suposed to fit in a couple of drawers? Virginia Woolf said that the Humankind was to diverse for that. I believe so.

Judith Butlers book "race, class and gender" is one of the great books in my life.

[Iberianwildwolf]

*the book is "undoing gender"!

[notleonard]

I'm sure there must be people out there working on performance and the Internet...I think there is something about YouTube that lends itself in particular to foregrounding a kind of ridiculous narcissistic quality in people. (Which maybe goes part of the way to explaining its illegitimate legitimate subversion in the form of Xtube.) (Butler's work is completely transformative. Please read Gender Trouble and think about what it would be like to believe in the integrity of human life.)

[notleonard]

That being said, I think she does come off as ridiculous and pretentious in this clip, but I think that actually says way more about what is possible to communicate through this medium (the Youtube anecdote) than it says about Judith Butler's work. It is interesting to observe how much more successfully Zizek's teaching-performances translate to this medium--I don't think it means that he is any less ridiculous and pretentious than J.B.

[soporific1000]

Interesting. I find Butler much more pity and understandable than Zizek on youtube. I never understand him, heh.

[notleonard]

OK I would just like to say that as a typical Ivy asshole I posted some pretty negative comments about Butler on this thread with having only "read" (meaing: breezed through) her work. I just yesterday went back to Gender Trouble, read the section on Freud and the Melancholia of Gender, and I spent 2 hours tonight crying my eyes out as a consequence. Completely transformative. So, pretentious haters like the man I am trying to get over being (like): read the work.

[tobpmip]

I don't believe she is genuinely concerned with questions of human nature. If she were, she would have have educated herself a little more in the sciences...in such things as evolutionary psychology and neuroscience. I think that a good place to start in understanding where she's coming from is to look up "performativity" and "performative writing" on wikipedia. Gender just happens to be personally relevant to her as well as a rich area to practice performative writing/thinking.

[28g34ajbsd]

to tobpmip: that's why god created Donna Haraway. As for 'human nature' denoted as something intrinsic, my only comment would be:

pffffffffrt :P

[tobpmip]

Does Donna Haraway know she was created by god?

[RogueLinguist]

Well, I think gender is relevant to everybody--it's just a matter of who is being recalcitrant, and who try to change them, or else stamp them out of existence.

[soporific1000]

I find her clear, but even if you don't, it's not performative just because you're conscious of the form. The theory is that we're stuck within our conventional language/structure & its history & that to generate new ideas we're forced to use lang. in innovative ways. E.g., your invocation of "human nature"-that it's a possible project, that we have a method of determining it, & that she is in that project-carries a lot of baggage.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@soporific1000

Butler's verbiage is designed around the crucial reality that to her -AND SOCIETY- no firm essence, no core individuality, no absolute reference, no spiritual truth exists.

Her reference frame is a floating one, which is why she can only subvert, defy the norm, but NEVER produce TRUTH, ESSENTIALS, ABSOLUTENESS.

UNDERSTANDING humans should PRECEDE the urge to change them!!

[Aureleann]

@suddenlyitsobvious

I have a truth for you, an essential, absoluteness.

That no matter what difference you see in sb be it religious, ehtnical, gender-related, cultural, geographical, physical, NO MATTER WHAT, you are not allowed to discriminate them against in any way.

This is what her theory is all about...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@Aureleann

You fail to understand what Butler says and what I say about what she says, in favour of the mindless mantra "we must not discriminate", "we must be tolerant". The evil heteronormative boogeyman...

Yeah yeah yeah, discrimination is bad. How well you've watched your telly. ..

Too bad you don't transcend this simplistic binary model of good-bad, victim oppressor, and can't or don't want to PROCESS THE ACTUAL CONTENT OF HER MESSAGE.

Her therory about non discriminating? That's not..

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@Aureleann

...a theory at all: it's a moral statement.

OF COURSE Butler produces CONTENTS besides this statement.

It's the CONTENT of the "theory" I was OBVIOUSLY discussing.

"Queer is good-queer is bad" thinking is completely useless without even understanding what queer is or what kind of case Butler is making.

Sad that you even talk about Butler when obviously "thinking" in mantra's...

not the way to grasp anything.

[RachelA42]

@suddenlyitsobvious 1st, you say "She can only subvert...the norm, but NEVER produce TRUTH" as if that's a bad thing. 1 of her many arguments is that all norms are a) socially constructed & b) coercive. She doesn't want 2 proffer new norms precisely because she DOESN'T want 2 continue the cycle of coercion. That's not 2 say she doesn't believe in having norms at all;she's openly said elsewhere she does. She's just perpetually critical of what norms get put into place & whose interests they serve

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

' 1st, you say "She can only subvert...the norm, but NEVER produce TRUTH" as if that's a bad thing.'

Yeah, subversion is easy. Butler completely avoids the essence, and in reality doesn't have a clue of what the essence even is of the minorities she pushes to subversion. She is ONLY interested in a 'positionality vis-à-vis the normative', in REACTIVENESS, which is very convenient since it allows her to dispense with the formulation of any kind of ethic or mode of being...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

(2)

... that in some way reflects the INNER NATURE and predispositions of the minorities she professes to speak for, and that she has decided simply doesn't exist since to her everything is of course completely relative and socially constructed.

Of course, of course, man is but a tabula rasa, and his sexuality has no significance whatsoever, it merely results from socializing pressures and ...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

(3)

...we should all accept all sexualities are perfectly valid and nothing means anything.

What does it even mean to Butler to be a woman, a man, a queer?

NOTHING.

ALL BUTLER KNOWS, is that it must all be equal.

I'm sorry but this position is completely devoid of any kind of substance.

Her discourse is that of an empty, traumatized shell, and when you say: 'She doesn't want 2 proffer new norms precisely ...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

(4)

...because she DOESN'T want 2 continue the cycle of coercion. That's not 2 say she doesn't believe in having norms at al; she's openly said elsewhere she does.l',

then I must reply that SAYING that is EASY; however, in her work ALL MORALS, ALL ETHICS, ALL EMPATHY, ALL SIGNS OF UNDERSTANDING of humanity, sexuality, are completely absent. COMPLETELY.

Which is why her prose is so frigid. She seems like a Marxist apparatchik who's lost her soul...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

(5)

She has stripped the issues of sex, gender and identity OF ALL HUMANITY, of all feeling, of everything.

In fact she can only focus on the CONFRONTATION, while ignoring the substance, quality, ethics, nature of society, and ignoring the essence of the individuals that must 'gloriously' confront that society.

Her starting point that sex and biology ought to be uncoupled in approaching these issues is completely unsubstantiated, ...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

(6)

...and floats on the mere observation that societal conditioning can and does influence sexual expressions and identities.

Of course the fact that societal pressures can and do affect us and can and do shape and distort identities and sexual expressions DOES NOT MEAN by any means that all these identities are to be considered as purely relative and equivalent, and more importantly, that they are EXCLUSIVELY SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

(7)

It doesn't mean at all that there's not an inner biological reference at all.

She certainly hasn't demonstrated this.

She's taken an observation and conveniently blotted out all other realities.

In reality, she has no clue of what's happening INSIDE.

She doesn't acknowledge that society is influencing the shape of a pre-existing INNER PRINCIPLE, since she has no investment in retrieving the ESSENCE that was corrupted by society, ...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

(8)

...presumably because she is not in touch with herself IN THE SLIGHTEST!

Basically she takes all constellations of corruption for granted, one being as irrelevant and socially construed as the other, and in reality concludes that nothing means anything, and that therefore we must not rest before everything has become completely stripped of all significance, by qualitatively equating everything to everything else.

[axilea67]

@suddenlyitsobvious Unfortunately, the world has been "evolving" this way and individuals are becoming more and more dissociated. She is just a symptom of this general trend. When I read Elisabeth Badinter, I get a similar feeling. She has been dissecting maternal instinct and claiming that it is a cultural construct for many years. In this case, ideology is more important than facts, experience and intuition. To me, this way of thinking celebrates the end of humanity.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@axilea67

It is quite a relief to receive a post such as yours, which is rare. Most people today can only idolize famous people and regurgitate their terms in the hope this will make them sound smart. They constantly use phrases like 'you need an education', 'you don't understand', 'you're so arrogant', 'what's your degree' and soforth and rarely appear equipped ro analyze anything authority is saying from an actual PERSONAL perspective.

Yeah, people like Badinter & Butler are...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@axilea67

... puppets promoted by the social engineers. They are covered in academic laurels precisely because their discourse is so destructive.

Did you notice the issue I pointed out that Butler when SPEAKING isn't quite as proficient in handling highflying abstractions as when she's WRITING? In fact, what she's saying here is really quite substandard...

Butler was educated as a child by a rabbi btw...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@axilea67

I'll just add this:

I don't know whether you put 'evolving' in quotation marks because you're aware of this 'evolution' NOT being a natural dynamic or even a strictly logical outgrowth of what preceded it; of course, to a large extent many processes and dynamics unfold from their premises, from prior situations they 'evolve' from, but what I'm getting at is that people like Butler or Badinter are more than just 'symptoms', that spring up; they're chosen for a purpose in a...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@axilea67

...PRECONCEIVED, DESIGNED social effort.

Note these puppets may very well be UNAWARE themselves of the masters pulling their strings...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

(9)

What Butler is REALLY doing, is stripping identities of their essence and significance.

Her discourse is fundamentally empty, which is why she relies on extremely obtuse and stunningly frigid jargon.

Of course her work opens the door for pedophilia, coprophilia, bestiality and what have you as perfectly equivalent performances.

'always contestable'

Yes, again: how easy it is to contest, to oppose, confront.

But from where? From what identity? She doesn't have one.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

(10)

Butler FUNDAMENTALLY doesn't acknowledge people's identity, the identities of the minorities she professes to fight for. Because she doesn't know what's INSIDE. She's dissociated.

She wants to destroy the existing normative order but doesn't have an absolute reference frame or even an inkling of an understanding of sexuality or human nature.

Consequently she can only confront, or rather: push others into ...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

@RachelA42

(11)

confrontation from the ivory tower of her academic bastion.

I don't mean to voice a cheap ad hominem, but really, just look at her, at her prose: FRIGIDITY. SEXLESSNESS. The woman is TRAUMATIZED.

She's completely nihilistic and as you'll easily see: she has lost all traces of femininity.

She isn't in touch with it. Fine spokeswoman for women or 'queers'...

[RachelA42]

@suddenlyitsobvious 2nd, u say "UNDERSTANDING humans should PRECEDE the urge to change them" but 1 of Butler's primary philosophical quests has been 2 ask after the socially & historically contingent means by which the notion of "the human" is defined, erected, consolidated. When looking 4 the "essence" of THE HUMAN one starts with an image of what THE HUMAN is already in mind. Those are the mediating norms of 'humanness' & Butler wants 2 expose them as contingent, variant & always contestable.

[aikigenius]

a boy is a boy is a boy, a boy must not walk with a swush or swish or zoom too much in the hip

for too much of a hippie go lucky male

is bound to upset the more woody or

stood he like a tin man tin tin soldier

if im raised to kill, it shouldnt be too much to suggest i gain mana by killing and expunging the swush that would undermine my woody nature...OR

is it because i was taken in just for one second by that swushiness from behind to mistake him for a her

thus shock of disrecognition killed?

[dwainegibson]

I'd certinaly like to hit you with a crowbar across your feminine head.

[boogaloobooboo]

You're right, it is the bullies who are the weaker of the two because they are the ones who are affected by such an act that makes them insecure or scared about one thing.

[ckyhimfan2004]

If you don't find the state of the world on topics pertaining to homophobia, appalling, you're part of the problem, not the solution.

[hatc9723]

there's nothing more appaling than someone who is a cky fan--they've got 1, maybe 2 good songs--and him? alas, you don't deserve to be alive.

[billius]

Hmmmm. Slight leap of logic here, though clearly her heart is in the right place. I'm sure it suffered from poor editing, otherwise one might be tempted to say that using the death of another to justify one's theories in such a simplistic way could be seen as exploitative.

[transftmgay]

n'importe quoi la

as le temps de répondre je le ferais plus tard

[Aureleann]

@transftmgay @billius

Billius, I agree with trans... (if u did get his French tht is)

She does not base her whole theory on sm1's(a single person's death) but perhaps u might say many. I'ts a social issue just as people dying from overmedication becomes a sanitary issue.

Also, ANY theory emerges from a deep and profound questioning, it also starts with personal experience. Even great scientists, say phisicists for instance, it starts with everday experience, sthg that catches ur attention.

[thefinewino]

that's Judith Butler. 'Exploitative' is never a word that applies to her.

[0neironaut]

huh? i think you misunderstand Judiths philosophy. she doesnt "use" the example to "justify" anything... rather, these extreme instances of homophobia are what she is trying to make sense of.

[dancewomyn1]

@billius I actually took this brief example as being quite accurate and perfect for pointing up the overwhelming power of social "norms/abnorms" and the violent repercussions that can befall one who dares to change the paradigm. Particularly in the case of those who are transgender.

[haaa0504]

The fact of the matter is someone was killed for being a subordinate "other" in society. If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.

[becher]

well, i guess mrs butler panics that the same story will happen to her - herassed and killed by long haired girls with painted fingernails and red lips!

[mitoew1]

you describe Femmes i think they'd go for her too but not in the sense you are talking about

[graykane]

In the murderers' psyches, the victim's very Being challenged the validity of their interpretive logic. They had two options: (1) to undergo a complete psychic overhall; or (2) to eliminate the excess that challenges the interpretive logic's validity. Society as a whole tends to take the easier of the two routes through other forms of negation, such as by legislating against gay marriage.

[russfloyd]

Dear GrayKane,

Logic IS interpretation.

The ONLY thing to challenge is its validity.

You should stop using unnecessary words.

Sincerely,

Reason

[graykane]

Keep leaving unsubstantive comments on other people's posts. You may win your syntactic war yet. "Interpretive logic" is a psychoanalytic term that signifies the organizational system that governs interpretation. (In other words, it differs from both "interpretation" and "logic.") The term's really quite common. Google it. And good luck in your battle against how others--even those who publish--write. You're obviously right and everyone else is wrong.

[russfloyd]

Superlative 'Unsubstantive': "Google it"

A Real Challenge, graykane:

Try to (somehow) use even MORE words... to say even less.

[ckyhimfan2004]

It seems to me, that you're more concerned with appearing an intellectual, than the topic at hand, which is the video.

You haven't fooled anyone.

[yidaki53]

I don't know. sounds jiffy.

I mean, if it's coercion to socialize people into genders,

what isn't it then to disallow people to murder in order to maintain their sense of reality.

That reasoning isn't fine imho.

Noone should be so far away from empathy that they think it's logical to kill someone/something.

[yidaki53]

The way judith sees the society of the murdered person resembles the way bruce kapferer writes about sri lanka. Violence as a way out, violence as a positive. The murder restores the control, the balance.

[7NLZTE33]

nine.l

[lorak74]

thanks for posting it

[staroluna]

The army of lemon meringue pies has been stabilized.

[felixunus]

Butler is simply wonderful. For those you haven't done so, go read "Gender Trouble", then move onto the rest of her corpus.

[CrowbarUpsideTheHead]

I gave this comment a thumbs up. I don't think I'll ever take the time to read Gender Trouble, neither that nor the rest of her "corpus" *snicker*

Of course, my concern is now whether I will be able to look back at the end of my life and feel as though it was a worthwhile one.

[notleonard]

I respect Butler's sense that gender norms are a critical, and largely unspoken, issue in our culture (and all Culture); however I think there are ways of launching a persuasive argument without translating the complexity of human life and death into Derridean newspeak. Why do you need to use the word "trace" to communicate the profundity of death? And isn't it more important that a man died, rather than that his walk was eliminated? Isn't *that* the tragedy?

[lumoa]

the tragedy is that he died because of his walk. Because that walk ofended/broke the very heart of the unspoken gender rules she (butler) speaks about.

[notleonard]

Well yeah, that's her version of the story. The tragedy being that some boys set out to destroy a walk, and accidentally annihilated a human being in the process. (Just as Oedipus sets out to discover the source of the plague, and accidentally stumbles on the true nature of his own life.)

[johnnyangst]

You go, girl!

[iheartbohoboys]

Thanks so much for posting this. Butler is amazing.

[sleepyamir]

she definitely "complies to the form of masculinity"

[lumoa]

which shows gender is not in the body

[notleonard]

But it just seems like improbable or shallow moral psychology to me, to assume that these murderous boys didn't recognize a human being there. In a way, Butler's version of the narrative renders them relatively innocent of the crime of murder, which I find upsetting.

[lumoa]

they might well have not regognized a human being there... One thing that she calls attention for is actually the norms that qualify a body to live in and be "intteligible" (is this word correct) in the world. When, for exemple, we talk about human rights, whose rights we are talking about? What we have to see is that the human seems to have a face...and we have to fight aganist this exclusion...But I wouldn´t think that they are innocent.

[notleonard]

so do you think that, had they been able to recognize a human being there, they wouldn't have killed him? i guess my point is that human beings kill other human beings with great regularity and always have, and it isn't clear to me that explaining this (using and distorting Hegel) as a consequence of insufficient recognition tells us much that's true or useful about what it means to kill.

[lumoa]

You have a point i should think about. Would they have killed him otherwise? Maybe there´s more than broken gender norms to cause this death. But still, it was there...thanks for the exchage

[0neironaut]

i have to disagree. I think its plain to see: because the boy failed to meet gender norms he WAS considered some-thing less than human. As Other, the boy became the object focus of the murderers projected "anxieties"... the boys ambiguous walk became a threat, as it disturbed the fixed and uncompromising symbolic order of the murderers view of gender "proper".

[0neironaut]

In some sense, the murderers ARE "innocent": if gender norms are culturally constructed, performative as Judith would say, then the problem is not simply a problem of *individual* judgement, but rather a problem with narrow worldviews that foreclose possibilities, or do not lend themselves to the free-play of difference and meaning.

[0neironaut]

sorry, i should also say... the *act* itself is of course atrocious. im not trying to justify the murder or brush aside human agency. Instead, i agree with Butler, but disagree with you: her morality isnt "shallow"; on the contrary, it is seeking to get at the very heart of the issue... on what conditions is such a brutal act intelligible?  what provokes such exclusionary behaviour?

[notleonard]

I think what this account leaves out is the basic fact that hatred, even murderous hatred, is not a perversion of human nature but an aspect of it. I think that this is a lot more self-evident than "the disruption of the free-play of difference and meaning," which I think is the way you're trying to account for the same phenomenon. I hear a longing for a pseudo-science of morality, a system outside the experience of moral judgments themselves, in Butler and some other post-modern moral thinkers.

[notleonard]

Oppression may be systematic, but a moral theory grounded in that conviction is going to do better work changing things than describing things. And I remain unconvinced that radical academic leftists have made a bit of difference in this country politically or legally. If she were head of a queer political party, this clip would have a whole different meaning for me. Her own utterances perform a revolution that will never come into being.

[0neironaut]

Hey guess what, there is a world outside The USA. You just dont get it, and you have an obviously unmoving opinion based on your misrecognition.

[littlechao999]

I think we're made to think there isn't; s'why our country is never going to be on top.

[28g34ajbsd]

Marx says hi :P

[0neironaut]

im sorry, what? pseudo-scientific longing?  no, absolutely not. "hatred an aspect of human nature".... "nature"?! hahhahaah ahh aah ah haah ahhah. Youre funny. And its clear that shant waste my time.

[notleonard]

Well look, this is Youtube, not exactly a forum designed for the robust exchange of ideas (at least in words.) If you need to hear what I have to say from someone in the theory tradition, read Hannah Arendt on violence, Melanie Klein on early childhood development, or Simone Weil on the Iliad. I'm sorry that you feel like hollow, superior laughter is the best way to deal with a point of view you disagree with (or don't understand.) As if the problem is simply that I'm too stupid.

[billybobhortons]

The thing is, you first commented this video because you were concerned about the question of responsibility on part of 2 murderers. You were worried that Butlers explanation is too simple, and that it rids the 2 kids of guilt and responsibility.

And then, rather than provide me with any solid reasons, you just disagree by offering the silliest claims: "psuedo-science", "human-nature", "Queer political party", and lumping "post-modern... academic leftist... moral theorists".

[notleonard]

To be brief--what bothers me is not the answer that Butler gives, exactly, but the question she chooses to ask, and in her role as an educator and researcher in the humanities asks her students and colleagues to ask with her. That is to say, she doesn't ask "Why do human beings sometimes kill each other?" She asks, "Why do gay people sometimes get killed?" I'm a gay man, but I think the first question just matters so many orders of magnitude more, and we all spend so little time asking it.

[mitoew1]

she asks the question as to why gay people get killed, as you suggest, by her location. to answer the question why humans sometimes kill other humans you'd be asking about the 'sometimes', and that is what JB is doing. so you ask a question answer the reasons for killing; guilt, jealous, greed, hatred, ect.

[billybobhortons]

there is an obvious irony: "naturalizing" violence rids the murderers of responsibility all together! You dont get angry at a lion for hunting a gazelle, for hes simply doing what lions do.

"queer political parties" is probably the most absurd and antithetical suggestion, in regards to Butlers philosophy. It seems to me that youre wholly ignorant of her work, her own experiences, and the impact of her writing.

[notleonard]

No, I'm not ignorant, I'm just being deliberately ornery. It's a bad habit of mine, it's rude, I'll try to stop. But I do sincerely have trouble understanding your argument about "naturalizing." Of course I'd be angry with the lion, if I loved that gazelle, or gazelles in general, or deer which the gazelle reminded me of...even if I know that it's irrational for me to be angry at the lion, I might still feel angry.

[notleonard]

The point of that being that to explain this murder of the case of ideologies operating through bodies doesn't do justice to the fact that it is a story about actual whole human beings. I think it's the hidden suggestion of a martyrdom that Butler introduces here that really drives me so crazy, as if the best way to pay tribute in sympathy to the suffering of the deceased would be to describe him and his killers as the vehicle for ideological conflict.

[mitoew1]

Then we ask, why this hatred, oh, i get it, it's the way he swooshed. then we ask, why this hatred of swoosh? and we say it's unpleasing to the eye (on a western male). then we ask, why...is it unpleasing to the eye (for these men who kill). does anyone have any answers? JB does, she suggests something to do with masculinity (in the west(?))

[notleonard]

Part three: The way she presents this case seems like a way of controlling significance rather than generating it, as does the jargon-inf(l)ected language of her prose.

[28g34ajbsd]

In order to antagonize someone, you must dehumanize him/her. Be it "enemy", "terrorist", "godless dirt-worshippin' heathen cocksuckers" or "faggot", the strategy is the same. The way to end that is to understand multiple points of views and not label anybody, instead of typical shallow moralizing (which is exactly what Butler doesn't do).

[notleonard]

So I guess you've never had a fight with a parent, a sibling or a lover. There have definitely been moments in my life when I've wanted to kill someone I love. I think most people have those moments. Antagonizing is not the same as oppressing; free people do still fight with each other; a world without anger is a world of the dead.

[28g34ajbsd]

I get angry just reading this post, dude :)

But I'm not throwing someone offa bridge just cuz he/she's different.

[micaa93]

i totally agree

[daddysambiguity]

Wow. I love Butler, from a theoretical POV. I have never seen hir, though!

[badharem]

thank you! but where's the rest of the video?

[herma57]

Thanks again

[nenejeolas]

sthrengt limits and doing a better world

nene jeolás

[transftmgay]

i have the entiere video here if you want

go on my blog see videos and you have 1 hour of Judith ( desole pour mon anglais tu vas sur mon blog tu cliques sur liens vidéos et tu peux voir toute l 'interview de judith Butler )

[ariel555555]

excuse moi, mais je ne truve pas le video de Judith. Il n'y a pas de "liens vidéos"...

[nosferatudasvampir]

Sorry, but I searched and did not see it. Could you link it directly here? Thanks!

[rottentwapple]

Butler is my idol. Thx for putting up this clip. Her speech could almost be transcribed and published as a book. Amazing!!