One reason to militate against this framing is because trans activism is linked to queer activism and to feminist legacies that remain very alive today. Filed under: Groupthink gender identity JK Rowling Judith Butler New Statesman Transphobia. ... September 23, 2020… And does she see a way to break the impasse? 2020 10. When he calls for an end to counting votes (much like his call to end Covid testing), he seeks to keep a reality from materializing and to maintain control over what is perceived as true or false. 2006. Thirty years ago, the philosopher Judith Butler*, now 64, published a book that revolutionised popular attitudes on gender. 2005. To circumvent that outcome, he wants to stop the count, even if citizens are deprived of their right to have their vote count. If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? Find this book ... Judith Butler’s The Force of Non-Violence argues that this ambivalence should not undermine ‘the task of critical thought in order to expose the instrumental use of that distinction that is both false and harmful’ (7). Description: Brooklyn : Verso Books, 2020. judith butler. But when the president declares himself the winner and there is general laughter and even his friends call him a cab, then he is finally alone with his hallucinations of himself as a powerful destroyer. So I am not in favour of neutralising the strong political demands for justice on the part of subjugated people. Let us also remember, though, the threats against trans people in places like Brazil, the harassment of trans people in the streets and on the job in places like Poland and Romania – or indeed right here in the US. What do you have to say about violent or abusive language used online against people like JK Rowling? Not only has more than half of the country responded with revulsion or rejection, but the shameless spectacle has all along depended on a lurid picture of the left: moralistic, punitive and judgmental, repressive and ready to deprive the general populace of every ordinary pleasure and freedom. She asks if we need to have “a settled idea of women, or of any gender, in order to advance feminist goals,” to which I would say, obviously. Kaliforniya Üniversitesi, Berkeley'de Retorik ve Karşılaştırmalı Edebiyat bölümlerinde profesör olmanın yanı sıra European Graduate School'da Hannah Arendt Felsefe Profesörü'dür. In an open letter she published in June, JK Rowling articulated the concern that this would "throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman", potentially putting women at risk of violence. I know “downfall” is usually reserved for kings and tyrants, but we are operating in that theatre, except here the king is at once the clown, and the man in power is also a child given over to tantrum with no discernible adults in the room. We tend to say that one person should be treated the same as another, and we measure whether or not equality has been achieved by comparing individual cases. AF: What do you think would break this impasse in feminism over trans rights? If he has to lose, he will try to take democracy down with him. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia. Philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler. Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence. In the light of the bitter arguments playing out within feminism now, does the same still apply? Democracy requires a good challenge, and it does not always arrive in soft tones. JB: My point in the recent book is to suggest that we rethink equality in terms of interdependency. JB: I am not aware that terf is used as a slur. In March 1945, when both the allied forces and the Red Army had vanquished every Nazi defensive stronghold, Hitler resolved to destroy the nation itself, ordering a destruction of transportation and communication systems, industrial sites, and public utilities. We may finally have the chance to let Trump become a passing spectacle of a president who, in seeking to destroy the laws that support democracy, became its greatest threat, opening the way for some rest from what has seemed an interminable exhaustion. This practice has not fully accomplished its perverse liberation. 2012. Judith Butler The Force of Nonviolence, online event, Whitechapel Gallery. If not for Butler’s work, “you wouldn’t have the version of genderqueer-ness that we now have,” Jack Halberstam, a gender-studies professor at Columbia, once said. The Ethical in the Political, Verso, February 2020 Towards a form of aggressive nonviolence. AF: This year, you published, The Force of Nonviolence. The Force of Nonviolence argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a … We are still frightened to have seen the fragility of the laws that ground and orient us as a democracy. 2011. And yet others do not wish to be challenged on their racism. If trans-exclusionary radical feminists understood themselves as sharing a world with trans people, in a common struggle for equality, freedom from violence, and for social recognition, there would be no more trans-exclusionary radical feminists. Issue 89, 3rd July 2020 Judith Butler | American social and political philosopher, and co-director of the International Consortium for Critical Theory Programs, whose first book 'Subjects of Desire' investigated Hegelian reflections in twentieth-century France. Some of us are shocked that he is willing to go this far, but this has been his mode of operating from the outset of his political career. We are equally dependent, that is, equally social and ecological, and that means we cease to understand ourselves only as demarcated individuals. Women should not engage in the forms of phobic caricature by which they have been traditionally demeaned. Judith Butler’s new book shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. JB: It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists' return to biological essentialism. It asked how we define “the category of women” and, as a consequence, who it is that feminism purports to fight for. Litigation becomes the ultimate field of law’s power, and all other kinds of law, even constitutional rights, are now reduced to negotiable items within that field. His allegedly last words: “what an artist dies in me!”. The excited fantasy of his supporters was that, with Trump, shame could be overcome, and there would be a “freedom” from the left and its punitive restrictions on speech and conduct, a permission finally to destroy environmental regulations, international accords, spew racist bile and openly affirm persistent forms of misogyny. Bu yazı, Judith Butler’ın “ The Force of Nonviolence ” ( Şiddetsizliğin Gücü ) adlı yeni kitabından bir bölümün Türkçeye çevrilmiş halidir. | Summary: “Situating non-violence at the cross-roads of the ethical and political, The Force of Non-Violence A peculiarly contemporary form of media-driven narcissism thus morphs into a lethal form of tyranny. JB: If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. Feminists know that women with ambition are called “monstrous” or that women who are not heterosexual are pathologised. As Trump campaigned to crowds excited by racist violence, he also promised them protection from the threat of a communist regime (Biden?) Most influential people in 2020 in the contemporary artworld. And by “women” I mean all those who identify in that way. “Judith Butler is quite simply one of the most probing, challenging, and influential thinkers of our time.” – J. M. Bernstein Judith Butler’s new book shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. — Katherine Cross (@Quinnae_Moon) September 23, 2020. yes, judith butler is very articulate, but what she's actually saying isn't that different from what trans people say all the time. Rather, we get to make a political claim to live freely and without fear of discrimination and violence against the genders that we are. By gender freedom, I do not mean we all get to choose our gender. That was before I read this interview; I won’t trouble with her again. And by “women” I mean all those who identify in that way. But what has always been distinctive of the Trump regime is that the executive power of the government has consistently attacked the laws of the country at the same that he claims to represent law and order. I had gathered a daunting impression of Judith Butler as an intellectual heavyweight. We fight those misrepresentations because they are false and because they reflect more about the misogyny of those who make demeaning caricatures than they do about the complex social diversity of women. 10. 271 | Judith Butler: Then and Now August 13, 2020 by Catherine Carr in politics This week two conversations with the feminist theorist and writer Judith Butler: one recorded the week Trump won the presidency in 2016 and one recorded a few days ago, as … I disagree with JK Rowling's view on trans people, but I do not think she should suffer harassment and threats. Academic - Preeminent American gender theorist. The philosopher and gender theorist discusses tensions in the feminist movement over trans rights. Judith Butler Wants Us to Reshape Our Rage. AF: In Gender Trouble you asked whether, by seeking to represent a particular idea of women, feminists participate in the same dynamics of oppression and heteronormativity that they are trying to shift. September 24, 2020. There is no legal norm that cannot be litigated under Trump. Her idea of social construction is so totalizing that even biological sex itself is constructed. Women should not engage in the forms of phobic caricature by which they have been traditionally demeaned. So if we are going to object to harassment and threats, as we surely should, we should also make sure we have a large picture of where that is happening, who is most profoundly affected, and whether it is tolerated by those who should be opposing it. [1] Kaliforniya Üniversitesi, Irvine hemşireleri üniversitenin Tıp Merkezi önünde nöbet değişimi sırasında mumışığı eylemindeyken, 20 Nisan 2020. But disagreements over biological essentialism remain, as evidenced by the tensions over trans rights within the feminist movement. Many people who were assigned “female” at birth never felt at home with that assignment, and those people (including me) tell all of us something important about the constraints of traditional gender norms for many who fall outside its terms. The tyrant spiraling down calls for an end to testing, to counting, to science and even to electoral law, to all those inconvenient methods of verifying what is and is not true in order to spin his truth one more time. JB: I have mixed feelings about that letter. I put the question that way… to remind us that feminists are committed to thinking about the diverse and historically shifting meanings of gender, and to the ideals of gender freedom. But what if the individual – and individualism – is part of the problem? My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. JB: I think we are living in anti-intellectual times, and that this is evident across the political spectrum. We know that Trump will try to do anything to stay in power, to avoid that ultimate catastrophe in life – becoming “a loser”. Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminist, queer, and literary theory. About Judith Butler With the publication of Gender Trouble in 1990, Judith Butler became an academic celebrity. In 2014, TIME declared a “Transgender Tipping Point”. butler'in lacan olan ve olmayan taraflarini düsünmeye basladigimizda butler'in hakikate ulasmak icin pek caba fsargfetmedigini sadece "bir diamanda galas performansi" ile sorusturdugunu görürüz. I think this may be wrong. Title: The force of nonviolence : an ethico-political bind / Judith Butler. Bu yazı Kasım 22, 2020 tarihinde Universus Sosyal Araştırmalar Merkezi tarafından yazılmıştır. It is one thing to posture as the kind of guy who would do untold damage to democracy to hang on to power; it is quite another to make that show into reality, initiating the lawsuits that would dismantle the electoral norms and laws that guarantee voting rights, striking at the very framework of US democracy. Alona Ferber is Special Projects Editor at the New Statesman. 10 in 2020. AF: Threats of violence and abuse would seem to take these “anti-intellectual times” to an extreme. He has shown that he is willing to manipulate and destroy the electoral system if he has to. But given that he does not have the electoral numbers, why would he stop it? 2017 48. Gender Trouble, the work she is perhaps best known for, introduced ideas of gender as performance. And though Trump is not Hitler, and electoral politics is not precisely military war (not yet civil war, at any rate), there is a general logic of destruction that kicks in when the downfall of the tyrant seems nearly certain. Judith Butler; "Bu metin Türkiye’ye 2017 yılında, pek çok demokratik hakkın ve emelin dehşetengiz bir şekilde yok edildiği, pek çok insanın ..... 19 Aralık 2017 Salı Call from Judith Butler for Solidarity with Academics for Peace If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? But the idea of law as something that secures our rights and guides our action has been transformed into a field of litigation. We live in time; we err, sometimes seriously; and if we are lucky, we change precisely because of interactions that let us see things differently. Author Naomi Cunningham Posted on September 26, 2020 October 3, 2020 Tags feminist philosophy Get the New Statesman’s Morning Call email. Names: Butler, Judith, 1956- author. The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. Butler recently exchanged emails with the New Statesman about this issue. A law is not there to be honored or followed, but as a potential site of litigation. Bu yazı Kasım 29, 2020 tarihinde Universus Sosyal Araştırmalar Merkezi tarafından yazılmıştır. Some of them have opposed legal rights for Palestine. The only way that contradiction makes sense is if law and order are exclusively embodied by him. Even Fox does not accept his claim, and even Pence says every vote is to be counted. Thirty years ago, the philosopher Judith Butler*, now 64, published a book that revolutionised popular attitudes on gender. Hitler’s missive was called “Destructive Measures on Reich Territory” but it was remembered as the “Nero Decree”, invoking the Roman emperor who killed family and friends, punishing those perceived as disloyal, in his ruthless desire to hold onto power and punish those perceived as disloyal. He goes to court to compel the conclusion he wants. We know that Trump will try to do anything to stay in power, to avoid that ultimate catastrophe in life – becoming a ‘loser’, Last modified on Thu 21 Jan 2021 03.19 GMT. See all our reading for International Women's Day 2020 here . 2015. It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society. What is less clear is whether he can do what he threatens to do, or whether the “threat” is left hanging in the air as an impotent command. First, one does not have to be a woman to be a feminist, and we should not confuse the categories. Judith Butler tore J.K. Rowling’s transphobia to pieces in an epic clapback "I think we are living in anti-intellectual times...." By Alex Bollinger Friday, September 25, 2020 It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women... Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. When we went to the polls, we were not voting for Joe Biden/Kamala Harris (centrists who disavowed the most progressive health and financial plans of both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) as much as we were voting for the possibility of voting at all, voting for the present and future institution of electoral democracy. The quickness of social media allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful debate. Butler’s career is all about this kind of solipsistic disconnection. How does Butler, who is Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature at Berkeley, see this debate today? This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. . AF: You have spoken about the backlash against “gender ideology”, and wrote an essay for the New Statesman about it in 2019. His appeal to nearly half of the country has depended upon cultivating a practice that licenses an exhilarated form of sadism freed from any shackles of moral shame or ethical obligation. Judith Butler: I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. Many of those who had not suffered disenfranchisement before were not even aware of how their lives rested on a basic trust in the legal framework. He can litigate as much as he wants, but if the lawyers scatter, and the courts, weary, no longer listen, he will find himself ruling only the island called Trump as a mere show of reality. As so many times before in the Trump presidency, we are left to wonder whether he is bluffing, scheming, acting (putting on a show) or acting (doing real damage). Further, it argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a passive practice that emanates… Bring it on, Sleepy Joe! The only reason the pandemic is bad in the US, he argues, is that there is testing which furnishes numerical results. Gender Trouble, the work she is perhaps best known for, introduced ideas of gender as performance. September 24, 2020. questingvole. 2008. If there were no way to know how bad it is, then apparently it would not be bad. 2013. 2020. Her latest book is The Force of Nonviolence (Verso), Don't underestimate the threat to American democracy at this moment | Corey Brettschneider, ‘ There is no legal norm that cannot be litigated under Trump.’, US election 2020 live: follow the latest news, results and reaction, Trump v Biden – full results as they come in.