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Judith Butler Biography

Judith Butler FBA (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. Since 1993, she has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is now Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory. She is also the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School.

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Judith Butler Quotes

Parody by itself is not subversive, and there must be a way to understand what makes certain kinds of parodic repetitions effectively disruptive, truly troubling, and which repetitions become domesticated and recirculated as instruments of cultural hegemony

Hegemony, Instruments, Kind, Understand, Way

It seems to me that "Gender trouble" will always be important to try and open up our ideas of what gender is. So, I don't know if it's revolutionary, but maybe it still has something to say to those issues.

Ideas, Issues, Important, Revolutionary, Open

The Gulf War was a clear precedent as well, and it let us begin to understand how the US government would go to war to secure strategic oil reserves and potential markets.

Government, Gulf, Oil, Potential, Strategic, War

Lacanian theory must be understood as a kind of “slave morality.

Kind, Morality, Slave, Theory

I do think it's important that we experiment with new vocabularies. That new words help us conceptualize our social existence in a different way.

Help, Important, Social, Thinking, Vocabulary, Words

I think, what I want to say is that yes, my ideas have travelled into popular culture they also emerged from popular culture in a way, or from the general public as you put it. But not as a program.

Culture, Emerged, General, Ideas, Think, Thinking

In the first instance, performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate ‘act,’ but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names

Firsts, Names, Practice, Produces, Reiterative

I certainly don't mean to suggest that all investigative journalism prior to 9
11 in the US was praiseworthy. But there were more examples to which one could point, and there were at last some activist photographers who understood that getting information into the public sphere in spite of military censorship was a right and obligation within democracy. That strain in war journalism did nearly vanish during that time.

Investigative, Mean, Military, Right, Understood, War

The pleasurable part of public mourning can also lead to a sense of self-sanctification that justifies in advance any war effort, whether or not the target and destruction are in any way related to the initial event.

Mourning, Pleasurable, Self, Sense, War

If you are asking whether states and state actors can only respond through revenge, then you are suggesting that diplomatic solutions are hopeless.

Actors, Asking, Diplomatic, Hopeless, Revenge

A certain kind of permission is given to live differently, to conceptualize and to act according to a new conceptualization.

Act, Given, Kind, Permission

I think we are affected by others in all kinds of ways. I do understand what it's like to wish to control the conditions under which we can be affected by other human beings, but none of us really are.

Human, Think, Thinking, Way, Wish

I wonder about economic sanctions, though, since that is a way that states engage in boycotts against one another.

Against, Boycotts, Economic Sanctions, Engage, Way, Wonder

Let me say one thing to clarify my position. I think we can take distance from norm but I think we are also mired in norm, "empêtrés", I think you say in French. And I think the choices we can make are only in a certain struggle with the norms out of which we're constituted.

Distance, Empetres, Struggle, Thing, Thinking

If you have a conversation "Why is it you think masculinity is linked with heterosexuality? Or why is it you think masculinity is linked with sexual dominance or the sexually active position in the sex act?" If you start to ask people those questions, then they realize "Maybe gender is not one thing. Maybe I have collected a number of things under one category and I've made a mistake".

Category, Mistake, Questions, Sex, Start, Thinking

What we need are poems that interrogate the world of pronouns, open up possibilities of language and life; forms of politics that support and encourage self-affirmation.

Self, Support, Needs, Forms, Life, World

I think I never expected "Gender trouble" to have any particularly revolutionary effect so whatever effects it has, I'm always surprised.

Effects, Revolutionary, Thinking, Trouble

Sexual harassment law is very important. But I think it would be a mistake if the sexual harassment law movement is the only way in which feminism is known in the media.

Harassment, Known, Media, Mistake, Movement, Thinking

We have to have a very strong criticism of modes of cooperation that entrench inequality.

Cooperation, Criticism, Inequality, Modes, Strong

It is always brave to insist on undergoing transformations that feel necessary and right even when there are so many obstructions to doing so, including people and institutions who seek to pathologize or criminalize such important acts of self-definition. I know that for some feels less brave than necessary, but we all have to defend those necessities that allow us to live and breathe in the way that feels right to us. Surgical intervention can be precisely what a trans person needs – it is also not always what a trans person needs.

Allow, Brave, Important, Necessary, People, Seek

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