Book Description
With the same intellectual courage with which she addressed issues of gender in two earlier best-selling Routledge books, Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, philosopher Judith Butler turns her attention to speech and conduct in contemporary political life, looking at several efforts to target speech as conduct that has become subject to political debate and regulation. Reviewing hate speech regulations, anti-pornography arguments, and recent controversies about gay self-declaration in the military, Judith Butler asks whether and how language acts in each of these cultural sites.

Excitable Speech examines the issue of the threatening action of words. The book suggests that although language is a kind of performance which has the power to produce political effects and injuries, it is best understood as a scene of injury rather than its cause. Rather, Butler warns us againts a "sovereign" view of language, in which thewords we speak are construed as unequivocal forms of conduct. She shows that the repetition of injurious language can be the occasion of its redefinition.

Butler illuminates the efficacy of injurious language, covering speech act therapy in both philosophical and literary traditions, Supreme Court cases, hate speech and pornography critics, and recent bans on gay speech in the military. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Butler and Agency
Butler is a difficult author to understand, particularly if you don't have a background in theories of performativity. I recommend reading JL Austin's How to Do Things with Words and Derrida's Limited, Inc either before or alongside this book. She also draws heavily from Foucault and Althusser.

Excitable Speech is powerful for its account of how subjects are formed through the address of hate speech and how, through this very address, the conditions for the subject's agency are enabled.

A previous reviewer pointed out that for Butler "the subject can only exhibit agency in and through language" and that agency in Butler's account emerges ex nihilio. This is a misunderstanding of both Butler and poststructural theories of agency in general. For Butler, agency is not produced by an autonomous actor; nor is it contained to language.

Drawing from Derrida and Bourdieu, Butler's point is that agency arises from social iterability and the fact that every re-iteration opens the potential for change and subversion. Such iteration, however, is part of the structure of signification broadly conceived (not simply language) and is not the conscious effort of an individual agent. Thus, Butler points to the effect of the body and how bodies are implicated in acts of speech and iteration.

In this text Butler is perhaps at her most cogent and most optimistic reach. I would recommend picking this up for anyone serious about theories of performativity.

Irascible Speech
Several years ago, I saw a film entitled Total Eclipse, which is a dramatization of the complex and ill-fated relationship between Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, two nineteenth-century French poets. In one scene, a manic Rimbaud, played by the pubescently-challenged Leonardo Dicaprio, exclaims that "The only unendurable thing about life is that nothing is unendurable" (I may have misquoted this slightly; as I said, its been several years since I saw the film). As I recall, the film was rather silly by and large, although I found that this particular exclamation had the ring of solid truth (incidentally, at the time I had been an autodidactic devotee of Nietzsche's philosophy). I subsequently incorporated it into my own repertoire of pithy aphorisms, held at the ready the appropriate occasion present itself.
However, by reading Butler's Excitable Speech in tandem with a whole host of other works of a theoretical/critical sort, I came to realize that there is in fact one thing that is truly unendurable for what appears to be just about every latter-day theoretician: viz., poststructuralist discursive determinism, especially the agentless, discursively animated individual that such determinism entails. Hence Butler's insistence upon the fundamental citationality of speech, which strikes me as the continental philosopher's version of the notion of "weak voluntarism" popular among certain ethicists of an Anglo-American bent. Butler's notion of the subject's agency is certainly a qualified one, in that the subject can only exhibit agency in and through language. But nevertheless, it appears that Butler considers this deterministic influence of language to be less than rigidly absolute. Agency does not in fact emerge ex nihilo, because it is impossible to produce positive effects by using absolutely nothing. The subject must have at her disposal something with which to demonstrate her agency, because agency is observed through its effects--just as "government" [an abstraction] is manifested only through people's comportment in a manner understood to be in accordance with the principles of such an abstraction. Language is a medium as well as a matrix. However, if agency is manifested empirically, that is, through effects, then it follows that agency is a posteriori synthetic, because we observers ascribe causal necessity to the action in relation to its source, the performer of the action. Therefore, I remain uncertain as to how these effects point to a capacity for agency that is intrinsic to the subject as constitutive of the subject a priori. Perhaps the answer lies in the distinction Butler draws between "agency" and "mastery," the latter of which connotes an absolute agency which is inimical to the "weak voluntarism" thesis she advances in Excitable Speech."

dilettantism at its worst
The results of Butler's attempt to tackle the very serious issue of speech rights are disappointing in the extreme.With no legal background whatsoever and a myopic philosophical vision which seems ingorant of theliberal tradition upon which the right of free speech is grounded, Butlerprovides an obfuscted discussion (and that's all it is, a discussion) ofthe issue that is at the best of times, irrelevant, and at the worst oftimes, offensively misleading.The book is worthwhile only as an exampleof what happens when a postmodern thinker in the French tradition tries totackle a subject outside the race/power/gender/subjectivity canon outlinedby the philosophers of the 1960s.If you have an appetite for readingphilosophical trainwrecks, then by all means read it.If you wantsomething serious on the issue of free speech, look elsewhere.

Butler's most "grounded" work
Butler does a good job grounding speech act theory in political and legalissues, particularly racist and homophobic "hate speech."Shetakes Derrida's theory of iterability and shows how repetition of discoursein new contexts can be a means of resistance.For Butler, this is veryapplied and I liked it much better than Gender trouble.

When words injure, what do we do?
An insightful and thoroughly researched study of the social, political, and legal ramification of not only hate speech but discourse concerning the lingusitics of hate.Butler questions the contemporary practices of the adjudication of speech which seeks to define what is correct speech and what is proscribable under law.If words are legally indistinguishable from conduct, then, Butler asks, is law not complicit in the wounds that words cause?Challenging reading ... Read more

Book Description

In such works asGender Trouble andBodies That Matter Judith Butler broke new ground in understanding the construction and performance of identities. While Butler's writings have been crucial and often controversial in the development of feminist and queer theory,Bodily Citations is the first anthology centered on applying her theories to religion. In this collection scholars in anthropology, biblical studies, theology, ethics, and ritual studies use Butler's work to investigate a variety of topics in biblical, Islamic, Buddhist, and Christian traditions. The authors shed new light on Butler's ideas and highlight their ethical and political import. They also broaden the scope of religious studies as they bring it into conversation with feminist and queer theory.

Subjects discussed include the woman's mosque movement in Cairo, the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, the possibility of queer ethics, religious ritual, and biblical constructions of sexuality.

Contributors include: Karen Trimble Alliaume, Lewis University; Teresa Hornsby, Drury University; Amy Hollywood, Harvard Divinity School; Christina Hutchins, Pacific School of Religion; Saba Mahmood, University of California, Berkeley; Susanne Mrozik, Mount Holyoke College; Claudia Schippert, University of Central Florida; Rebecca Schneider, Brown University; Ken Stone, Chicago Theological Seminary

Book Description

Judith Butler's work on gender, sexuality, identity, and the body has proved massively influential across a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Yet it is also notoriously difficult to access.

This key book provides a comprehensive introduction to Butler's work, plus a critical examination of it and its precursors, both feminist (including Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray), and non-feminist (including Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida). The volume covers such topics as:

• gender as performance and performativity
• sociological notions of performance
• the materiality of the body and the role of biology
• power, identity and social regulation
• subjectivity, agency and feminist political practice.

A comprehensive introduction to Butlers work, this book also covers melancholia and gender identity, performativity and 'race', social change and transformation, and Butlers shifting relation to psychoanalysis. Clearly laid out to cover key themes for a student audience, this key text will be an essential read for undergraduates in the fields of gender, psychoanalysis and sociology.

Book Description

The first to use Judith Butlers work as a reading of how the legal subject is formed, this book traces how Butler comes to the themes of ethics, law and politics analyzing their interrelation and explaining how they relate to Butlers question of how people can have more liveable and viable lives.

Acknowledging the potency and influence of Butlers concept of gender as process, which occupies a well developed and well discussed position in current literature, Elena Loizidou argues that the possibility of people having more liveable and viable lives is articulated by Butler within the parameters of a sustained agonistic relationship between the three spheres of ethics, law and politics.

Suggesting that Butlers rounded understanding of the interrelationship of these three spheres will enable critical legal scholarship, as well as critical theory more generally, to consider how the question of lifes unsustainable conditions can be rethought and redressed, this book is a key read for all students of legal ethics, political philosophy and social theory.

Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Judith P. Butler, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 2326 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Customer Reviews (2)

Pseudoscientific and ridiculous
In this book, Rosa Lee tries to argue that gender is not a social construction (an interesting thesis that seems highly relevant to modern feminism) through transgender theory and---here is where it all breaks down---quantum physics. Somehow Lee got the idea that quantum mechanics (she makes frequent analogies to physics she clearly doesn't understand) could be used to explain away the more grievous logical errors in her ultimate conclusion: "society is a contruction of gender."

Lee writes: "The patriarcy deliberately planted the philosophical seeds of post-structuralist feminism to distract feminists from reality's true nature[...]." Her entire understanding of her opposition is limited to this sort of absurd conspiracy-theory.

Read this book if you want to think
Rosa Lee's "Why Feminists Are Wrong" touches upon so many things--things that aren't necessarily simple. Many times while reading this book I was forced to pause, and think. As a feminist, I do hate when flaws are exposed, but Rosa Lee does it in a way where you think, "Yes, she is quite right." And you realize that the way feminism is constructed is not always right. Lee touches upon things beyond gender--yet ties it all in together, as social constructions are all related. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Book Description

"For several years," write the editors of What's Left of Theory, "a debate on the politics of theory has been conducted energetically within literary studies. The terms of the debate, however, are far from clear.What is meant by politics? What is meant by theory?"

What's Left of Theory is a vigorous engagement with that thorniest of critical questions: how today are theory and progressive thought connected? Michael Warner, activist and critic, examines 'zones of privacy and zones of theory' while law professor Janet Halley considers theory and its applicability to sex harassment. Jeff Nunokawa examines Oscar Wilde, Marjorie Levinson reads Elizabeth Bishop alongside National Geographic; John Brenkman considers 'extreme criticism', Michael Berube the 'future of contingency'; William Connolly addresses the matter of secularism, Gayatri Spivak explores what she calls 'theory-remains', and Jonathan Culler demonstrates once again his gift for explaining the complex in an essay that identifies 'the literary in theory'.

Editors Butler, Guillory, and Thomas have brought together not only outstanding questioners, but outstanding questions. As their introduction puts it, "Are there ways of pursuing a politically reflective literary analysis that have definitively left theory behind, and must 'theory' be left behind for left literary analysis to emerge? Has the study of literature passed beyond its encounter with theory? If so, in passing beyond theory, has it remained unchanged? Does the recent cry for a 'return to literature' signal the surpassing of theory, the fact that literature remains after theory? Does literature remain (the same) after theory?" For students of literature and the humanities in general, these questions are not only left: they endure.

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Shakespeare Studies, published by Associated University Presses on January 1, 2002. The length of the article is 3283 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Desiring Women Writing: English Renaissance Examples.(Book Review)
Author: Judith Butler
Publication: Shakespeare Studies (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2002
Publisher: Associated University Presses
Page: 234(10)

Article Type: Book Review

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