Judith Butler

Judith Butler

Philosopher, Gender Theorist

Judith Butler is a prominent philosopher and gender theorist known for her influential work on gender performativity and queer theory.

Thinking People Mean Way War Important
Born
March 24, 1956
Quotes
194
Rank
#4346

Quote collection

Judith Butler quotes (page 7 of 10)

194 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"I am not sure that I know enough about the pre-history of 9/11 to agree or disagree. But I did think at the time that the [George W.] Bush administration took a number of cues from the Israeli government, not only by drawing on and intensifying anti-Arab racism, but by insisting that the attack on US government and financial buildings was an attack on "democracy" and by invoking "security at all costs" to wage war without a clear focus (why the Taliban?), and by suspending both constitutional rights and the regular protocol for congressional approval for declaring war."

War Thinking Rights
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"I consider both the West Bank and Gaza to be colonised, even though Gaza is not occupied in the same way that the West Bank is. The Israeli government and military control all goods that pass in or out of that area, and they have restricted employment and building material that would allow Palestinians to rebuild homes and structures that were destroyed by bombardment."

Military Home Government
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"It is clear that whatever language of democracy [Barack] Obama and his administration use is very tactically deployed, and has as its main aim the extension of US power and interests."

Democracy Use Administration
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"A different kind of pleasure surfaced in the aftermath, the pleasure of seeing the towers fall time and again, the experience of being entranced by the visual spectacle, and then also the very graphic forms of public mourning for exemplary citizens (taking place at the same time as the refusal to mourn the undocumented, the foreign, gay and lesbian lives lost there, for example). I am not sure that the guilt over the pleasure re-installed the good citizen."

Fall Gay Mourning
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"I'm no great fan of the phallus, and have made my own views known on this subject before, so I do not propose a return to a notion of the phallus as the third term in any and all relations of desire."

Views Desire Fans
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"I did not mean to argue that gender is fluid and changeable (mine certainly is not). I only meant to say that we should all have greater freedoms to define and pursue our lives without pathologization, de-realization, harassment, threats of violence, violence, and criminalization. I join in the struggle to realize such a world."

Struggle Mean Violence
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"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
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"One struggles always with these norms. So one doesn't construct oneself freely without respect to norm but one works with one's historical situation and sees where there might be some play. Where there might be some freedom to move."

Struggle Moving Play
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"I want my arguments to be good arguments on the basis of what I actually have to say."

Want Argument Be Good
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"It seems, though, that historically we have now reached a position in which Jews cannot legitimately be understood always and only as presumptive victims."

Victim Jew Understood
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"I think that public grieving is a good thing. People need to be grieved; loss needs to be acknowledged publicly, because it helps to confer a sense of reality on the loss but also because it makes it known that this was a real life."

Real Loss Thinking
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"Look, "Gender trouble" includes a critique of the idea that there are two ideal bodily forms, two ideal morphologies: the masculine and the feminine. I want to suggest that today the intersex movement is very engaged with criticizing that idea."

Ideas Two Looks
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"Maybe we need to start with the rethinking of what is "west" and what is "non-west." It seems to me that there are any number of populations who already cross that divide, and we could probably point to several existing states that belong exclusively neither to one category nor to the other. Do we use these terms to designate geographical realities, geopolitical ones, or perhaps sites of power, exploitation, orientalism that move through space and time in ways that have to be tracked historically."

Moving Reality Numbers
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"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."

Military Order Land
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"It's not like it's a brand new vocabulary that permits to have a new reality. It's rather a new vocabulary that lets us see that our lives have always been more complex than traditional categories allow. So, I think, you know, maybe the introduction of new words permits us to rethink what we've taken for granted about what forms bodies take, what the name is for certain kinds of sexual, intimate relations, how we think of a life."

Taken Reality Thinking
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"For instance, when "Gender trouble " is translated into Japanese, it produces a problem of vocabulary and a way of thinking about a quality for instance that is somewhat controversial in academic circles and also outside of the academy. In other places, "Gender trouble" is old."

Thinking Circles Vocabulary
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

""Gender trouble" is old. I mean, you know, in New York, it is old. I mean it's sweet. I mean people are really kind about it but it's like a former love affair you had and you're done."

Sweet New York Mean
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"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"."

Sex Mistake Thinking
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"I think there is no one answer. It is still a struggle, there are tensions and I'm sure there are many people who would like to see these questions laid to rest or cease to be posed altogether."

Struggle Thinking People
Read quote 3 likes
Judith Butler Philosopher, Gender Theorist
Popular

"I think we have to ask, not, what "Gender trouble" is today but where "Gender trouble" is today."

Thinking Today Trouble
Read quote 3 likes