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Judith Butler

Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at Berkeley, is writing a book on the critique of state violence in Jewish thought.

From the London Review dated 21 August 2003

No, it’s not anti-semitic

“If we think that to criticise Israeli violence, or to call for economic pressure to be put on the Israeli state to change its policies, is to be ‘effectively anti-semitic’, we will fail to voice our opposition for fear of being named as part of an anti-semitic enterprise. No label could be worse for a Jew, who knows that, ethically and politically, the position with which it would be unbearable to identify is that of the anti-semite. The ethical framework within which most progressive Jews operate takes the form of the following question: will we be silent (and thereby collaborate with illegitimately violent power), or will we make our voices heard (and be counted among those who did what they could to stop the violence), even if speaking poses a risk?” [ read more . . . ]

Selected bibliography

Giving an Account of Oneself (2005)
Undoing Gender (2004)
Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence (2004)
Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in 20th-Century France (1999)
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (1993)
Gender Trouble (1990)

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In the LRB archive

‘I merely belong to them’ · 10 May 2007

The Jewish Writings by Hannah Arendt, edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron Feldman Buy this book

Jacques Derrida · 4 November 2004

No, it’s not anti-semitic · 21 August 2003

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