With the same intellectual courage with which she addressed issues of gender, 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.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Powerful and persuasive arguments. -- Signs
Butler's exploration of racist, sexist, and homophobic language is hence of acute significance to anyone concerned with the sociopolitical and theoretical implications of hate speech. -- The Lesbian Review of Books
This book offers a challenging analysis of the free speech debates. As she moves from the often frightening contradictions in legal arguments to the visceral pain caused by hate speech, Butler makes a compelling case that our laws--and our lives--are determined by conceptual frameworks. -- Lambda Book Report
Excitable Speech offers a thoughtful consideration of the ways in which speech and speaking are used by all points on the political spectrum to further political ends. -- The Bay Guardian
This sober and subtle work draws us into the dark heart of a world where words wound, images enrage, and speech is haunted by hate. Butler intervenes brilliantly in an argument that tests the limits of both legal claims and linguistic acts. She explores the link between 'reasons' of state and the passions of personhood as she meditates on utterance as a form of incitement, excitement, and injury. There is a fine urgency here that expands our understanding of the place of the 'affective' in the realm of public events. -- Homi Bhabha, The University of Chicago
Judith Butler has brilliantly challenged us to rethink our conventional ideas about the power of speech. As is to be expected of Butler,Excitable Speech is original, witty, and lucidly argued. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the politics of free speech. -- Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University School of Law
If to speak is to act, what follows? In this shrewd and compelling book, Judith butler, the philosopher of Queer Theory and the performative theory of gender, takes up the thorniest problems of our day concerning the relation between speech and action, such as hate speech, pornography, and the military's policy that makes a declaration of homosexuality a punishable act. Her analyses are brilliant engagements that refuse to oversimplify and show us that politics requires serious thinking. -- Jonathan Culler, Cornell University
Flag burning and cross burning; pornography and coming out; racial taunts and AIDS education; using 'racial classifications' and remaining 'race blind': this book will provide constitutional and legislative debates about regulating these forms of 'injurious speech' with a brilliantly nuanced analysis of language as action. Butler has provided us with a sustained demonstration that we should fill in the moat that separates law schools from the human sciences, and quickly. -- Janet Halley, Stanford Law School
In this relentlessly intelligent analysis of hate speech, Judith Butler proposes a speech act theory of verbal injury that is not dependent on the grammar of accountability. Cautioning against recourse to state speech to regulate hate speech, Butler argues that, since naming constitutes as well as devastates, injury cannot be cleanly and legalistically separated from recognition. This is what gives hate speech so much power to wound, but also what opens a space for turning misnaming to new purposes. There is never a slack moment in this brilliant book. -- Barbara Johnson, Harvard University
In her extraordinary new book, Excitable Speech, Judith Butler...looks conceptually at speech, and she has plenty to say...Excitable Speech offers a thoughtful consideration of the ways in which speech and speaking are used by all points on the political spectrum to further political ends. -- The Bay Guardian
Makes a valuable contribution...No one should ignore Judith Butler's analysis and conclusions. -- The Women's Review of Books
Butler's exploration of racist, sexist, and homophobic language is hence of acute significance to anyone concerned with the sociopolitical and theoretical implications of hate speech. -- The Lesbian Review of Books
This book offers a challenging analysis of the free speech debates. As she moves from the often frightening contradictions in legal arguments to the visceral pain caused by hate speech, Butler makes a compelling case that our laws--and our lives--are determined by conceptual frameworks. -- Lambda Book Report
Excitable Speech offers a thoughtful consideration of the ways in which speech and speaking are used by all points on the political spectrum to further political ends. -- The Bay Guardian
This sober and subtle work draws us into the dark heart of a world where words wound, images enrage, and speech is haunted by hate. Butler intervenes brilliantly in an argument that tests the limits of both legal claims and linguistic acts. She explores the link between 'reasons' of state and the passions of personhood as she meditates on utterance as a form of incitement, excitement, and injury. There is a fine urgency here that expands our understanding of the place of the 'affective' in the realm of public events. -- Homi Bhabha, The University of Chicago
Judith Butler has brilliantly challenged us to rethink our conventional ideas about the power of speech. As is to be expected of Butler,Excitable Speech is original, witty, and lucidly argued. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the politics of free speech. -- Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University School of Law
If to speak is to act, what follows? In this shrewd and compelling book, Judith butler, the philosopher of Queer Theory and the performative theory of gender, takes up the thorniest problems of our day concerning the relation between speech and action, such as hate speech, pornography, and the military's policy that makes a declaration of homosexuality a punishable act. Her analyses are brilliant engagements that refuse to oversimplify and show us that politics requires serious thinking. -- Jonathan Culler, Cornell University
Flag burning and cross burning; pornography and coming out; racial taunts and AIDS education; using 'racial classifications' and remaining 'race blind': this book will provide constitutional and legislative debates about regulating these forms of 'injurious speech' with a brilliantly nuanced analysis of language as action. Butler has provided us with a sustained demonstration that we should fill in the moat that separates law schools from the human sciences, and quickly. -- Janet Halley, Stanford Law School
In this relentlessly intelligent analysis of hate speech, Judith Butler proposes a speech act theory of verbal injury that is not dependent on the grammar of accountability. Cautioning against recourse to state speech to regulate hate speech, Butler argues that, since naming constitutes as well as devastates, injury cannot be cleanly and legalistically separated from recognition. This is what gives hate speech so much power to wound, but also what opens a space for turning misnaming to new purposes. There is never a slack moment in this brilliant book. -- Barbara Johnson, Harvard University
In her extraordinary new book, Excitable Speech, Judith Butler...looks conceptually at speech, and she has plenty to say...Excitable Speech offers a thoughtful consideration of the ways in which speech and speaking are used by all points on the political spectrum to further political ends. -- The Bay Guardian
Makes a valuable contribution...No one should ignore Judith Butler's analysis and conclusions. -- The Women's Review of Books
About the Author
Judith Butler is Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Her previous books include Gender Trouble (Routledge, 1990), and Bodies That Matter (Routledge, 1993).
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More About the Author
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Psychic Life of Power, Excitable Speech, Bodies that Matter, Gender Trouble, Frames of War, and with Slavoj Zizek and Ernesto Laclau, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Butler and Agency,
This review is from: Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (Paperback)
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.
24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
When words injure, what do we do?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (Paperback)
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
24 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Butler's most "grounded" work,
By A Customer
This review is from: Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (Hardcover)
Butler does a good job grounding speech act theory in political and legal issues, particularly racist and homophobic "hate speech." She takes Derrida's theory of iterability and shows how repetition of discourse in new contexts can be a means of resistance. For Butler, this is very applied and I liked it much better than Gender trouble.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
The title of J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words poses the question of performativity as what it means to say that "things might be done with words." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
homosexual utterance, linguistic injury, name that one attributes, linguistic vulnerability, statement that the member, words that wound, injurious speech, hate speech regulation, fighting words doctrine, injurious language, state action doctrine, social magic, prohibited desire, linguistic survival, performative power, verbal conduct, racist speech, homosexual conduct, burning cross, performative contradiction, prior contexts, performative force, offensive conduct Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Equal Protection Clause, Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Delgado, Rodney King New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The title of J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words poses the question of performativity as what it means to say that "things might be done with words." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
homosexual utterance, linguistic injury, name that one attributes, linguistic vulnerability, statement that the member, words that wound, injurious speech, hate speech regulation, fighting words doctrine, injurious language, state action doctrine, social magic, prohibited desire, linguistic survival, performative power, verbal conduct, racist speech, homosexual conduct, burning cross, performative contradiction, prior contexts, performative force, offensive conduct Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Equal Protection Clause, Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Delgado, Rodney King New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 35
books:
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100
books
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- Only Words by Catharine A. MacKinnon on 6 pages
- Language and Symbolic Power by Pierre Bourdieu on 4 pages
- Totem and Taboo (Great Minds Series) by Sigmund Freud on page 66, page 72, and Back Matter
- Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement by Kimberle Crenshaw in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud on page 68, page 74, and Back Matter
See all 35 books this book cites
- Affirmative Action, Hate Speech, and Tenure: Narratives About Race and Law in the Academy by Benjamin Baez on 9 pages
- Nihilism and the Sublime Postmodern (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory) by Will Slocombe on 6 pages
- Gender and Social Theory (Theorizing Society) by Mary Evans on 4 pages
- The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance by Lizbeth Goodman in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Back Matter
- Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance by Bronislaw Szerszynski in Front Matter, page 29, and page 181
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