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Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence Hardcover – May 17, 2004

by Judith Butler (Author)

9 customer reviews

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In this profound appraisal of post-September 11, 2001 America, Judith Butler considers the conditions of heightened vulnerability and aggression that followed from the attack on the US, and US retaliation. Judith Butler critiques the use of violence that has emerged as a response to loss, and argues that the dislocation of first-world privilege offers instead a chance to imagine a world in which that violence might be minimized and in which interdependency becomes acknowledged as the basis for a global political community.

Butler considers the means by which some lives become grief-worthy, while others are perceived as undeserving of grief or even incomprehensible as lives. She discusses the political implications of sovereignty in light of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. She argues against the anti-intellectual current of contemporary US patriotism and the power of censorship during times of war. Finally, she takes on the question of when and why anti-semitism is leveled as a charge against those who voice criticisms of the Israeli state. She counters that we have a responsibility to speak out against both Israeli injustices and anti-semitism, and argues against the rhetorical use of the charge of anti-semitism to quell public debate.

In her most impassioned and personal book to date, Judith Butler responds to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest form global justice.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A book that shines with the splendor of engaged thought.”—Brooklyn Rail

“Hers is a unique voice f courage and conceptual ambition that addresses public life from the perspective of psychic reality, encouraging us to acknowledge the solidarity and the suffering through which we emerge as subjects of freedom.”—Homi K. Bhabha

“If Precarious Life represents a departure from the subject of gender, it’s clear that its author is still interested in stirring up trouble—academic, political and otherwise.”—Bookforum

“If we are interested in arresting cycles of violence to produce less violent outcomes, it is no doubt important to ask what, politically, might be made of grief besides a cry for war.”—Judith Butler

“One of Butler’s most topical and accessible books.”—Women’s Review of Books

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 Frames of War, Precarious Life, The Psychic Life of Power, Excitable Speech, Bodies that Matter, Gender Trouble, and with Slavoj Žižek and Ernesto Laclau, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality.

Hardcover: 160 pages
Publisher: Verso (May 6, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1844670058
ISBN-13: 978-1844670055
Product Dimensions: 0.6 x 0.1 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
Average Customer Review: 9 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #827,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1454 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Violence in Society
- #1509 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Terrorism
- #5586 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science > History & Theory

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Amy in Ohio

Brilliant, Moving, an Important Book of Our Day

December 23, 2009

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

One of Butler's most accessible books, this is a phenomenally interesting and beautifully written investigation into human vulnerability and loss. Butler uses the political circumstances of the historical moment in which the book was written--just post 9/11, detainment of insurgents in Guantanamo Bay, and the crisis in the Middle East--to uncover the nature of human interdependency and to theorize what a political practice that takes such interdependency and vulnerability to others seriously might look like. While her examples might become slightly dated over time, her Levinasian analysis of the meaning of being human and of the kind of political and moral work needed to achieve true global peace will stand despite the passage of time. One note of criticism--some chapters are long and can get a little tedious after the first half of the book.

16 people found this helpful

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nycprof

A book that transcends its academic origins

December 31, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This may be Butler's most accessible book. I would recommend it to generalist readers interested in contemporary political philosophy.

One person found this helpful

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May 7, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Great

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September 30, 2014

Format: Paperback

Great read that shows the hypocrisy in how people value human life. Should make people challenge their notions about war and intervening around the world.

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misslynn

I had to read this for a college course, ...

November 13, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I had to read this for a college course, and I decided to keep it after I finished that project.

2 people found this helpful

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Provocative book

January 18, 2007

Format: Paperback

I read this book yesterday and just ate it up. It's not the usual esoteric examination by Butler. (Not that anything is wrong with that and I've read her other work, as well).

That said, the book is written for a lay audience and I think that this book needed to be published, since the responses of feminists to or after Sept 11th have been far and few. (Aftershock is a great book to read about Sept 11th from a feminist point of view).

I can't pinpoint what my favourite section of the book was, however, I enjoyed it all. It was refreshing to see a political theorist write about something "real" that is taking place today that many are discussing or living through.

This is a wonderful addition to her writing repertoire. I do hope to see her write more for a lay audience, since hopefully they will get their curiosity piqued and read more Butler.

17 people found this helpful

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A customer

Excellent social commentary

June 27, 2004

Format: Hardcover

Judith Butler is a multi-talented scholar who can write for both specialized and general audiences (which is why many, I believe, envy her). This book is quite accessible and rightly so; it is concerned with the contemporary predicaments we are currently in at this point in history. An extremely important book, Butler's "Precarious Life" has much to offer.

24 people found this helpful

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April 25, 2012

Format: Paperback

I have admired and enjoyed earlier works by Judith Butler, but this one came at, for her and this book, a most unpropitious moment in my personal historical experience. I had been on a six month journey to Israel attempting to rescue and offer refuge to four Palestinian queers--three men and one woman--who were in fear for their life for very good reason. Their pleas for justice and protection had been thoroughly ignored by the PLA, who basically told them they deserved whatever was coming to them. The only organization willing to give them material support was Keshet, an Israeli LGBT activist group in Tel Aviv.
When I was reading Butler's passages about the potential opportunities for cooperation between queers and Muslims (etc.) I could not help but look back on my experiences in Israel and, before that, my experiences in Iraq, where I had gone with a relief organization to assist gay men who had been victims of torture. I thought the book committed the error of the three friends in The Book of Job, who care more about their abstractions of the theory of retribution and G-d's justice (universalism) than about the stark and stubborn actualities of real lives. This is a book that needed far more research and hands-on experience to achieve respect or credibility in my eyes. Geopolitical realities dictate that an alliance between queers and political Islam is an even more extreme pipe dream than an alliance between queers and the Christian Right. Arguing otherwise seemed, I believe, one of the aftereffects of this author's clear anti-Zionist ideology. This is fine, but it led her into inaccurate, inappropriate, and mistimed political day dreams.

27 people found this helpful

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