Flexner Book Club Blog

2011 Mary Flexner Lecturer: Judith Butler

December 1, 2011
by Jessica Lee
Comments Off on Toward an Ethics of Cohabitation—Because we don’t have a choice?

Toward an Ethics of Cohabitation—Because we don’t have a choice?

The questions Butler raises in her final lecture are intriguing: What are global obligations near and far? What makes these ethical encounters possible? What does it mean for our ethical obligations when we are joined to those we did not … Continue reading

November 17, 2011
by Jessica Lee
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Public Square

Judith Butler’s discussion of Hannah Arendt’s theory of the “space of appearance” is incredibly timely with the movements happening around the world this year, and with Occupy Wall Street protestors being forced out of Zuccotti Park on Tuesday morning. In … Continue reading

November 10, 2011
by Jessica Lee
Comments Off on Resettled, still precarious

Resettled, still precarious

In her lecture, Gender Politics and the Right to Appear, Judith Butler critiques the structural systems that marginalize and precariatize populations.  Thus, she expands her discursive inquiry to include minority and stateless peoples. Judith Butler’s lecture resonates with my clinical … Continue reading

November 3, 2011
by Jessica Lee
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Externalized Pathology and Internalized Identity

I work with refugees in Philadelphia. Butler’s chapter Melancholy Gender/Refused Identification makes me reconceptualize my clients’ struggles in the resettlement process. Butler expands on Freud’s idea of melancholia into a discussion of melancholic incorporation, arguing that identity results from disavowed … Continue reading