December 8, 2011
by Jessica Lee
Comments Off on Unchosen Cohabitation in Real Life
I’ve been mulling over Judith Butler’s ethics of cohabitation. Sorry to be such a social worker, but I’m having a hard time understanding how she envisions this cohabitation to emerge in terms practice and policy. To revisit her exploration of … Continue reading
December 1, 2011
by Jessica Lee
Comments Off on 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
Comments Off on 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
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
3 Comments
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
October 27, 2011
by Jessica Lee
2 Comments
Judith Butler alludes to Althusserian ideology through her reference to Frantz Fanon in this essay. In so doing, Butler shows a literal propagation of Althusser’s well-known illustration of interpellation.[1] Louis Althusser (famous for contribution to Marxist theory and infamous for … Continue reading