Quote

I think I never expected Gender trouble to have any particularly revolutionary effect so whatever effects it has, I'm always surprised.

Judith Butler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Judith Butler
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: February 24
Art Theorist
Feminist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Cleveland
Ohio
Judith P. Butler
Judith Pamela Butler
Never
Gender
Think
Particularly
Thinking
Effect
Expected
Effects
Trouble
Whatever
Surprised
Always
Revolutionary

More quotes by Judith Butler

Image
If we think about sexual life for a gender life, it seems to me that we have to allow for certain kinds of changes or certain kinds of ways of reconceptualizing ourselves.
Judith Butler
Image
When I was young there were lesbians who said Oh, I will free myself of all norms of masculinity, all norms of heterosexuality . And then, they ended up in very complex relationships that were maybe full of heterosexual power dynamics or full of lesbian forms of masculinity and they became very confused.
Judith Butler
Image
People need to know who I am and where I'm coming from.
Judith Butler
Image
Maybe one of the jobs of theory or philosophy is to elevate principles that seem impossible, or that have the status of the impossible, to stand by them and will them, even when it looks highly unlikely that they'll ever be realised. But that's ok, it's a service.
Judith Butler
Image
It seems, though, that historically we have now reached a position in which Jews cannot legitimately be understood always and only as presumptive victims.
Judith Butler
Image
The Gulf War was a clear precedent as well, and it let us begin to understand how the US government would go to war to secure strategic oil reserves and potential markets.
Judith Butler
Image
A certain kind of permission is given to live differently, to conceptualize and to act according to a new conceptualization.
Judith Butler
Image
Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed.
Judith Butler
Image
Gender trouble is old. I mean, you know, in New York, it is old. I mean it's sweet. I mean people are really kind about it but it's like a former love affair you had and you're done.
Judith Butler
Image
Genocide is not a legitimate option. It's not ok to decide that an entire population has no right to live in the world. No matter whether these relationships are very proximate or very distant, there is no entitlement to expunge a population or to demean its basic humanity.
Judith Butler
Image
The idea that speaking at all on the topic, demanding public space in which to have that debate, is itself an act of complicity with violence, and violence against Israelis, understood as synonymous with Jews, and so violence against Jews, clearly stops the speech with an unspeakable allegation.
Judith Butler
Image
When I was twelve, I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate in education and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said that I either wanted to be a philosopher or a clown, and I understood then, I think, that much depended on whether or not I found the world worth philosophizing about, and what the price of seriousness might be.
Judith Butler
Image
Peace is a certain resistance to the terrible satisfactions of war. It’s a commitment to living with a certain kind of vulnerability to others and susceptibility to being wounded that actually gives our individual lives meaning.
Judith Butler
Image
To operate within the matrix of power is not the same as to replicate uncritically relations of domination.
Judith Butler
Image
We're trying to divide groups or decide that some of them are truly victims and some of them are truly aggressors.
Judith Butler
Image
I think something happens only when people find that they are moved with others, find themselves linked or allied in new ways, showing up or speaking out in ways that resonate with one another. That resonating can be very compelling and lead to moving and speaking more emphatically and with sharper focus.
Judith Butler
Image
We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and part of a more expansive world.
Judith Butler
Image
It's important that if one opposes discriminatory speech, one opposes all kinds. That is that one decides on a principle that it will include all minorities. But if the protection of one minority against another minority is what is happening, then I worry about that.
Judith Butler
Image
I think we need a politics that allows us to risk what is intelligible. To be maybe slightly unintelligible, too be slightly illisible. To take the risk of suggesting that the human form might take another form.
Judith Butler
Image
I think that many of the mobilizations against the wars waged by the US and its allies since 2001 have been non-violent and massive. We have seen them throughout European capitals and in the US, and in many other parts of the world as well. So it is not only imaginable, but already actual.
Judith Butler