Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:43 08 October 2013 Judith Butler’s Precarious Politics This volume provides the first forum where political theorists engage in a series of critical encounters with Judith Butler’s wide-ranging body of work. It brings together essays by 13 distinguished contributors, who address Butler’s writing on topics ranging from feminism and phenomenology, to capitalism and culture, to law, rights and the livable life. Butler’s work from the start has been profoundly philosophical, and therefore in principle multidisciplinary. Rather than claim her as a political theorist, this book instead exhibits the diversity of responses that political theorists have had to her work. The theorists in this collection are not merely surveying or syn- thesising Butler’s writings. Instead, they use Butler’s thought, putting it to work in diverse ways. These include philosophical issues of great abstrac- tion; cross-cultural and interdisciplinary issues in comparative social thought; macro-issues in public policy and international politics; and con- temporary politics as reflected and pursued in TV and cinematic drama. While not underrating Butler’s achievements in reorienting the study of sex, gender and sexuality, this book situates that work, as Butler does, in rela- tion to further issues, further controversies, further interventions in ‘pre- carious politics’. This book, along with its companion volume Judith Butler and Political Theory: Troubling Politics (by Samuel A. Chambers and Terrell Carver), makes a primary and fundamental contribution to political theory, just as it should have widespread implications for numerous fields: from women’s studies, gender studies, and lesbian and gay studies, to queer theory, fem- inist theory and cultural studies. Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol, Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:43 08 October 2013 UK. He has published extensively on issues relevant to sex, gender and sexuality in political theory and international relations. Samuel A. Chambers is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Swansea University, where he teaches political theory and cultural politics. He writes broadly in contemporary thought, including work on language, culture, and the poli- tics of gender and sexuality. Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:43 08 October 2013 Judith Butler’s Precarious Politics Critical encounters Edited by Terrell Carver and Samuel A. Chambers Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:43 08 October 2013 First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business # 2008 Terrell Carver and Samuel A. Chambers, selection and editorial matter; the contributors, their chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprintedor reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Judith Butler’s precarious politics : critical encounters / edited by Terrell Carver and Samuel A. Chambers. 1. Butler, Judith, 1956—Philosophy. 2. Feminist theory. 3. Phenomenology. 4. Social ethics. I. Carver, Terrell. II. Chambers, Samuel Allen, 1972- HQ1190.J83 2008 305.4201–dc22 2007022684 Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:43 08 October 2013 ISBN 0-203-93745-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN13: 978-0-415-38442-1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-38443-8 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-93745-7 (ebk) Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on contributors viii 1 Introduction 1 TERRELL CARVER AND SAMUEL A. CHAMBERS Part I Phenomenology and epistemology 9 2 Butler’s phenomenological existentialism 11 DIANA COOLE 3 Feminists know not what they do: Judith Butler’s gender trouble and the limits of epistemology 28 LINDA M.G. ZERILLI Part II Feminism and philosophy 45 4 ‘French theory’ goes to France: trouble dans le genre and ‘materialist’ feminism – a conversation manque´ 47 LISA JANE DISCH 5 Acclaim for Antigone’s Claim reclaimed (or, Steiner contra Butler) 62 JOHN E. SEERY Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:43 08 October 2013 Part III Capitalism and culture 77 6 Missing poststructuralism, missing Foucault: Butler and Fraser on capitalism and the regulation of sexuality 79 ANNA MARIE SMITH vi Contents 7 Towards a cultural politics of vulnerability: precarious lives and ungrievable deaths 92 MOYA LLOYD Part IV Ethics and sovereignty 107 8 Change of address: Butler’s ethics at sovereignty’s deadlock 109 JODI DEAN 9 Sovereignty and suffering: towards an ethics of grief in a post-9/11 world 127 DAVID S. GUTTERMAN AND SARA L. RUSHING Part V Law and rights 143 10 Butler and life: law, sovereignty, power 145 ELENA LOIZIDOU 11 Rights and the politics of performativity 157 KAREN ZIVI Part VI Humanity and vulnerability 171 12 This species which is not one: identity practices in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 173 KATHY E. FERGUSON 13 Vulnerability, vengeance, and community: Butler’s political thought and Eastwood’s Mystic River 188 ROBERT E. WATKINS 14 Gender trouble at Abu Ghraib? 204 TIMOTHY KAUFMAN-OSBORN Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:43 08 October 2013 Bibliography 221 Index 232 Acknowledgements We would like to thank Craig Fowlie at Routledge for his continued support and for helping to bring this volume into existence. Most of all we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all the contributors to the volume whose fine work has formed the book you have before you. A number of the chapters in this volume were published previously and in different form, and we thank the authors and publishers for permission to use copyright material. Ferguson, Kathy. ‘This Species Which Is Not One: Identity Practices in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’. Strategies 15.2 (2002): 181–95. Kaufman-Osborn, Timothy. ‘Gender Trouble at Abu Ghraib?’ Politics & Gender 1.4 (2005): 597–619. Reprinted with Permission. Seery, John E. ‘Acclaim for Antigone’s Claim Reclaimed (or, Steiner contra Butler)’. Theory & Event 9.1 (2006) # The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press. Smith, Anna Marie. ‘Missing Poststructuralism, Missing Foucault: Butler and Fraser on Capitalism and the Regulation of Sexuality’. Social Text 67 19.2 (2001) # 2001 Duke University Press. Zerilli, Linda M.G. Chapter 1 of Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom. Chi- cago: University of Chicago Press, 2006: 32–65. # Linda M.G. Zerilli. Terrell Carver and Samuel A. Chambers Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:43 08 October 2013 Contributors Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol. He has published extensively on sex, gender, and sexuality, including Gender is Not A Synonym for Women (Lynne Rienner, 1996), Politics of Sexuality (ed. with Veronique Mottier, Routledge, 1998, repr. 2006), and Men in Political Theory (Manchester University Press and St. Martin’s Press, 2004). With Samuel A. Chambers he is co-author of a companion volume to this one, Troubling Politics: The Political Theory of Judith Butler (Routledge, 2008). Samuel A. Chambers is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Swansea University, where he teaches political theory and cultural politics. He is the author of Untimely Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2003) and The Queer Politics of Television (IB Tauris, 2008). With Terrell Carver he is co-editor of William E. Connolly, Democracy, Pluralism and Political Theory (Routledge, 2008), as well as co-author of a companion volume, Trou- bling Politics: The Political Theory of Judith Butler (Routledge, 2008). Diana Coole is Professor of Political and Social Theory at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has written extensively on existential phe- nomenology and critical theory. Her publications include Negativity and Politics: Dionysus and Dialectics from Kant to Poststructuralism (Routle- dge, 2000) and Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics after Anti-Humanism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). She is currently co-editing a volume on the New Materialism with Samantha Frost, for Duke University Press. Jodi Dean teaches political theory at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:43 08 October 2013 Geneva, New York. She has authored or edited eight books, including Publicity’s Secret (Cornell University Press, 2002), Zˇ izˇek’s Politics (Rou- tledge, 2006), and (co-edited with Paul A. Passavant) Empire’s New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri (Routledge, 2004). Lisa Jane Disch teaches contemporary political theory at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. She has published two books, The Tyranny of Contributors ix the Two-Party System (Columbia University Press, 2002) and Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 1996), along with numerous articles on feminist and democratic political theory. Kathy E. Ferguson is Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies at the University of Hawai’i. Her books include Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific (co-edited with Monique Mironesco, forthcoming from University of Hawai’i Press) and Oh, Say, Can You See? The Semiotics of the Military in Hawai’i (with Phyllis Turnbull, University of Minnesota Press, 1999). She is writing a book on Emma Goldman, con- tinuing work with Phyllis Turnbull on the military in Hawai’i, and researching home schooling. David S. Gutterman is Assistant Professor of Politics at Willamette Uni- versity where he teaches courses on political theory, religion and politics in the United States, and political dissent.