Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

Front Cover
Verso, 2006 - Political Science - 168 pages
4 Reviews
In her most impassioned and personal book to date, Judith Butler responds in this profound appraisal of post-9/11 America 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 for global justice.
 

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - arewenotben - LibraryThing

More accessible than I was anticipating, particularly strong on dehumanisation post-9/11 America and the horrific treatment of "detainees" in Guantanamo Bay. Read full review

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She makes compelling argument and her writing is more accessible than a lot of political theory (albeit repetitive and a little dramatic), but the evidence and examples she uses to substantiate her argument are largely not cited and range from over simplified and overstated to outright incorrect. The theories are well used, but take the 'facts' and information with a grain of salt. It is not terribly academic, just her take take on the situation as she understood it. I have read other work by Butler that I found far more impressive; if you are new to reading Butler, start with something else.  

Selected pages

Contents

EXPLANATION AND EXONERATION OR WHAT WE CAN HEAR
1
VIOLENCE MOURNING POLITICS
19
INDEFINITE DETENTION
50
THE CHARGE OF ANTISEMITISM JEWS ISRAEL AND THE RISKS OF PUBLIC CRITIQUE
101
PRECARIOUS LIFE
128
NOTES
153
INDEX
163
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
Judith Butler
Limited preview - 2020
Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
Judith Butler,Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric Judith P Butler
Limited preview - 2004
Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
Judith Butler
Limited preview - 2020

Common terms and phrases

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References to this book

About the author (2006)

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 Zizek and Ernesto Laclau, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality.

Bibliographic information

QR code for Precarious Life
TitlePrecarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
AuthorJudith Butler
Editionreprint
PublisherVerso, 2006
ISBN1844675440, 9781844675449
Length168 pages
Subjects › 

Political Science / Essays
Political Science / Political Freedom
  
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