Judith Butler interview

[MotherofPearl]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/07/judith-butler-interview-gender?CMP=ShareiOSAppOther

Apologies if this has already been posted. I found this troubling to read. Am I misreading this or is Butler saying that GC feminism is fascist?

@candycane222

Yay *@ScreamingMeMe*, that prize was superbly well deserved. May the winner be awarded all the biscuits!! (And a signed EP of Parklife)

I made a Judith Butler parking diagram, by reproducing and undoing the discursive techniques of intersectional analysis.

(I can't mimic her writing to save my life but I think I have a decent handle on her logic.)

That is amazing, @allmywhat !

sites of nonviolent resistance

To the rest of us, would that be parking on the road (where legal) but with attitude if it's not immediately outside the home in question?

And or as appropriate, allmywhat

"Sites" should not be understood to be geographically or temporally bound. Violently imposed and antiquated parking laws and historical constraints of gender can both be sites of nonviolent resistance.

Sometimes you have to imagine in a radical way that makes you seem a little crazy, that puts you in an embarrassing light, in order to open up a possibility that others have already closed down with their knowing realism. I’m prepared to be mocked and dismissed for my re-envisioning of the concept of "my driveway" as contingent and complex. Unfortunately, we live in anti-intellectual times. How am I going to get my car back?

Amazing allmywhat !

I’m prepared to be mocked and dismissed for my re-envisioning of the concept of "my driveway" as contingent and complex. Unfortunately, we live in anti-intellectual times. How am I going to get my car back?

Looking forward to a range of JB Practical Guides: Changing a light bulb. Putting up a shelf. Making a cup of tea, etc.

They could be bestsellers like those spoof Ladybird books for grown-ups.

In a similar vein, something from the Reddit archives just seen on Twitter:

My (33F) husband's (35M) career in academic philosophy is ruining our marriage

My husband and I are both academics. We've been married for 3 years, and been together for 6. He is an academic philosopher and I am a physicist. He has recently expressed displeasure that I've never seriously engaged with his work. Now, I've read a bit of the classics of philosophy, but my husband's work is more in what I'm told is called the "continental" tradition. Unfortunately, everything he's shown me has just seems completely insane.

Don't mess around, go to the source:

www.reddit.com/r/badphilosophy/comments/d87iot/my_33f_husbands_35m_career_in_academic_philosophy/

How am I going to get my car back?

I'm pleased to see you raised this issue yourself (if that isn't too outmoded a term). I couldn't conceive the delicacy necessary for such a materialist concern as that of retrieving a car in a parked state - especially if there were no indication of a preference to remain in that state or embrace another mode of being, irrespective of your emotional need for it.

While you interrogate your desire for the car and need to dominate it to supply your transportation or status needs, I undertake to reflect upon my hitherto blinkered and privileged view of 'sites' as a signifier of some form of quantitative reality.

Oh that’s hilarious 😆

One of my colleagues is one of those angry Roger Scruton types of analytic philosopher. His daughter is quite young, in her twenties still, but shaping up to be a talented Continental philosopher. He’s very, very angry about this still, and repeatedly complains about her being captured by an academic discipline “without rigour”, and how this was caused by her refusing to take up Greek and advanced mathematics as a teenager, and instead being interested in stuff he considers “without merit” - like literature, art, theatre etc.

It must be a charmed existence to be a middle aged man and that’s one of your major angsts in life 🙄

So much comedy potential. The writer's proposal to change the question but keep the same answer sounds like something out of the Morecambe and Wise school of philosophy: 'I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.'

Haha allmywhat. I suggest reversing into the stone wall at speed.

Haha @Floisme! I wonder which other great interviews in history would read just as well if the interviewer retrospectively changed the questions?

@MonsignorMirth

Trying to imagine Butler describing a parking situation without a diagram really IS blowing my mind.

"CF neighbour parked performatively creating a new reality, invoking a power that did not belong to them as a person. I have been 'blocked' - entered into a realm of blockdom, although I did not just choose it - it was not just imposed on me - this has become a socially constructed struggle of negotiation. Make, model and position of parking space are rendered distinct analytically only to produce the realisation that I cannot proceed without CF getting out of my way.

I cannot operate within the matrix of power - would penguin bollards help?"

Your parody is spot on.

This real Butlerism from that article and it's nonsense. It's a completely nonsensical analysis of the action of a judge passing sentence.

The philosophy of why we obey laws and why we confer authority on law makers and enforcers is a legitimate philosophical issue but that's not what she's doing.

At the time I was interested in a set of debates in the academy about speech acts. “Performative” speech acts are the kind that make something happen or seek to create a new reality. When a judge declares a sentence, for instance, they produce a new reality, and they usually have the authority to make that happen. But do we say that the judge is all-powerful? Or is the judge citing a set of conventions, following a set of procedures? If it is the latter, then the judge is invoking a power that does not belong to them as a person, but as a designated authority. Their act becomes a citation – they repeat an established protocol

I don't think this has been mentioned yet (forgive me if I'm wrong) but the Guardian have expanded their footnote:

"This article was amended on 7 September 2021. One section of the Q&A was removed by editors because the interview and preparation of the article for publication occurred before new facts emerged regarding an incident at Wi Spa in Los Angeles. The consequent lack of reference in the relevant question to this development, in which an arrest was made for alleged indecent exposure at the spa, risked misleading readers and for that reason the section was removed. This footnote was expanded on 9 September 2021 to provide a fuller explanation."

@SimonedeBeauvoirscat

Haha *@Floisme*! I wonder which other great interviews in history would read just as well if the interviewer retrospectively changed the questions?

Wasn't that the plot in a Rumpole story? The case against an allegedly corrupt police officer was based on someone editing the exchange and changing the questions so that the answers were now incriminating?

@nauticant

I like the suggestion that a judge in a trial can give one of the verdicts: 1) this person is not guilty and is a transwoman; or 2) this person is guilty and is therefore a man.

Maybe the verdict could incorporate a process to immediately award a GRC in the event of "not guilty".

So the judge will litteraly creating reality with her words, just like a god. I wonder if the prospective judge realises their new exhaulted status?

Specialist subject - answering the question before last

Have been waiting for over 20 years for a good place to use this Simpsons gag. Why not now?

memes.yarn.co/yarn-clip/57c83b37-31d9-41f1-bdee-94d830532c22

Excellent @MonsignorMirth

After all the thorough piss-taking above, this feels like lowering the tone, but King Critical on YouTube here spends an hour trying to take the piece seriously, picking it apart.

I don't think this has been mentioned yet (forgive me if I'm wrong) but the Guardian have expanded their footnote:

Make no mistake, that expansion of the footnote is because on twitter trans activists were outraged that that St Judith's sacred words had been deleted. The Guardian is now alarmed that they've shot themselves in the foot with the only audience they're interested in cultivating. They assume the rest of the audience will simply follow, in a way reminiscent of how Labour viewed the Red Wall.

Do they think that expansion will cut any mustard with TRAs and their allies?