Butler, I think, is really accustomed to being surrounded by sycophants who don’t challenge the quality of her argument.
I saw her speak at a conference and I was pretty horrified at how the academics around me approached the whole thing. It was more like fans at a Taylor swift concert than an academic conference. All these people who are usually total arseholes about other academics’ talks (nitpicking, weird power plays, all the standard academic egotism) gasping about how wonderful she was.
She was NOT. She gave half a talk that was lots of hot air and little substance. Just got to the end of her a lot and said ‘I’ll stop there’ without reaching any conclusion. If any normal academic had done that, they’d have been ripped to shreds - and bitched about (because academics really aren’t nice to people not in their clique). But people were just starstruck and decided to abandon any critical engagement whatsoever.
It’s not just Judith butler this applies to. There are a number of ‘big name’ American academics who swan through life being pandered to by adoring fans.
This particular conference experience was a key turning point in my deciding that academia was not for me. I just looked at my peers and thought: I have lost all respect for you. You treat PhD students and junior academics like shit by asking sneery questions and posturing but along comes a ‘star’ and you turn into a much of sycophants.
The public displays of sycophancy on twitter that went along with this were just nauseating.