Judith Butler: irony?

[AnotherAngryAcademic]

Judith Butler is opining on the Hamas/Israel war, and on student protests.

JB says:

any student who says “I feel unsafe by what I hear another student say” is saying that “My security and safety is more important than that person’s freedom of expression.”

And then:

And if we countenance that, if we give too much leeway to that claim that a student feels unsafe because, say, an anti-Zionist — or a statement in support of Palestine, or a statement opposing genocide makes that Jewish student feel unsafe, we are saying that that student is perceiving a personal threat or is threatened by the discourse itself — even when the discourse is expressive rather than portending physical harm.

And:

if calling for an end of genocide against Palestine is understood as making a Jewish student feel unsafe, then we see that the safety of the situation has been oddly co-opted by that particular Jewish student.

I am fascinated by the way Judith Butler has framed these concerns about feeling threatened by discourse.

(JUDITH BUTLER WILL NOT CO-SIGN ISRAEL’S ALIBI FOR GENOCIDE

Edited for formatting, and because the link disappeared!)

😂

Sure Judith. That sounds about right. People should be able to express their opinions on controversial issues. Speech is not violence. Though threats of violence or incitement to violence should not be tolerated.

Now apply these principles to all issues, not just the ones you'd like to speak up about.

That has to be either a fake or parody account. Its couched in straightforward comprehensible language-no way is that Butler themselves.

It's remarkable, isn't it, how she is able to write clearly and intelligibly when she has a coherent argument to make (whether you agree with her or not).

The word salad comes out when she is writing irrational mumbo-jumbo, because if she wrote clearly then everyone would see what banal nonsense it all is.

Well that is rich.

It's published by The Intercept. The full piece is long and includes the transcript of an interview, with plenty of Butler... obviously I have cherry picked snippets above because those bits really stood out to me - but having read all 7500 ish words of it I don't think it's fake. (Which doesn't mean that I understand what JB's intention is in framing observations in this way!)

(I couldn't tell if @lonelywater was being sarcastic! But then, I have just read a lot of JB in one go!)

Well she’s so conceited and full of a sense of her own importance and Great Intellect that I have no faith she will see the irony or internal contradiction of her various stances. Or that she is - entirely predictably - simply parroting the standard lefty-approved views of being unequivocally pro-Palestine and anti-Jew and pro-trans and anti-women.

She’s blinded by her own prejudice. Nothing more or less than that.

Yes, I have never seen anyone as high on their own supply as JB.

Excellent username 👏👏

Me neither. Thinks a lot of herself, that one.

I think the term here is 'brass neck'.

Brilliant username . . . 👌

I'd never realised how much like Peter Tatchell they looks . . . it got me thinking . . . . 🤔

Tell me . . . has anyone ever seen them both in the same room?

Edit for autocarrot

The responses here have put a smile on my face for the first time today. Thank you so much

Does she not realise that the reverse of everything she said is also true? Silly cow.

Yes, the opacity is deliberate.

'High on the smell of they's own farts'

That’s very funny, thankyou AnotherAngryAcademic

I am resuscitating this thread because I've just been reading another Judith Butler interview. (The new one is available here: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-12-15/judith-butler-philosopher-if-you-sacrifice-a-minority-like-trans-people-you-are-operating-within-a-fascist-logic.html?outputType=amp )

Some highlights:

JB (referring to discussions about Israel and Palestine, and antisemitism): "Censorship and baseless allegation takes the place of difficult conversations. But it is the latter that we need, especially now that so many democracies are on the verge of succumbing to authoritarian powers."

This is of course true, but I wish JB would acknowledge the same is true of discussions about sex and gender...

JB: "There’s such a rush to censorship and condemnation that it is very difficult to be part of an open discussion."

Quite.

JB: "And yet there are these litmus tests: you must utter some words, and not others, and if you fail the test, your reputation will be damaged."

I am truly in awe at JB's ability to say these things with a complete lack of irony. (Or what I presume is a complete lack of irony, since it is a printed interview.)

Interviewer: "Do you understand the concerns of feminists who think that gender could result in the erasure of women?"

JB: "Some feminists, I think unwittingly, have allied themselves in places like the U.K. and Spain with the far right when it comes to instigating this phantasm about gender. I understand those fears, but that doesn’t mean that I think they’re based on knowledge. Perhaps those feminists need a better understanding of who trans people are. Womanhood won’t be erased just because we open the category and invite some more people in. This is a moment for expanding alliances, not to have sectarian struggles about bathrooms. Women know what it’s like to be denied health care. They are currently being deprived of access to reproductive health in several parts of the world, including the U.S. Women know how difficult and necessary it is to struggle for autonomy. So why would they not support trans struggles for health care and to live free of the fear of violence?"

JB: "I have great discussions on gender with taxi drivers. I find that many of them are excellent theorists of the everyday."

JB: "Identity is, for me, a point of departure for alliances, which need to include all kinds of people, from trans to working people to those taxi drivers that J. K. Rowling is worried about. Identity is a great start for making connections and becoming part of larger communities. But you can’t have a politics of identity that is only about identity. If you do that, you draw sectarian lines, and you abandoned our interdependent ties."

I actually thing JB is right that identity politics can result in "sectarian lines". But JB seems to have a massive blindspot when applying JB's own logic to women's concerns about the erasure of sex in favour of gender in policy making.

I wonder how many cabbies agree with her that TWAW?

I must have missed the part where JK Rowling was worried about taxi drivers.

I'm pretty sure that should I be bonkers enough to have the gender conversation with a London cabbie, they'd 100% agree with me.

Maybe JK is worried about Bab's cabs from the League of Gentlemen.

Oh wait, she's not.

If Judith Butler is coming out in support of free speech (even when that speech makes someone ‘feel unsafe’) doesn’t that mean Judith Butler they/themself is now ‘operating with a fascist logic’? Seeing that free speech has been reclassified as fashy an ‘all?