Judith Butler Quotes
Judith Butler is an American philosopher whose Gender Trouble made the performative theory of gender central to contemporary feminism, queer theory, and political thought. Drawing on Foucault, Lacan, and speech-act theory, Butler argued that gender is not the expression of a prior identity but a citational practice that produces the effect of substance through repeated stylization of the body. The quotes below are attributed to Judith Butler, organized by topic.
Browse Judith Butler by topic
Judith Butler on God
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“Nonviolence does not necessarily emerge from a pacific or calm part of the soul . Very often it is an expression of rage, indignation, and aggression.”
Introduction | p. 21
Judith Butler on Knowledge
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“Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" (1990)”
There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. -
“If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.”
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" (1990) -
“Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" (1990)”
If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. -
“Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself.”
Imitation and Gender Insubordination" in Inside/Out (1991) edited by Diana Fuss -
“Imitation and Gender Insubordination" in Inside/Out (1991) edited by Diana Fuss”
Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself. -
“Indeed it may be only by risking the incoherence of identity that connection is possible.”
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (1993) -
“Perhaps the promise of phallus is always dissatisfying in some way.”
The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary" (1993), later published in The Judith Butler Reader (2004) edited by Sarah Salih with Judith Butler -
“The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary" (1993), later published in The Judith Butler Reader (2004) edited by Sarah Salih with Judith Butler”
Perhaps the promise of phallus is always dissatisfying in some way. -
“We must fight those who are committed to destruction , without replicating their destructiveness. Understanding how to fight in this way is the task and the bind of a nonviolent ethics and politics.”
Chapter One | p. 64
Judith Butler on Life
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“Lives matter in the sense that they assume physical form within the sphere of appearance; lives matter because they are to be valued equally.”
Introduction | p. 12 -
“When the world presents as a force field of violence , the task of nonviolence is to find ways of living and acting in that world such that violence is checked or ameliorated, or its direction turned, precisely at moments when it seems to saturate that world and offer no way out.”
Introduction | p. 10 -
“Preserving seeks to secure the life that already is; safeguarding secures and reproduces the conditions of becoming, of living, of futurity, where the content of that life, that living, can be neither prescribed nor predicted, and where self-determination emerges as a potential.”
Chapter Two | p. 94
Judith Butler on Love
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Attributed to Judith Butler:
“Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something.”
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Attributed to Judith Butler:
“We are, from the start, given over to the other.”
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“We do not have to love one another to be obligated to build a world in which all lives are sustainable. The right to persist can only be understood as a social right, as the subjective instance of a social and global obligation we bear toward one another.”
Chapter One | p. 64
Judith Butler on Mind
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Attributed to Judith Butler:
“Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance.”
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“There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be its results.”
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" (1990)
Judith Butler on Nature
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“Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (1993)”
Indeed it may be only by risking the incoherence of identity that connection is possible.
Judith Butler on Politics
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Attributed to Judith Butler:
“To be a body is to be exposed to social crafting and form.”
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“There is no practice of nonviolence that does not negotiate fundamental ethical and political ambiguities, which means that “nonviolence” is not an absolute principle, but the name of an ongoing struggle.”
Introduction | p. 23 -
“To affirm equality is to affirm a cohabitation defined in part by an interdependency that takes the edge off the individual boundaries of the body, or that works that edge for its social and political potential.”
Chapter Three | p. 148 -
“If nonviolence is to make sense as an ethical and political position, it cannot simply repress aggression or do away with its reality; rather, nonviolence emerges as a meaningful concept precisely when destruction is most likely or seems most certain.”
Chapter One | p. 39
Judith Butler on Time
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“Further Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time" (1997), which received first place in the Philosophy and Literature Bad Writing Contest”
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoret -
“There was a brief moment after 9/11 when Colin Powell said “we should not rush to satisfy the desire for revenge.” It was a great moment, an extraordinary moment, because what he was actually asking people to do was to stay with a sense of grief, mournfulness, and vulnerability .”
Interview with Judith Butler. in: The Believer. May 2003