Judith Butler : ethics, law, politics / Elena Loizidou.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Loizidou, Elena.

Series:

Nomikoi

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Butler, Judith, 1956-.

Butler, Judith.

Law--Philosophy.

Law.

Feminist theory.

Feminist jurisprudence.

Physical Description:

x, 184 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Abingdon [England] ; New York : Routledge-Cavendish, 2007.

Summary:

Judith Butler is the philosopher who has invited us to think the subject as the effect of gender processes and practices. In this book, Elena Loizidou acknowledges the potency and influence of Butler's 'concept' of gender as process. But, instead of focusing on this well-developed and discussed position, she addresses a set of themes that, whilst central in Butler's work, have received rather less consideration. Loizidou traces how Butler comes to the themes of ethics, law and politics, analysing their interrelation and explaining how they relate to Butler's question of how we can have more livable and viable lives. And she argues that this possibility is articulated by Butler within the parameters of a sustained agonistic relationship between these three spheres. Critical legal scholarship has engaged with the question of 'life' by offering a disparate analysis of its ethical, legal and political dimensions. Loizidou suggests that Butler's rounded understanding of the interrelationship of these three spheres will enable critical legal scholarship, as well as critical theory more generally, to consider how the question of life's unsustainable conditions can be rethought and redressed.

Contents:

Table of cases and statute xi

2 Gender performativity as method 17

Historiography, language and bodies 21

Gender performativity and its genealogy 26

3 Ethical sisters 45

Ethics: a brief genealogy 48

The briefest history of the subject 61

Ethical ambivalence 74

4 Double law 87

Legal suspensions and the question of violence 93

Law, sovereignty, governmentality and the question of life 110

5 The melancholic drag queen and its political potential 129

The political 130

Bodies figural and material 140

Resistance 149

6 Butler's reception 157.

Notes:

"A GlassHouse book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages [169]-176) and index.

ISBN:

0415420415

9780415420419

1904385451

9781904385455

OCLC:

74568028