Vulnerability in Resistance


Book Description

Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power. Contributors. Meltem Ahiska, Athena Athanasiou, Sarah Bracke, Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Başak Ertür, Zeynep Gambetti, Rema Hammami, Marianne Hirsch, Elena Loizidou, Leticia Sabsay, Nükhet Sirman, Elena Tzelepis




Vulnerability in Resistance


Book Description

Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power. Contributors. Meltem Ahiska, Athena Athanasiou, Sarah Bracke, Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Başak Ertür, Zeynep Gambetti, Rema Hammami, Marianne Hirsch, Elena Loizidou, Leticia Sabsay, Nükhet Sirman, Elena Tzelepis




The Art of Post-Dictatorship


Book Description

Since the end of the last dictatorship in 1983, Argentina’s visual artists and art-activists have been central to campaigns to demand the criminal prosecution of those initially granted amnesty and to a variety of commemorative projects. In The Art of Post-Dictatorship: Ethics and Aesthetics in Transitional Argentina Vikki Bell examines this involvement and intervention. She argues that the problematics that arise within the aesthetic realm cannot be understood solely through an art-historical approach; instead, they must be understood as a constitutive part of a broader collective endeavour. In this sense, the ‘art’ of post-dictatorship is not something that belongs to art or the artists themselves, but is about how the subjectivities and imaginations of new generations are constituted and entwined with questions of response, ethics and justice. It concerns how people align themselves between the past and the future. This book will be an invaluable resource for those studying the law, politics, art and sociology of contemporary Argentina as well as those concerned more widely with transitional justice and the politics of memory.




Precarious Life


Book Description

In her most impassioned and personal book to date, Judith Butler responds in this profound appraisal of post-9/11 America to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest for global justice.




The Force of Nonviolence


Book Description

Judith Butler’s new book shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. Further, it argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a passive practice that emanates from a calm region of the soul, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power. But, in fact, nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field. An aggressive form of nonviolence accepts that hostility is part of our psychic constitution, but values ambivalence as a way of checking the conversion of aggression into violence. One contemporary challenge to a politics of nonviolence points out that there is a difference of opinion on what counts as violence and nonviolence. The distinction between them can be mobilised in the service of ratifying the state’s monopoly on violence. Considering nonviolence as an ethical problem within a political philosophy requires a critique of individualism as well as an understanding of the psychosocial dimensions of violence. Butler draws upon Foucault, Fanon, Freud, and Benjamin to consider how the interdiction against violence fails to include lives regarded as ungrievable. By considering how ‘racial phantasms’ inform justifications of state and administrative violence, Butler tracks how violence is often attributed to those who are most severely exposed to its lethal effects. The struggle for nonviolence is found in movements for social transformation that reframe the grievability of lives in light of social equality and whose ethical claims follow from an insight into the interdependency of life as the basis of social and political equality.




Frames of War


Book Description

In Frames of War, Judith Butler explores the media’s portrayal of state violence, a process integral to the way in which the West wages modern war. This portrayal has saturated our understanding of human life, and has led to the exploitation and abandonment of whole peoples, who are cast as existential threats rather than as living populations in need of protection. These people are framed as already lost, to imprisonment, unemployment and starvation, and can easily be dismissed. In the twisted logic that rationalizes their deaths, the loss of such populations is deemed necessary to protect the lives of ‘the living.’ This disparity, Butler argues, has profound implications for why and when we feel horror, outrage, guilt, loss and righteous indifference, both in the context of war and, increasingly, everyday life. This book discerns the resistance to the frames of war in the context of the images from Abu Ghraib, the poetry from Guantanamo, recent European policy on immigration and Islam, and debates on normativity and non-violence. In this urgent response to ever more dominant methods of coercion, violence and racism, Butler calls for a re-conceptualization of the Left, one that brokers cultural difference and cultivates resistance to the illegitimate and arbitrary effects of state violence and its vicissitudes.




Obstetric Violence: Realities, and Resistance from Around the World


Book Description

In this book, we make space to interrogate obstetric violence; from its historical and legal roots and contemporary realities, to responses of advocacy and resistance. Through the lens of obstetric violence, we are able to see overlap in structural vulnerability across continents as well as recognize the ways in which obstetric violence is symptomatic of larger global problems including systemic injustices related to reproductive health. Combining the perspectives of care providers, birthing people, advocates and researchers, our volume seeks to include both a systematic and structural understanding of obstetric violence. We bring together diverse voices, from practitioners, to activists, to academics, and provide a global perspective on obstetric violence with research from around the world, including indigenous communities from North America (Canada and Hawaii), examples from Latin American and Caribbean countries as well as country-specific cases from Argentina, Australia, Egypt, Mexico, Portugal, and the United States. The range of disciplinary perspectives and global experiences presented in this book demonstrates that obstetric violence is neither bound to one discipline, nor site specific. Together the chapters of this volume work to understand obstetric violence, moving beyond static definitions towards a spectrum of lived experiences that highlight three main areas: Legislation and Policy, Experiencing Obstetric Violence, and Advocacy, Resistance and Reframing. The time for a global recognition of obstetric violence &– of the larger structural forces embedded in systems that cross cultures and violate bodies in acutely vulnerable life moments &– is now. By naming it and saying it out loud we recognize obstetric violence exists and can together begin the process of systemic change necessary to prevent it.




Vulnerability Politics


Book Description

"Katie Oliviero's "Vulnerability Politics: The Uses and Abuses of Precarity in Political Debate" explores the concept of politically vulnerable and unprotected groups in the 21st century. The book addresses such important issues as women's reproductive rights, immigration and marriage equality" --




Negotiating Gender, Policy and Politics in the Caribbean


Book Description

Have efforts to advance women’s and men’s commitments to democratic governance, women’s rights and gender equality been successful in the Caribbean? Do they reflect local as well as international concerns and visions of gender equality? This edited collection answers these questions by focusing on women’s political leadership, electoral quota systems, national gender policies and transformational leadership as four feminist strategies that aim to engender democracy and citizenship. It offers a rich historical, comparative and ethnographic perspective on the lived experience of these strategies through case studies of Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Dominica, Jamaica and St. Lucia. Drawing on national policy debates, election campaigns, state officials’ solidarities, men’s gender consciousness and women leaders’ life histories across these five Caribbean countries, the collection assesses the successes of transnational feminist efforts, the resilience of masculinist resistances, the limits of gender mainstreaming and the possibilities for gender justice in and beyond the Caribbean today.




Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics


Book Description

This book documents the lived experiences of women of color academics who have leveraged their professional positions to challenge the status quo in their scholarship, teaching, service, activism, and leadership. By presenting reflexive work from various vantage points within and outside of the academy, contributors document the cultivation of mentoring relationships, the use of administrative roles to challenge institutional leadership, and more. Through an emphasis on the various ways in which women of color have succeeded in the academy--albeit with setbacks along the way--this volume aims to change the discourse surrounding women of color academics: from a focus on trauma and mere survival to a focus on courage and thriving.