If you speak [ about violence against Israelis], you are in an unspeakable place, have become a Nazi or its moral equivalent (if there is a moral equivalent). It certainly terrifies, but perhaps also it is a linguistic permutation of state terrorism, an assault that stops one in one's tracks, and secures the continuing operation of the regime and its monopoly on politically intelligible speech.
Judith ButlerI was born a Zionist, because I didn't have a choice about that. It was the ether of my family life, but I certainly broke with it as I asked more questions about it. And that doesn't mean I want to see the destruction of a people, it means I want to see a state structure that might embody more substantially the basic principles of democracy.
Judith ButlerPhotography has a relation to intervention, but photographing is not the same as an intervening.
Judith ButlerIt wasn't possible just to rid oneself, simply, of the norms through which one is constituted.
Judith ButlerObama's failure to close Guantanamo is yet another instance where the rhetoric of democratic and constitutional rights proved not useful for his international relations, relations which are always pursued in ways that continue to link and fortify securitarian power with the opening of new markets.
Judith ButlerI did not mean to argue that gender is fluid and changeable (mine certainly is not). I only meant to say that we should all have greater freedoms to define and pursue our lives without pathologization, de-realization, harassment, threats of violence, violence, and criminalization. I join in the struggle to realize such a world.
Judith Butler