Popular sovereignty has to be given by a people to itself, and this is the important meaning of self-determination.
Judith ButlerIt is true that non-governmental organisations working within strong human rights frameworks are now confounded by securitarian forms of logic and power that extend the paternalistic bias of their work in new ways.
Judith ButlerA certain kind of permission is given to live differently, to conceptualize and to act according to a new conceptualization.
Judith ButlerWhat we need are poems that interrogate the world of pronouns, open up possibilities of language and life; forms of politics that support and encourage self-affirmation.
Judith ButlerI do not deny certain kinds of biological differences. But I always ask under what conditions, under what discursive and institutional conditions, do certain biological differences - and they're not necessary ones, given the anomalous state of bodies in the world - become the salient characteristics of sex.
Judith Butler