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and welcome to the wall exchange my name

is Janice Sarah and I'm the director of

the Peterborough Institute for Advanced

Studies and a professor of law the Royal

Exchange is a series of downtown

lectures sponsored by the Peter wah

Institute of Advanced Studies at the

University of British Columbia and it's

really dedicated to trying to advance

innovative and fundamental research by

bringing people together in a fulsome

conversation about timely topics that

are highly important to us as members of

society and certainly tonight's

conversation promises I think to

generate a provocative and stimulating

debate I'd like to thank the Georgia

Strait magazine for co-sponsoring this

event and to thank CBC Radio one ideas

program its producer Kathleen flattery

en

I would ask you to please turn your cell

phone ringer Soph I know people might be

tweeting and things but we'd really like

not to have the noise so just briefly to

talk about the program this evening dr.

Butler is going to speak for about 50

minutes Charlie Smith will then serve as

moderator for a 45-minute question and

answer period Charlie Smith is an

accomplished journalist senior editor of

the Georgia Strait and former associate

producer of CBC Radio one it gives me

great pleasure to introduce Judith

Butler dr. Butler is the Maxine Elliot

professor in the department's of

rhetoric and comparative literature and

co-director of the program of critical

theory at the University of California

Berkeley she holds the Hannah Aaron

chair at the European Graduate School in

Switzerland she received her PhD in

philosophy from Yale University and has

been awarded the brudno Prize for

lifetime achievement at that University

Judith Butler has been called simply one

of the most probing challenging and

influential thinkers of our time one of

America's pre-eminent philosophers she

has challenged the financial beliefs

that anchor our cultural norms a

prolific scholar of diverse interests

she has published significant works on

feminist and queer theory literary

theory modern philosophy political

ethics warning and a course war

dr. Butler applies her extraordinary

theoretical knowledge to real-world

situations and her ideas and insights

have both informed and transformed

current thought she currently holds the

Andrew Mellon Award for distinguished

academic achievement in humanities in

her recent article in title dr. Butler

wrote on precarity embodiment in the

politics of public space to quote her

when bodies gather as they do they

express their to express their

indignation and to enact their plural

existence in public space they are also

making broader demands they are

demanding to be recognized and to be

valued they are exercised

a right to appear and to exercise

freedom they are calling for a livable

life

these values are presupposed by

particular demands but they also demand

a more fundamental restructuring of our

socio-economic and political order

please join me in welcoming dr. Butler

thank you

thank you very much

I'm enormous ly pleased to be here in

Vancouver today and I want first of all

to thank the Peter Wall Institute for

this wonderful invitation I'd like also

to acknowledge that we are on the

traditional lands of the Coast Salish

peoples

I'm particularly grateful to Joanna

Forbes and Janice Sara of the Peter wall

Institute the wall family including

Sonja wall who I believe is with us this

evening and the kind people at the vogue

see her at Georgia Strait and of course

the fabulous people of Vancouver thank

you I have said that I would speak about

bodies in the street and that is surely

what I plan to address but I want to

take a moment with you to pause and

think about what such a lecture can be

an attempt to set aside some of the

misconceptions that can easily arise

from such a title it may be thought that

I will say that bodies in the street are

a good thing that we should celebrate

mass demonstrations and that bodies

together on the street form a certain

ideal of community or even a new

politics worthy of praise though

sometimes bodies assembled on the street

are clearly cause for joy even for hope

let us remember that the phrase bodies

on the street can refer equally well to

right-wing demonstrations as military

soldiers assembled to quell

demonstrations and two forms of military

occupation so from the start we have to

be prepared to ask under what conditions

do we find bodies assembled on the

street to be cause for celebration or

what forms of assembly actually work in

the service of realizing greater ideals

of justice and equality minimally we can

say that those demonstrations that seek

to realize justice and equality are

worthy of praise but even then we are

called upon to define our terms since as

we know there are conflicting views

about justice to be sure and there are

sure then there are many disparate ways

of thinking and valuing equality to more

problems immediately present themselves

in certain parts of the world political

asylum alliances do not or cannot take

the form of Street assemblies think

about conditions of intense police

surveillance or military occupation

crowds cannot swell on the streets

without risking imprisonment injury or

death and so alliances are sometimes

made in other forms ones that seek to

minimize Bottle the exposure to violence

at the same time that demands for

justice are made hunger strikes within

prisons as we recently saw in Palestine

our forms of resistance that must take

place in spaces of enforced confinement

they are themselves bodily demands for

public space and public freedom so let

us remember that heightened bodily

exposure is not always a political good

or at least not always the most

successful strategy the Israeli

occupation of Palestine is a case in

point further we have to consider as

well that some forms of political

assembly do not take place on the street

or in the square precisely because

streets are not at the center of that

political action for instance a movement

may be galvanized for the purposes of

establishing adequate infrastructure we

can think about the continuing shanty

towns of South Africa Kenya Pakistan in

sites constructed outside the border of

Europe but also the Barrios of Venezuela

or the baracus of Portugal these are

more often than not groups of people

immigrants squatters and/or Roma who are

struggling precisely for running water

working toilets paved streets for work

and provisions indeed the street is not

the only site that

we can take for granted for certain

kinds of public assemblies because the

street is also a public good for which

people fight an infrastructural

necessity that forms one of the demands

of certain forms of mobilization and I

would add certain forms of mobilization

against precarity and yet I think we can

see that in such situations with or

without streets some basic requirements

of the body are at the center of

political mobilizations

we could certainly make a list of those

bodies require food and shelter

protection from injury and destruction

freedom to move employment healthcare

bodies require other bodies for support

for passion for survival and it matters

what age those bodies are and whether

they are able-bodied since in all forms

of dependency bodies require not just

one other person but social systems of

support that are complexly human and

technical but if I say this then another

set of questions emerge emerges are we

speaking only about human bodies and can

we speak about bodies at all without the

environments of the machines and the

complex systems of social

interdependence e upon which they rely

which form the conditions of their

existence and survival and finally even

if we come to understand and enumerate

the requirements of the body do we

struggle only for those requirements to

be met or do we struggle as well for

bodies to thrive it is one thing to

demand that bodies have what they need

to survive and indeed survival is a

precondition for all the other claims we

might make and yet it seems that we

survive precisely in order to live and

life as much as it requires survival

must be more than survival in order to

be livable so how do we think about a

livable life without positing a single

or uniform ideal for that life

it is not a matter in my view of finding

out what the human really is or what the

human really should be since it has

surely been made plain that humans are

animals too and that they're very bodily

existence depends upon systems of

support that include human and non-human

dimensions so to a certain extent I

follow my colleague Donna Haraway

in asking us to think about the complex

relation a letís that constitute bodily

life and to suggest that we do not need

any more ideal forms of the human but

rather complex ways of understanding

those sets of relations without which we

do not exist at all

perhaps I've gotten ahead of myself

or perhaps I keep lagging behind the

topic that forms the purpose of my

remarks this evening but I wanted to

pause at the beginning to make sure that

there are no unnecessary

misunderstandings although there are

those who will say that active bodies

assembled on the street constitute a

surging multitude one that in itself

constitutes a radical Democratic event

or action I am only partially in

agreement with that view there are all

sorts of surging multitudes I don't want

to endorse and they would include racist

or fascist congregations and mass

movements I don't think the point of

politics is simply to surge forth

together constituting a new sense of the

people although sometimes for the

purposes of radical Democratic Change

which I do endorse and for which I

struggle it is important to surge forth

in ways that claim and alter the

attention of the world something has to

hold together such a group some demand

some felt sense of injustice some lived

experience of the possibility of change

and that change has to be fueled by a

resistance to

minimally existing and expanding

inequalities ever increasing conditions

of precarity for many populations both

locally and globally resistance to forms

of authoritarian and security and

control that seek to suppress democratic

movements on the one hand there are

bodies that assemble on the street or

online or through other less visible

networks of solidarity especially in

prisons whose political claims are made

through language action gesture and

movement through linking arms the

refusing to move to forming bodily modes

of obstruction to police and state

authorities in making contact in ways

that are difficult to trace and in this

sense we can say that these bodies form

networks of resistance together

remembering that bodies are not just

active agents of resistance but also

fundamentally in need of support so

those movements when they work provide

provisional support in order to

facilitate the broader demand for forms

of support that make life livable so on

the one hand bodies assemble precisely

to show that they are bodies and they

let it be known politically what it

means to persist as a body in this world

what requirements must be met for bodies

to survive and what conditions make of

bodily life which is the only life we

have finally livable so on the one hand

as I'm saying bodies form in networks of

resistance on the other hand as I hope

to make clear bodies form in order to

produce not only structures of support

and in dependency but to events or enact

ideas of community and equality for

which the movement struggles it's not

only or primarily as abstract subjects

bearing rights that we take to the

streets we take to the streets because

we need to walk or move there we need

streets to be structured so that whether

or not we are in a chair we can move

and we can move there without

obstruction harassment administrative

detention fear of injury or death if we

are on the street it is because we are

bodies that require infrastructural

support for our continuing existence and

for living a life that matters so if I

caution against an easy celebration of

active bodies

I'm also cautioning against the idea

that activism requires that we think of

the body only as active as a Gentek if

the body were by definition active then

we would not need to struggle for the

conditions that allow the body it's free

activity in the name of social and

economic justice and though I do not

want to rest easily with an idea of the

body as vulnerable or indeed as passive

I do think that we cannot understand the

forms of interrelation allottee that

constitute our bodily lives if we do not

understand the complex relation between

vulnerability and those forms of

activity that come to constitute our

political resistance indeed even in the

moment of appearing on the street we are

vulnerable this is especially true for

those who appear on the street without

permits who are opposing the police or

the military or other security forces

one is shorn of protection to be sure

but this does not mean that one is

reduced to some sort of bare life on the

contrary to be shorn of protection is a

form of political exposure at once

concretely vulnerable and potentially

defiant how do we understand this

connection between vulnerability and

defiance within activism of course

feminist theorists have for a long time

argued that women suffer social

vulnerability disproportionately and

though there is always a risk in

claiming that women are especially

vulnerable given how many of

groups can certainly make that claim

there is perhaps something important to

be taken from this tradition of

argumentation the claim can sometimes be

taken to mean that women have an

unchanging and defining vulnerability

and that and that kind of argument makes

the case for paternalistic protection if

women are especially vulnerable then

they seek protection it becomes the

responsibility of the state or other

paternal powers to provide that

protection on that model feminist

activism not only petitions paternal

Authority for special dispensations and

protections but affirms that inequality

of power that situates women in a

powerless position and by implication

men in a more powerful one or it invests

the state with the responsibility for

facilitating the achievement of feminist

goals such a view is very different from

one from one that claims for instance

that women are vulnerable and capable of

resistance that vulnerability and

resistance can and do happen at the same

time as we see in certain forms of

feminist self-defense or even in certain

openly political movements of women in

the public sphere where they are not

generally allowed to appear we can think

of the walks or we can think about

those who oppose harassment or injury by

virtue of appearing as they do this

would in my mind also include Muslim

women wearing full veils in France who

are unjustly subject to to arrest and

and and and fines of course there are

good reasons to argue for the

differential vulnerability of women they

do suffer disproportionately from

poverty and literacy two very important

dimensions of any global analysis of

women's condition so when I'm asked for

instance are you a post feminist I say

well as long as women suffer

disproportionately from from poverty and

literacy and our disproportionate

vulnerable to violence I'm still a

feminist so the question that emerges

and forms the focus of my question here

is how to think about the vulnerability

of women in conjunction with feminist

modes of agency and how to think both in

light of global conditions and emerging

possibilities of Global Alliance this

task is made all the more difficult as

state structures and institutions of

social welfare lose their own resources

thus exposing more populations to

homelessness unemployment illiteracy and

inadequate health care so the struggle

in my view is how to make the feminists

claim effectively that such institutions

are crucial to sustaining lives at the

same time that feminists resist modes of

paternalism that reinstate relations of

inequality in some ways vulnerability

has been regarded as a value in feminist

theory in politics

this means neither that women are more

vulnerable than men nor that women value

vulnerability more than men do rather

certain kinds of gender defining

attributes like vulnerability and

invulnerability are distributed

unequally and for purposes of shoring up

certain regimes of power that

disenfranchised women we think about

goods as as distributed unequally under

capitalism we think about opportunities

distributed unequally under capitalism

we think about natural resources

especially water distributed unequally

but we should also surely consider that

one way of managing populations is to

distribute vulnerability unequally in

such a way that vulnerable populations

are established within discourse and

policy more recently we note that social

movements and policy analysts refer to

precarious populations and that

political strategies are accordingly

devised to think

about ameliorating conditions of

precarity as we extend the economic

notion of unequal distribution to

broader social and cultural spheres we

are also confronted especially during

times of war with the uneven grieve

ability of populations that is the idea

that certain lives if lost are more

worthy of memorialization and public

grieving than others populations

targeted for injury and destruction in

war are often considered unbelievable

from the start but so too are

populations whose labor is episodic and

precarious or who are considered

abandoned through systematic forms of

negligence when vulnerability is

distributed unequally then certain

populations are effectively targeted as

endurable with impunity or disposable

without reparation this kind of explicit

or implicit marking can work to justify

the infliction of injury upon them as we

see in times of war or in state violence

against undocumented citizens or we can

see such populations as responsible for

their own position or conversely in need

of protection from the state or other

institutions of civil society it's

important to note that when such

redistributive strategies abound than

other populations usually the ones

orchestrating or affecting the processes

of redistribution posit themselves as

invulnerable if not impermeable and

without any such needs of protection

this approach takes vulnerability and

invulnerability as political effects

unequally distributed effects of a field

of power that acts on and through bodies

if vulnerability has been culturally

coded feminine then how are certain

populations effectively feminized when

designated as vulnerable and others

construed as masculine when laying claim

to impermeable

once again these are not essential

features of men or women but processes

of gender formation effects of power

that have as one of their aims the

production of gender differences along

lines of inequality this has led

psychoanalytic feminists to remark that

the masculine position construed in such

a way is effectively built through a

denial of its own constitutive

vulnerability this denial or disavowal

requires the political institution of

oblivion or forgetfulness

more specifically the forgetting of

one's own vulnerability its projection

and displacement elsewhere the one who

achieves this impermeability

erases or externalizes all trace of a

memory of vulnerability the person who

considers himself by definition to be

invulnerable aspect effectively says I

was never vulnerable and if I was it

wasn't true and I have no memory of that

condition an obviously contradictory

statement it nevertheless shows us

something of the political syntax of

disavowal but it also tells us something

about how histories can be told in order

to support an ideal of the self one

wishes were true

such histories depend on disavowal for

their coherence and this coherence is

also thereby rendered suspect although

psychoanalytic perspectives such as

these are important as a way of gaining

insight into this particular way that

vulnerability is distributed along

gender lines it only goes part of the

way toward the kind of analysis needed

here since if we say that some person or

some group denies vulnerability we are

assuming not only that the vulnerability

was already there but also that it is in

some sense deniable of course one cannot

make an easy analogy between in

vidual and group formations and yet

modes of denial or disavowal can be seen

to traverse them both for instance to

certain defenders of the military

rationale for the destruction of

targeted groups or populations we might

say you act as if you yourself were not

vulnerable to the kind of destruction

you caused or to defenders of certain

forms of neoliberal economics you act as

if you yourself could never belong to a

population whose work and life is

considered disposable precarious who can

suddenly be deprived a base of basic

rights of access to housing or health

care or who lives with anxiety about how

and whether work will ever arrive in

this way then we assume that those who

seek to expose others to such positions

of Honor ability or those who seek

deposit and maintain a position of

invulnerability for themselves deny a

vulnerability by which they are in fact

bound to the ones they seek to subjugate

this last claim it's a claim I'm willing

to make moves in the direction of a

common or shared vulnerability but this

has meant less as an existential thesis

than as a general claim about how bodies

are invariably dependent upon enduring

viable social relations and institutions

for their survival and their well-being

although this claim can be understood as

an existential one it belongs in my view

more properly to the articulation of a

social ontology that I am trying in a

preliminary way to suggest can become

the basis for new forms of coalition one

that we see episodically instanced in

the contemporary politics of the street

even though i see the two levels of this

analysis i want to suggest that these

are not two forms of vulnerability

rather i want to argue that for

bodily vulnerability presupposes a

social world that we are as bodies

vulnerable to others and to institutions

and that this vulnerability constitutes

one aspect of the social modality

through which bodies persist and then

secondly I want to suggest that the

issue of my vulnerability or your

vulnerability implicates us in a broader

political problem of equality and

inequality since vulnerability can be

projected and denied psychological

categories but also exploited and

manipulated social and economic

categories in the production of

inequality this is what is meant by the

unequal distribution of vulnerability

vulnerability constitutes one aspect of

the political modality of the body where

the body is surely human understood as a

human animal vulnerability to one

another that is to say even when

conceived as reciprocal marks a pre

contractual dimension of our social

relations this means as well that at

some level it defies the instrumental

logic that claims I will only protect

your vulnerability if you protect mine

according to which politics becomes a

matter of brokering a deal or making a

calculation or strategically entering

into a contract in fact it constitutes

the conditions of sociality and

politically fit of political life that I

would argue cannot be contractually

stipulated and whose denial and

manipulable 'ti constitutes an effort to

destroy or manage a condition of

potential equality I don't mean to

suggest by this last formulation that

there's a single subject sovereign who

allocates vulnerability differentially

or unequally these modes of allocation

and even disavowal can be built into

institutional rationalities and stress

oh geez and so become forms of power

that operate without this the conceit of

a single deciding subject and so efforts

to challenge and contest these issues

something that happens more often than

not under the name of precarity takes

aim not only at individuals who make

policy but more fundamentally at the

forms of rationality representation and

strategy that inform this condition so

the way this differential allocation of

vulnerability works doesn't always

presuppose a dyadic frame one person or

group does something to another on those

occasions when there are groups who do

not appear at all or who do not count

whose bodies do not matter then the

institutionalized forms of a Faceman at

issue cannot readily be described

through recourse to the category of the

subject so it's not that one subject

does this to another whether the subject

is understood is singular or plural it's

rather that a set of strategies produce

the situation in which a population

cannot appear as a subject at all in the

US for instance the history of Native

peoples tends to fall into this category

and the history in Canada is of course

related yet distinct Native peoples are

described and given discursive life

through national narratives about the

founding of the Americas and yet this

very description these very narratives

more often than not become the means of

effacement as we know since Spain was an

imperial power before the u.s. that the

colonization of the Americas brought

with it acts of slaughter and killing

that are regularly denied on what is

still called in the u.s. Columbus Day

and now of course there is a popular

movement that has achieved rather

widespread success in renaming that day

indigenous peoples day

when we speak about a face meant we are

also speaking about the regulation of

memory and entering into another

formulation of disavowal there was no

slaughter for radical dispossession and

even if there were I do not remember it

or there is no reliable archive or it is

not among the histories that any of us

know or tell but if we were to enter

that history into a comparative study of

genocide or a comparative history of

forcible displacement then would we we

would see how the killing of whole

populations in Congo and Nazi Germany

and Armenia in the early part of the

20th century or the more recent

histories of the disappeared in Chile

Argentina or even the political murders

of Franco's Spain regularly become

matters for historians to dispute will

there be an institutionalized memory or

not and in such cases it's not a matter

of memory as something that is held in

the mind by someone who has experienced

this destruction directly rather it is a

memory that is maintained through

historical record through discursive and

transmittable means through

documentation image and archive to

preserve the memory of the vulnerability

of bodies under such conditions requires

a form of memorialization that must be

repeated and re-established over time

and space and this means that there is

no one memory that memory is not finally

a property of cognition but rather that

memory is socially maintained and

transmitted through certain forms of

documentation and exhibition through

media in this sense we might say that

the historical vulnerability of those

who were exploited whose land was

confiscated or whose lives were lost is

always at risk of disappearing this is

why Walter benjamine thought there that

there that a struggle must be waged for

the history of the oppressed precisely

because under modern conditions that

history runs the risk of

appearing always into oblivion it is

this Benjamin Ian Maxim that was and is

enacted by the madres de Plaza de Mayo

who beginning in 1977 started to meet

every Thursday in that large square in

Buenos Aires the site of Argentina's

government publicly to protest the

disappearance of their children those

suspected of activism against the

dictatorship illegally and persistently

they walked in nonviolent demonstrations

taking back public space and even making

use of their public exposure as mothers

precisely to defy the regime as they

walked they chanted we want our children

we want them to tell us where they are

the moderates said no matter what our

children think they should not be

tortured they should have charges

brought before them we should be able to

see them visit them the movement and

numbers of women whose children had

disappeared grew and in their weekly

demonstrations in those demonstrations

some carried pictures of the missing

children later they wore white scarves

to sell it to symbolize the white dove

of peace which they argued can unite all

women and yet this movement was neither

primarily identitarian nor maternal list

it opposed the brutality of the regime

and even when the regime finally fell in

1983 they continued weekly and even

continue now with other generations

joining them to protest any forgetting

of that brutality and for trials that

will bring all the torturers to justice

suffering a moralization

and political resistance mark that

ongoing public demonstration and yet it

is also a demonstration that claimed

public space when it was forbidden and

claims it still maintaining it as a

political right so I hope I am now able

to make clear at least two points about

Valle

ability that seek neither to idealize

nor to discount its political importance

the first is that vulnerability cannot

be associated exclusively with injure

ability that all responsiveness to what

happens including the responsiveness of

those who document the losses of the

past is a function and effect of

vulnerability of being open to a history

that is not told or being open to what

another body undergoes we can say that

these are matters of empathy but I want

to suggest that part of what a body does

to use the phrase of Delors derived from

his reading of Spinoza is to open onto

the body of another or asset of others

and for that reason bodies are not self

enclosed kinds of entities they are

always in some sense outside themselves

exploring or navigating their

environment extended and even sometimes

dispossessed through the senses if we

can become lost in another or if our

tactile or visual or auditory capacities

comport us beyond ourselves that is

because the body does not stay in its

own place and because dispossession of

this kind characterizes bodily life more

generally it is also why we have to

speak sometimes about the regulation of

the senses as a political matter there

are certain photographs of injury or

destruction of bodies in war that are

often forbidden to be seen precisely

because there is a fear on the part of

the state that regulates such matters

that some body will feel something about

what those other bodies underwent or

that some body in its sensory

comportment outside itself will not

remain enclosed monadic and individual

indeed we might ask what kind of

regulation of the senses what I would

call modes of ecstatic relationality

might have to be regular

related for individualism to be

maintained as an ontology required for

both economics and politics this is also

why certain forms of public

documentation in print and media in

museums and art spaces or even the art

space of the street become important in

the battle against historical oblivion

my last point here is that the body can

and does become a site where the

memories of others are transmitted no

memory is preserved without a mode of

transmission and the body is a point of

transfer in which your history becomes

mine or where your history passes

through mine I do not have to experience

your history history - to transmit

something of your history the

temporality of your life can and does

cross my own and a certain operation of

translation makes that possible one that

does not purport to translate everything

it is also because we are or can be

bound up with one another

which is very different from being

bounded as individual subjects thus the

possibility of transmitting a memory

under political threat the political

threat of oblivion depends upon the

transitivity of that memory its taking

shape and exercising an effect on bodies

that were not there and could not be

there this is not the same as the kind

of testimony given by those who were

there but it does suggest that testimony

depends upon transmission to survive in

time thus we might see the ways that the

memories of others arrive for us or even

in us as a mode of relationality we

might further understand this capacity

to receive and convey what the other

documents about history as a function of

our own corporeal relatedness across

time and space to those whose words we

carry we carry them in ourselves those

history become part those histories

become part of who we are but we also

carry them in spite of ourselves

so we're not just as bodies these

spatial and bounded creatures we can

never transcend that boundary completely

I agree but we are also the histories

that we never lived but which we

nevertheless transmit in the name of the

struggle to preserve the history of the

oppressed and to mobilize that history

in our struggle for justice in the

present when for instance the Israeli

government prohibits prohibits any

mention or memorialization of the Nakba

the forcible dispossession of more than

750,000 Palestinians from their homes in

1948 often in the middle of their meals

or in the middle of their night with no

warning and no justification in order to

produce domiciles for Jewish citizens of

the new state what precisely are they

doing they are surely seeking through

passing a law to regulate memory to

consign an historical and persisting

form of dispossession and suffering to

oblivion and to refuse the historically

demonstrated link between the forcible

dispossession of one people in order to

produce a Liberatore narrative for

founding a nation for another it would

be one thing if the dispossession

happened once but it inaugurated forms

of land confiscation and transfer that

happened continually and as we see in

the expansion and legalization of the

illegal of the illegal settlements

indeed all their settlements are illegal

the redrawing of territorial lines and

the new demands for loyalty oaths on the

part of Palestinians to Israel as a

Jewish nation and even in in the now

very public debate about transferring

those Palestinians who still live within

the boundaries of Israel to the occupied

territories of course there are many

different histories to be told here and

I cannot do justice to that to any of

them this evening but what I want to

suggest in a more modest way is that in

all of these struggles the body is

central as it is central

to the fight for the history of the

oppressed the fight against oblivion

what has happened to bodies is being

transmitted through various media and

those who openly struggle against the

faced past are themselves in a bodily

position of vulnerability being

impressed upon by a history and in this

sense being outside themselves even in

spite of themselves as they carry what

belongs to others no history can be

inscribed on a body or conveyed through

it without vulnerability an inscription

makes the body bend cave suffer and

respond even take new form in light of

that pressure the body then is not is to

be thought not as substance and

enclosure but perhaps as site of injury

ability receptivity passionate exposure

even ethical transport so I propose to

return now to the question of

vulnerability and to understand what

relation it might have to contemporary

coalition's and how the body figures

prominently in any idea of coalition we

may imagine for the present although we

often speak this way I do not think we

can consider vulnerability as a purely

contingent circumstance of course it's

always possible to say oh I was

vulnerable then but I'm not vulnerable

anymore sometimes that's even true and

we say that in relation to specific

situations in which we felt ourselves to

be at risk or enjoyable they can be

economic or financial situations when we

feel that we might be exploited lose

work find ourselves in conditions of

poverty or they can be emotional

situations certainly the political ones

are emotional or the economic ones are

deeply emotional to in which we are very

much vulnerable to rejection but later

find that we have lost that

vulnerability it makes sense that we

speak this way vulnerability seems

episodic it also makes sense that we

treat with caution the seductions of

ordinary just

course at such moments since though we

may feel that we are vulnerable in some

instances and not in others the

condition of our vulnerability is itself

not precisely changeable at most there

are times when our vulnerability becomes

apparent to us but that is not the same

as saying that we are only vulnerable at

those times we can be vulnerable without

knowing it and indeed that not knowing

it is part of vulnerability itself

vulnerability cannot be understood

restrictive ly as an effect restricted

to a contingent situation nor can it be

understood merely as a subjective

disposition as a condition that is I

would suggest coextensive with human

life understood a social life understood

as creaturely life and is bound to the

problem of precarity vulnerability is

the name for a certain way of opening

onto the world in this sense it's not

you know not only designates a relation

to the world but it asserts our very

existence as a relational one to say

that any of us are vulnerable beings is

to establish our radical dependency not

only on others but on a sustaining

sustainable world this has implications

for understanding who we are as

passionate beings as sexual as bound up

with others of necessity but also as

beings who seek to persist and whose

persistence can and is can be and is

imperiled when social economic and

political structures exploit or fail us

drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt

adriana cavarero the italian philosopher

tells us that one of the key moments of

politics what we might even identify as

its constitutive ethical moment is the

emergence of the question who are you we

asked this question implicitly or

explicitly when we seek to bring a

population into discourse or establish a

language of representation it's not

necessarily a single person who poses

this question an institution a dis

course an economic system that asks who

are you

seeks to establish a space of appearance

for the other to ask who are you is to

avow that one does not know in advance

who you are that one is open to what

comes from the other and that one

expects that no pre-established category

will be able to answer in advance the

question that is posed indeed I would

suggest in a certain of a nasty way the

question who are you has to remain an

infinitely open question unanswerable in

order to remain an ethical one it will

be important to keep active the

relationship between the various

meanings of the precarious if we are to

think how vulnerable 'ti relates to

coalition during this time

precariousness is a function of our

social vulnerability the condition of

our exposure that always assumes some

political form precarity is

differentially distributed and so one

important dimension of the unequal

distribution of conditions required for

a livable life precariat ization is also

an ongoing process as Isabel Isabel

Laurie has argued precariat ization

allows us to think about what Lauryn

Berlin has called the slow death

undergone by targeted or neglected

populations under conditions of

neoliberalism and it is surely a form of

power without a subject prokaryote

ization which is to say that there is no

one Center which propels its direction

and force of destruction if we only

considered the term precariat ization

I'm not sure we could account for the

structure of effect that is named by

precarity and if we decided to rally

under the name of the precarious as a

new identity or community formation we

might then be we might then draw

attention away from the globally

specific ways that precarity has lived

as a social political condition cloaking

some way that form of power

works so maybe precarious is what we

feel or would rather not feel and then

its analysis has to be linked to the

impetus to become impermeable as so

often happens within the discourse of

military nationalism and the rhetoric of

security and self-defense and yet it

will be important to call precarious

those bonds that support forms of life

those that should be structured by the

condition of mutual need and exposure

that bring us to forms of political

organization that sustain living beings

on terms of equality or at least dispose

them toward equality as an ideal worth

struggling for what seems finally more

important than any form of existential

individualism is the idea that a bond is

flawed or afraid or that it is lost or

irrecoverable and we see this I think

very prominently when for instance the

the Tea Party politicians in the United

States overtly rejoice over rejoice

about the idea that individuals who have

failed to take responsibility for their

own health care may well face death and

disease as a result apparently this was

this was mentioned at a at a tea party

congregation people who don't take

responsibility for their own health care

will face death and disease as a

consequence of their lack of

responsibility and the group rose up and

clapped joyously joyous clapping

rejoicing rejoicing we have to think

about that particular effect may be the

effect studies people will help us

okay at such moments I want to say I

want to say at such moments a social

bond has been cut or destroyed in ways

that deny a shared precariousness the

very particular ethos and politics that

ideally should follow from from that is

one that underscores local and global

interdependence II and actively resists

the radical radically unequal

distribution of precarity and grieve

ability okay so it's I mean of course

yes we need to think about sadistic

forms of joy at the thought of other

people lacking healthcare and dying as a

consequence but but what we really need

to see I think in that moment is that

the precarity of the one who takes that

sadistic joy is also denied as well as

the bond the the bond of interdependency

with the one whose death is being

joyously imagined such a struggle would

be at once opposed to forms of security

rien logics as well as the old and new

paternalism that are now linked to the

promise of security but this resistance

can happen only if modes of coalition

grounded in interdependency the in the

stem struggles against precarity and for

equality exercised power in ways that

break with the lure of paternalism this

cannot mean refusing all forms of state

and institutional support that form of

anti institutional politics

unfortunately allows with the

destruction of social democratic goods

and the idea of economic rights and

these forms of destruction the

destruction of those goods and rights

are precisely those that are being of

course undertaken and produced by

neoliberalism and secured terian

politics alike so yes one must struggle

for social democracy but in the context

I would suggest of a radical Democratic

politics and they are

friend we cannot presume that

interdependency is some beautiful state

of coexistence it's not the same as

social harmony

inevitably we rail against those on whom

we are most dependent and there is no

way to dissociate dependency from

aggression once and for all these may

not even be happy alliances or or

particularly joyous coalition's but they

are constituted from the insight I would

say the insight from the from the from

look from the condition of a pre

contractual set of relations that

pertain to social embodiment we require

one another to live this means that our

survival and well-being both are

invariably negotiated in the social

economic and political spheres indeed

our negotiations are the very sites

where those spheres converge and lose

their distinctness we can make this idea

popular by seeking recourse to broad

existential and humanist claims well

everyone is precarious but once we ask

about what this means or what forms

precarity assumes we see that we have

from the start left the existential

domain to consider our social existence

as bodily beings who depend upon one

another for shelter and sustenance and

who therefore are at risk of

statelessness homelessness and

destitution under unjust and unequal

political conditions in other words

precarious defines our existence as

political beings our survival depends

upon political arrangements and politics

especially as it becomes bio politics

and the managing of populations is

concerned with the question of whose

lives will be preserved protected and

valued and eventually mourned or

regarded in advance as potentially more

noble and whose lives will be considered

disposable and unbreathing all in this

way our precarity is to a large extent

dependent upon the organization of

economic and

social relations the presence or absence

of sustaining infrastructures and social

and political institutions modes of

struggling for them that produce and

sustain alliances so what I'm trying to

suggest is that precarity is indecisive

all form that dimension of politics that

addresses the organization and

protection of bodily needs precarity

exposes our sociality the fragile and

necessary dimensions of our

interdependency and this has

implications for how we join together in

struggle when we do no one escapes the

precarious dimension of social life that

is we might say our common

non-foundation indeed nothing founds us

outside of a struggle to establish those

bonds by which we are sustained so when

people take to the streets together they

form something of a body politic and

even if that body politic does not speak

in a single voice even when it does not

speak at all or make any claims it still

forms asserting its presence as a plural

and obdurate bodily life what is the

political significance of assembling as

bodies stopping traffic or claiming

attention or moving not as stray and

separate individuals but as a social

movement of some kind it does not have

to be organized from on high the

Leninist presumption and it does not

need to have a single message the logo

centric can seat 4 assembled bodies to

exercise a certain performative force in

the public domain the we are here that

translates that collective bodily

presence might be read as we are still

here meaning we have not yet been

disposed of such bodies are precarious

and persisting which is why I think we

have always to link precarity with forms

of social and political agency where

that is possible when the bodies of

those deemed disposable assemble into

public view they are saying

we have not slipped quietly into the

shadows of public life we have not

become the glaring absence that

structures your ordinary life in a way

the collective assembling of bodies is

an exercise of the popular will and a

way of asserting in corporeal form one

of the most basic presuppositions of

democracy namely that political and

public institutions are bound to

represent the people and to do so in

ways that establish equality as a

presupposition of social and political

existence so when those institutions

become structured in ways in such a way

that certain populations become

disposable or are interpolated as

disposable deprived of a future of

Education of stable and fulfilling work

of even knowing what space one can call

a home then surely the Assemblies

fulfill another function not only the

expression of justifiable rage but the

assertion in their very social

organization of principles of equality

in the midst of precarity I am aware

that the fate of the Egyptian revolution

remains uncertain and sometimes

extremely dispiriting especially as the

transitional military government refuses

to honor its deadlines for ceding to

civil rule even in the midst of our

elections whether the elections we're

seeing right now

indeed it continues to unleash its

police force on demonstrators and retain

power over who may or may not run for

election who may or may not be accepted

as elected I want to underscore

nevertheless two aspects of the

revolutionary demonstrations in Tahrir

Square that emerged so clearly in the

winter before last and which still

despite all odds continue to this day

the first has to do with the way a

certain sociability was established

within the square a division of labor

that broke down gender difference that

involved rotating who would speak and

who would clean the areas where people

slept in eight developing a work

schedule for everyone to maintain the

environment and to clean the toy

in short what some would call horizontal

relations among the protesters formed

methodically and even easily introducing

relations of equality into the very form

of resistance those included an equal

division of labor between the sexes and

became part of the very resistance to

the Mubarak regime and its entrenched

hierarchies including the extraordinary

differentials of wealth between the

military and corporate sponsors of the

regime and the working people and those

subject to the violence of police forces

and to the belt Ageha hired thugs that

do the government's dirty work

so the social form of the resistance

began to incorporate principles of

equality that governed not only how and

when people spoken acted for the media

and against the regime but how people

cared for their very their various

quarters within the square the beds on

pavement the makeshift medical stations

and bathrooms the places where people

ate the places where people were exposed

to violence from the outside these

actions were all political by breaking

down conventional distinctions between

public and private in order to establish

relations of interdependency that were

supportive and sustaining and in this

sense they were incorporating into the

very social form of resistance the

principles for which they were

struggling on the street and for the

future the second the second dimension

of of of that assembly I want to call

attention to is the careful relation to

violence when up against violent attack

or extreme threats many people chanted

the words sumia which comes from the

root verb Salima which means to be safe

and sound unharmed unimpaired intact

safe and secure but also interestingly

to the unobjectionable blameless

faultless and yet also to be certain

established clearly proven the term

comes from the noun seen si l M which

means peace but also interchangeably and

significantly the religion of Islam one

variant

of the term is of us soon which is

Arabic for pacifism most usually the

chanting of Samia comes across as a

gentle exhortation peaceful peaceful

although the Revolution was for the most

part nonviolent it was not necessarily

led by a principled opposition to

violence rather the collective chant was

a way of encouraging people to resist

the mimetic pull of military aggression

and the aggression of the gangs by

keeping in mind the larger goal radical

Democratic change to be swept into a

violent exchange of the moment was to

lose the patience needed to realize the

revolution what interests me here is the

chant the way in which language worked

not to incite an action but rather to

restrain one the chant structures effect

in the direction of community and

non-violence calling for an enacting a

nonviolent mode of politics of course an

ambiguity emerges precisely there since

resisting a violent attack does take

some force one has to sometimes forcibly

resist a forcible attack and this means

that non-violence is not a form of

passivity but rather the thoughtful

cultivation of forceful resistance that

refuses to replicate the aggression it

opposes and where restraint itself must

be understood as the nonviolent

cultivation of force although some may

wager that under conditions of new media

or social networking the exercise of

rights now takes place quite at the

expense of bodies on the street that

Twitter and other virtual technologies

have led to a disembodiment of the

public sphere I disagree and as I've

argued elsewhere I want to suggest that

the media requires those bodies on the

street to have an event even as the

street requires the media to exist in a

global arena but under conditions when

those with cameras or internet compress

and or tortured or deported then the use

of the technology effectively implicates

the body

not only must someone's hand tap and

send but someone's body is on the line

if that tapping and sending gets traced

in other words localization is hardly

overcome through the use of a media that

potentially transmits globally and if

this conjuncture of street and media

constitutes a very contemporary version

of the public sphere then bodies on the

line have to be thought as both there

and here now and then transported in

stationary with very different political

consequences following from these two

ways of being positioned in space and

time finally then bodies on the street

are precarious they're exposed to police

force and sometimes endure physical

suffering as a result the risk is there

and it seems to be increasing now that

police regularly clear out the

encampments of the Occupy movement

through forcible means or or clamp down

on free assembly supported by laws and

policies that claim that free assemblies

are security risks one way to obliterate

a fundamental right those bodies are

also obdurate and persisting they insist

on their continuing and collective their

nasur hereness and in these recent forms

organizing themselves without hierarchy

and so exemplifying the principles of

equal treatment they are demanding of

public institutions in this way in this

way those bodies enact the message

performative Lee even when they sleep in

public or when they organize collective

methods for cleaning the grounds they

occupy as happened both interior and

Zuccotti Park if there's a we who

assembles there at that precise space

and time there's also a we that forms

across the media that calls for the

demonstrations and broadcasts its event

so some set of global connections are

being articulated a different sense of

the global from the globalized market

and some set of values are being enacted

in the form of a collective resistance

a defense of our collective precarity

and persistence in the making of

equality and the many voiced and

unvoiced ways of refusing to become

disposable when this happens we act from

a sense of precarity we also act against

a sense of precarity reacting coalition

and often in unchosen proximities to

people we've never chosen to be close to

indeed in a situation where a pre

contractual interdependency is at work

sometimes this is experienced as a

relief and an exhilaration sometimes it

is uneasy and conflicted but it is in my

view always necessary and sometimes

promising and alive thank you

thank you

thank you

Thank You dr. Butler my name is Charlie

Smith I'm editor if the charges straight

and we have two microphones one on the

left and one on the right so if people

want to ask questions they can go to the

microphone and I'll just start with one

question to get things going

dr. Butler why is it that so many people

in North America seem to have difficulty

acknowledging their own precarity agree

with well it's not very much fun is it I

can follow up with another question

um no I'm happy to answer your question

although I'm not sure I could answer in

a satisfying way but but but but but

certainly I mean I do think that there

are forms of amassing wealth and

economic and political security and

protection that are very much about

producing the possibility of lives that

will not be touched by other lives or

lives that will be impermeable to

incursion right we can think about gated

communities but we can also think more

generally about forms of of militarism

or nationalism that are stoked by the

ideal of of never being attacked are

never never having anyone come into

one's territory who might do harm and I

think one can find it as well in

virulent anti-immigration discourses and

and I'm not

sure that most people would understand

themselves as dealing with a situation

of precarity at such moments but in fact

I think that there's there's a specter

of being destroyed or being destabilized

or of being penetrated or aggressed upon

that does suggest a level of enormous

political anxiety that that that focuses

on on the body and and and the capacity

of the body to be suddenly aggressed

upon or to be entered to be - - to have

its its solidity and control threatened

at a very fundamental level and and and

I and I do think that it is a political

strategy - to effectively externalize

and deposit that felt sense of precarity

in in other populations and to try to

keep other populations precarious

especially those who are who are in some

sense feared or loathed and of course

people in dominant in dominant positions

who do that know that they are also all

the more subject to aggression from

those they subjugate so what they

actually end up doing is increasing

their own felt sense of precarity

through a mode of subjugation that is

unlivable for those who who who live it

so you know I I think we could we could

answer the question at both the

psychological and a political level but

my my my wager is that the psychological

and the political work in tandem it's

not always easy to show how that works

I'm not interested in the kind of group

psychology exactly but I

but I am interested in seeing how that

can work out I don't I don't know if I

answered your question okay so what I

would say you did I mean I'll try again

yeah happy to know well there is the

psychological aspects - yes that failure

to acknowledge but what I'll do is we

have people who want to ask questions

and where what I would ask each person

who asks a question if you could keep it

relatively concise so that we can get

more questions in the amount of time

available so we'll start on the right

one of the chants I heard at the Occupy

movements in Vancouver the people United

will never be defeated and if there's

one thing I learned it's that in that

instance the people were defeated and

maybe you might disagree with me but we

need only refer to our mutual friend

Hegel and the battle between the law of

the heart in the way of the world to

graph onto this see what I think can be

characterized is the fact that we we

have the law of the heart the occupiers

keeping in reserve the virtue the fact

that the people will never be defeated

well the way of the world will always

triumph over that because of the nature

of it being a sham fight to this extent

my question is is this kegeling

characterization correct and if so to

what extent will these occupiers and

these carceral archipelagos need to

traverse the fantasy that non-violence

can actually edify radical Democratic

Change okay you know I my guess is that

others heard you better you were

standing just a little bit too far away

from that microphone for me but I

I and I understand it but I got it that

it was very articulate but I'm just but

I'm sorry

what I understand you to have said is

that the the the the so-called occupiers

were falsely believed that if they

remain united they would not be defeated

but indeed they were defeated which

means that there's something wrong with

the tactic but what I don't understand

is what you're you're claiming is wrong

with the tactic what I'm claiming is

that the the movement is subject to a

fantasy that nonviolent change can

actually edify radical Democratic Change

is that correct and if it is not correct

where am I going wrong well look first

of all as far as I'm concerned the

Occupy movement is not over and but the

Occupy movement is has to work through

certain kinds of in in in in in an

episodic way and the encampment episode

has been an extremely important one the

end of encampments is not the end of the

Occupy movement and the real question is

what are the new strategies and and and

what are the new ways of occupying

buildings temporarily or producing

demonstrations or continuing to get the

word out in in different ways so so you

know I think we have certain ideas of

what success is Oh Occupy movement

failed because police power came in and

wiped them out and they were defenseless

against police power now you could say

oh they needed to take arms or what we

need is a armed revolutionary struggle

or or something along those lines

but I think I think in fact what we are

seeing is the common the contours of a

new form of the conflict to remember

what what really began as a movement

that was trying to draw attention to

differential levels of wealth and in

particular showing that the rich are

getting richer and fewer and the poor

are getting larger and poorer suddenly

found itself up against police power

right and that the analysis of police

power and the resistance to police power

was not at the forefront of the movement

and suddenly became at the forefront of

the movement when public space was taken

back by the state time and again through

forcible police action so no and and it

seems to me that in in many of the

student movements as well which are to a

certain degree linked to occupy and to a

certain degree independent we're also

seeing police action against free

assembly and I gather the new montreal

law has actually now effectively

criminalized protests as as a kind of

security threat which is to me extremely

frightening so the real question for me

is okay what's what now we're not just

dealing with differentials in wealth

we're also dealing with a state a set of

economic and state powers that are

invested in the destruction of dissent

and legal assembly through using the

violent arm of the state which is the

police and and that point and those

police forces are increasingly in

several cities as we know

being trained by military forces so we

actually have the militarization of the

police and the criminalization of

protests happening at the same time

which means that the analysis of power

and the ways of resisting that power are

going to have to adapt but we're in the

middle of a process we're in the middle

of a process and and and it's also a

problem because traditional modes of

civil disobedience and nonviolent

resistance are no longer being

recognized as legitimate so for instance

on the Berkeley campus when people and

you know they actually you know gave the

police their wrists thinking okay you

know a handcuffed me take me away this

is what's done this is what happened in

the civil rights movement they were

thrown to the ground and beaten which

which is an historically really

important moment given free speech at

Berkeley because what it what it

effectively said it says is that

traditions governing non nonviolent

civil disobedience are no longer being

honored it seems to me that the only way

to overcome that kind of militarization

and criminalization of protest is

through making protest more amenable

making it larger making it global making

it overwhelming so that the the actual

legitimacy of the state is called into

question I think there I I think we

would have to have a longer discussion

about violence and non-violence and what

I was trying to suggest briefly today is

that non-violence is not just passivity

it is the cultivation of the force of

resistance and and in that sense it in

it involves bodily action pressure and

and presence and it is not simply taking

it but I we need more time for that

okay I don't know if this is a big

question or if it's actually a pretty

straightforward question but just

thinking about leftist politics it is

related to the last question on occupy

um any kind of leftist or progressive

politics whatever we want to call it um

it seems to obviously be in when it's up

against right-wing politics it's

necessarily fragmented because of our

recognition of difference within a group

and then I've often thought of your

notion of strategic essentialism in

terms of a way of bringing a group

together and then something like occupy

I just kind of want to ask you with some

with kind of a phrase we are the 99% as

a kind of example of what I understand

to be strategic essentialism I would ask

if do you think that that has proven a

kind of politically efficacious form of

the use of strategic essentialism or do

we lose something in something like we

are the 99% well I don't think we are

the 99% is strategic essentialism

because it doesn't say that our being

99% is essential to who we are or is the

only basis on which we mobilize together

I think in fact it seeks to be a kind of

umbrella term that is supposed to

actually include all kinds of

differences without asserting economic

oppression as more primary than all

other forms of oppression so I saw it as

trying to circumvent the more classical

leftist effort to to make economic

oppression primary and then to have

secondary oppressions but of course as

we know within many of the encampments

and within the movements there are

struggles about race about sexuality

about gender and and and I guess I want

to say that those struggles are

absolutely necessary

and that we shouldn't lament them I

don't think we should we should think oh

it's too bad we're still having those

struggles and we're not yet unified I

think if we're having those struggles

that is what Unity means Unity means

struggling right and so you know I I

tend to kind of resist the the language

of fragmentation even though sometimes

it's exactly right right that groups do

leave they can't be in coalition

together it's impossible and yet

it seems to me that hanging in hanging

in in coalition's where it's not easy

and when where those issues continue to

remain open and where there's there's

open conflict and struggle that's that's

what we can that's what is meant by

unity unity is not uniformity unity is

agreeing to stay in and struggle or

finding that the struggle is worth it

not just because different groups need

to recognize each other or understand

each other better

but because the stakes are really really

high because what is happening

economically and politically is is

absolutely unacceptable and one has to

keep that in mind at the same time that

one is engaged in that open-ended

struggle I first of all I never I never

felt so vulnerable that asking a

question you're you're safe with me

just the vulnerability asset choice and

being a student here as an immigrant and

a queer migrant the the first thing that

I was told when I attended a student

international student meeting was never

to attend a protest or any sort of

social or political event and waste of

like some the tactics of fear applied to

by the state but also by the

institutions to depolarize migrants as a

way of preventing any action to happen

that's one of and but also the

vulnerability as a choice so every time

I go to a protest

which I do all the time there's a choice

of me of being a greater choice of

actually being deported if anything goes

wrong so there's that that there's

always that fear but also vulnerability

as a as a place of birth of any

resistance so how do you play that

performative side of performativity

within like the tactics that are applied

by the state and by the institutions to

deploy to ties migrants mm-hmm good

question

seems like you could probably tell me

more about that question that I could

tell you but I do I do think that the

that the the effort to depoliticize

migrants as you've described it is also

a certain kind of training in good

citizenship

right and we have to ask what version of

citizenship is being inculcated at such

moments and whether whether you're also

being asked to accept implicit forms of

censorship as the precondition of your

membership and and that's that's really

tricky you don't even need a law to say

you you know you may I mean of course

there's the problem of the law but there

doesn't even have to be an explicit

censoring but I think in fact one I had

these conversations with with students

on the on the East Coast in the US who

did a number of public public actions

they were undocumented and they did

public actions that did put them in a

precarious position but also drew

attention to the precarious position

they were in and which was for them not

acceptable right and and so we have to

think about both dimensions of that and

what was interesting is that certain

students could do it and those were the

ones who for whatever reason felt that

their chances of deportation were

or that they were possibly protected by

the institutions they were part of or

who are willing to take the risk for

whatever reason and others felt they

could not do that but wanted to support

the effort in ways that didn't

necessarily put their own bodies on the

line and let's remember that every

public demonstration requires its non

public support system right there's a

non public support system and there's a

way to be supportive and to be you know

to be to be assisting and to be active

in in in in ways that that that feel

manageable depending on what the level

of political risk really is for the

individual or for the four other groups

so so I don't think there's one I don't

think there's simply one form of of

being mobilized on that issue

and one has to and and who no one can

prescribe no one can prescribe to you

what risk to take but if someone tells

you never to take a risk then you know

you have to wonder what norm is being

inculcated at such a moment

allowing permanent like permanent

residents can no like can be actually

deported if they're like even citizens

that went through process of refugee or

permanent resident before yes could be

deported like there's no it the status

of permanent resident or our citizen is

not even like it goes farther than just

being a I am aware I'm we we now have

retractable forms of citizenship yes

these are the retractable conditions of

citizenship and they are expanding and

and and and that is that is that that is

hugely worrisome and and and very very

difficult I understand that hi dr.

Butler I don't have a specific question

but I was wondering if you could speak

to what you said earlier in your lecture

about the link between feminization of

different nations and I'm totally

drawing a blank here

vulnerability of those nations so just

the link between the two I was wondering

if you could speak briefly about those

because I was curious about that um well

I suppose um you know let me just you

know clarify that I think you know in a

way I'm I'm I'm saying two things at the

same time and I want to be able to say

them both and one is that vulnerability

is something like a shared condition

that cannot be denied and I also want to

say that vulnerability is a condition

that is denied all the time and and and

I I do i I don't think we can deny what

is not in some sense there the link that

I was making in my own mind was one of

physical safety I don't know what

physical safety yeah because physical

safety is a concern for many women I

mean it's a concern for everybody

but I was wondering if that was

something that you were thinking of when

you made this whoa what I did have in

mind

is that certain forms of torture that

that took place under the Bush

administration involved involved efforts

to feminize the the bodies of of Arab

men in in out sourced prisons and and I

think that it's a very complex issue the

way in which torture work to to

emasculate at the same time that it

identified or consolidated the idea that

that those who are tortured are

homosexual or women like you become a

homosexual you become a woman

by being tortured and that the effect of

the torture was to do that so it it was

operating within that idea that the

worst possible social position or the

position of intense vulnerability would

be that of a homosexual or of a woman so

that kind of subservience well that kind

of inability to protect yourself against

violent assault okay thank you we've got

three more okay I just thank you I just

wanted to know what your thoughts were

on the connection between physical

violence in protests whether on the side

of protestors or the authorities and its

connection with the vulnerability so for

example could it displace the

vulnerability of those protesters or

does it rather reveal the vulnerability

of both the protesters and

otherwise impermeable authorities at the

same time or just what your thoughts

were generally between the connection on

physical violence in protests and the

vulnerability which you spoke of okay

um

in general I think I am

I support non non violent forms of

resistance at the same time I want to

say that one of the most important

things for me as a and indeed for many

people in my generation was learning

forms of of self-defense and that I

wouldn't be okay on the street if I

didn't know that I had skills of

self-defense when we think about

self-defense and we think about it on

the street we think about it in

demonstrations we think about it what

when a when a policeman is coming at you

with a baton or when you were being

sprayed of course there's a right to

self-defense and the question is what

form does that take and what I'm most

interested in our collective forms of

support at moments of police attack so

that people they link together to make

it difficult for the attack to take

place or they support one another or

they actually catch each other or or

interpose themselves in front of one

another there are there ways of thinking

about self-defense not just as an

individual practice which many of us had

to learn but also as a kind of

collective practice and it is it's a

delicate and difficult practice and I

don't think anyone can completely

prescribe it in advance although there

are a lot of people who have worked on

this for a very very long time and there

are other social movements too to

reference at this moment especially in

South Africa so I think using the body

as a force to stop a blow or to

to deflect a blow is extremely important

at what point does that become a blow

what's what's the defense and what's the

what's that what's the the act I want to

say that there's force on all sides of

that and that there's no way especially

in the confrontation with the police

that we can eradicate the field of force

we can only navigate the field of force

as ethically and and carefully and as we

can and sometimes our ex of self-defense

will be called provocation they will be

renamed after the fact and videos

brought like oh that's a provocation

well it seemed to me that person is

being beaten or that's a price don't you

see the left you know but there's no way

to control it especially in the visual

you know documentation there's no way to

fully control how it will signify and

that is of course a huge problem and I'm

also aware that politically self-defense

works in some ways that I don't agree

with right so that highly militarized

nations can say they had to assault a

population out of self-defense or they

use self-defense to legitimate every act

of aggression so self-defense can become

an alibi for aggression so that I don't

I don't have a good answer for you all I

want to say is that it's a very vigilant

practice to to insist on self-defense

and to make sure or to try as hard as

possible for it not to be an alibi for

for the kind of violence we are opposing

right because the whole point is not to

replicate the violence one opposes just

but it but to stop the violence right

that that's it

I was just wondering if you could

explain when you say that the Tea Party

for example has vicious appreciation for

the vulnerability of the other of those

who are not going to be able to afford

health care and such and you say that

that actually exemplifies their own

vulnerability and the fragility of their

own states I'm wondering why then you

included right-wing protests in your

caveat as to why not all bodies on the

street are positive and you included

them with violence and with military and

with three percussive bodies on the

street um just just tell me that again

what well the question is why why do you

include right-wing protests and

right-wing demonstrations in your caveat

about why not all bodies on the street

are a positive thing why is it it seemed

to me that you are saying that left-wing

protests that Occupy movements and such

are a good thing to have and yet it

seems that you think things I see

protest like tea party and things aren't

positive things to have I see what

you're saying okay I'm sorry

that's okay it's a good question because

it helps me clarify something I I am I

am in favor of the freedom of assembly I

am very anxious right now that the

freedom of assembly is being taken away

in many parts of the globe and that

security Rhian logics and and and and

state and economic interests are very

interested in quelling freedom of

assembly so I am in favor of freedom of

assembly which means that I want the

right to be enjoyed by people who are on

the left and the right and I probably

even defend the right of some pretty

horrible people to collect and you know

on the street okay but the fact that I

defend the right of right-wing people to

collect on the street of including the

Tea Party as I absolutely do because you

know there's a big liberal core to my

left ism

well you know I mean we are what we are

right we come out of I would come out of

complex histories but anyway there is

one I do defend their right and I would

right against it and I would a pour it

and I would hate it but I wouldn't take

the right away right and and that's

that's the line that's the line so and

when I started the talk I said look I'm

not rejoicing I'm not gonna rejoice

about the Tea Party on the street

I'm not going to oppose it legally and

I'm going to oppose any legal effort to

restrain them from from from going on

the street but I'm not gonna I'm not

gonna I'm not gonna celebrate that's all

okay basically out of time but you've

been very patient so if we can make this

really quick that would be terrific okay

well I I was interested in you're

talking about vulnerability as a pre

contractual thing that we share okay ah

there okay sorry so you you were

saying that vulnerability is a pre

contractual shared State I'm interested

in thinking about the language of

contracts in the context of what you're

saying cuz it seems in a certain way

contracts our way of denying

vulnerability in that they imply we have

control like we get to say this is what

we're entering into and then we're

taking responsibility of what happens to

us

it caught allows for a just world

hypothesis and it this sort of

contractual 'ti which easily ends up in

shoring up neoliberalism often invades

language of consent whatever sort of

consent sexual consents medical consent

and I think that they're sorry

obviously there's something really

important ethically about consensual 'ti

and about consensus and I'm wondering if

you have any insight into how we should

talk about that that gets away from this

problematic element of contractual 'ti

yeah thank you

I've been I've been working on that

issue in the last weeks I gave us

seminar on sexual consent actually in

France where we we talked a bit about

the Dominique strauss-kahn issue and and

and and how consent was projected and

what consent means so there's lots to be

said but but let me let me just say two

things that I think are relevant for us

this evening the first is how do we

think about global obligations of

obligations that we we have to one

another as inhabitants of the of the

globe when when we're not necessarily

part of the same nation state or we're

not necessarily part of the same

community or we've never entered into an

explicit contract with one another and

it seems to me that it cannot be the

case that were only ethically obligated

to those with whom we are already

contracted ie those who belong to the

same nation state that we have agreed to

join or that or that we've been born

into and and and legalized within we we

have to think about ethical obligations

and political obligations in ways that

exceed the terms of contract it's also

true that most forms of contract not all

tend to individualize those who enter

into them or certain forms of social

contract tend to produce ideas of a

nation-state which are exclusionary so

that Purdue

- two problems well what are my extra

national obligations and Who am I

when I am NOT just an individual am I

not related to others in ways for which

I need a different kind of political

vocabulary so so that seems terribly

important but you know it's always

possible to say well I mean if you think

about what happens in sexually

progressive circles where people they

make arrangements to have this or that

kind of sexual relationship and they

come enter into a contract and everyone

agrees and then you know something

happens and someone finds that they're

horribly vulnerable in a way that they

had no idea they they didn't expect it

all and they can't be in that contract

and whatever made them think they could

be in that contract and I mean it's

something we all know right and and it's

a kind of and I also think it's a kind

of leftist conceit but oh well we can

find the ideal form and then we we

consent to the ideal form and then we

live the ideal form because we think

it's right and then we find that it's

radically unlivable so so what would it

mean what would it mean say in a context

like that to return to a different kind

of question like what are the conditions

of livability right what are the

conditions of livability and how to

communicate them and how to live them

right which without going back to

completely conservative structures or

thinking oh I guess that Social Forum is

actually right no I mean it's really -

instead of asking what what it is

rationally I believe I should be able to

do what are the concrete conditions of

livability I want to say that this

question is something that not only

pertains to sexual life and the

organization of sexuality but it does

pertain to the organization of our our

ethical and our political bonds

especially with those you know we don't

know or never chose right I mean in a

way we are we are vulnerable in ways

that we can't that can't be accommodated

by ideas of of choice and knowledge that

are presupposed by contract we are we

are already and before any question of

choice vulnerable to others in ways that

that that in effect define us as bodily

and social beings and I'm trying to

think what does that say about our

global responsibilities and how might we

rethink ourselves as as global creatures

in in light of such a claim thank you

for your attention

Judith

judith on behalf of all of us thank you

for an extraordinary evening an

extraordinary conversation Thank You

charlie in the Georgia Strait and on

behalf of the Peter wall stitute for

Advanced Studies thank you to all of you

for joining in the conversation and

thank you for coming and safe travels

back and stay posted for future lectures

of the wall exchange ones coming up in

October about the cosmic universe in the

21st century but thank you again tutor