Table Of ContentJudith Butler and Theology
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Anna Maria Riedl
Judith Butler and Theology
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Translated by Maren Behrensen
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University of Lucerne and the University of Münster
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Contents
Introduction .................................................. ix
Butler, Religion, and Theology ............................. ix
Structure of the Book ..................................... x
A Theology of Vulnerability ................................ xii
PART A
Butler’s Philosophy
I Preliminary Remarks .......................................... 3
1 Butler’s Understanding of Language and Her Style .......... 5
2 Butler’s Understanding of Theory, Object of Intellectual
Interest, and Methodology ................................ 7
3 Butler as a Recognition Theorist ........................... 11
II The Foundations of Butler’s Philosophy ........................ 15
1 Power, Discourse, and Performativity ....................... 15
Butler’s Notion and Understanding of Discourse ........ 16
Performative Praxis: Citing, Repeating, Displacing ...... 17
2 Gender, Norms, and Subject ............................... 18
Butler’s Concept of Norms ............................. 19
Framework for Butler’s Critique of the Subject ........... 19
Subjectivation and Gender Norms ..................... 21
Butler’s Response to Criticism of Her Gender Theory ..... 22
Resisting the Effects of Norms ......................... 23
Philosophy of Language: Vulnerability, and Resistance
through Language ................................... 25
3 Subjectivation as ‘Subjection’ .............................. 28
From Gender Theory to a Theory of the Subject .......... 29
The Process of Subjectivation .......................... 30
The Figure of the Trope ............................... 31
The First Precondition of Subjectivation: the Desire to
Exist ................................................ 33
The Second Precondition of Subjectivation: Matrix of
Norms and Ideas of Identity ........................... 35
Melancholy .......................................... 36
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vi Contents
Resistance to Power ................................... 37
Potentiality .......................................... 38
Resistance through Entanglement ..................... 40
Structural Resistance as Work on the Conceptual
Framework .......................................... 42
III Post-sovereign Subjects ........................................ 43
1 The Other – Asymmetrical Intersubjectivity ................ 45
Readjustment of Recognition: Who Are You? ............ 46
Dependence on the Recognition of Others – the Ecstatic
Subject .............................................. 48
Transformative Effects ................................ 49
2 Vulnerability and Precarity ................................ 51
Alterity as Exposure to Others – the Vulnerable Subject .. 52
Ontological Vulnerability – Precariousness ............. 53
Phenomenology of Vulnerability ....................... 54
Real Danger – ‘Precarity’ .............................. 56
3 Reflexivity, the Capacity to Act, and Responsibility .......... 57
The Limits of Accountability ........................... 57
Responsibility as Response ............................ 59
Reinterpreting Responsibility .......................... 61
From Dyad to Triad: I/Subject, You/Other, Power/Norm .. 63
IV Post-sovereign Ethics .......................................... 67
1 Ethics of Non-violence .................................... 68
Ethical Violence ...................................... 69
Violence before Violence .............................. 72
Ethics of Non-violence ................................ 74
2 Ethics and Critique ....................................... 79
Ethically Motivated Critique ........................... 79
Critique of (Conventional) Understandings of Ethics
and Epistemological Framework ....................... 80
Critical Ethics ........................................ 83
V Butler’s Philosophy of Freedom: Summary and Evaluation ...... 87
1 Power and Recognition .................................... 87
2 Living Appropriation ...................................... 89
3 Limits of Recognition ..................................... 93
4 Possibilities and an Open Future ........................... 98
5 Participation and Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
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Contents vii
Part B
Butler and Theology
I Liberation Theology ........................................... 111
1 Option for the Poor ....................................... 112
Development and Criteria of the Option for the Poor ..... 112
Crisis and Internal Ruptures of Liberation Theology ..... 116
2 Poststructuralist Critique .................................. 118
Critique of the Ontological Framework ................. 119
No Praise for Vulnerability: Reorienting the Christian
Ideal of Action ....................................... 120
II Political Theology ............................................. 123
1 Theology “With Its Face to the World” (J. B. Metz) ........... 123
The Political in the New Political Theology .............. 124
The Concepts of Democracy and Responsibility ......... 126
2 The Relationship between Ethics and Politics ............... 128
Theory of the Subject ................................. 130
Critique of Ethical Violence and the New Conception
of Ethics ............................................. 132
III Prophetic Critique ............................................. 137
1 Between Universality and Particularity ..................... 138
Universal, Secularized Ethics .......................... 138
Particularist, Sacralized Ethos ......................... 141
2 Ethics, Politics, and Translation ............................ 144
Critique as Praxis .................................... 145
Cultural Translation and Cohabitation ................. 147
Bibliography .................................................. 153
Acknowledgments ............................................. 163
Index ......................................................... 165
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Introduction
Butler, Religion, and Theology
Judith Butler is one of the most prominent and influential philosophers of the
21st century, and she is now by no means unknown in the theological world,
either. For example, a broad theological approach to Butler can already be
found in the volume edited by Ellen T. Amour and Susan M. St Ville that was
published in 2006 under the title Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler.
But this volume is perhaps the exception that proves the rule, since theology
has generally been slow to deal with Butler’s broad output. A look at pertinent
publications shows that what has long sparked attention and discussion in
theological circles is primarily her gender theory.
This offers perhaps an initial explanation for why further engagement with
her work has been so hesitant. The Catholic Church in particular finds it diffi-
cult to deal with gender theories, and its representatives often speak of gender
as an ideology, with Butler frequently being made into the figurehead of this
‘ideology’. However, theologians across the world have repeatedly argued that
this view of Butler’s work is built on ignorance and misunderstanding. It is per-
haps precisely this debate on Butler’s gender theory that is blocking the view
of her wider work, and in particular of the fact that she has since turned to a
range of different issues, such as hate speech, American politics after 9/11, and
a critique of Zionism. Without wishing to diminish her contribution to gender
theory, or to deny its significance to her work as a whole, I will not rehearse
once again here all the arguments and misunderstandings that perhaps pre-
vent a fruitful dialogue between Butler and theology. Instead, I want to shift
attention away from her roots in gender theory, and towards her reflections on
ethics, politics, and the theory of recognition, themes that began to emerge at
the latest with Giving an Account of Oneself (2005).
Using philosophical sources for theology is not new, and I do not see the
need to explain this approach once again. My focus is on how theology can
benefit from dialogue with Butler’s philosophy, whose essential elements are
her definition of responsibility from relationality, her critique of violence, the
theme of translating universality, her reflections on performativity, and finally
the idea gained primarily from Levinas of the ethical claim by the other.
Butler herself, however, resists a reading of her work that hastily identifies
within it a religious potential for hope. Responding to a question from the
audience about the religious dimension and hope in Levinas’ sense during her
Sigmund Freud Lecture in Vienna in 2014, she said:
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x Introduction
He is definitely, definitely with me as I am thinking that through – Levinas… . But
I don’t know if it has to stay within the bounds of religion. It doesn’t bother me if
it has origins in religion, but it may wander outside this sphere of religion. [ehm]
You know it’s Kafka. I am closer to Kafka than Levinas, and Kafka says: There is
hope infinite hope unfortunately not for us (Butler 2014).1
Of course, this reply does not prohibit us from searching for this religious
potential and hope in Butler’s work. If we follow her reflections in Parting
Ways, then it is possible to read here an answer to how we deal with and trans-
late religious traditions. Nevertheless, such a position also provides a kind of
framework for a dialogue between Butler and theology, one that demands that
her translations from religious sources for a broader society are not hastily
declared again to be solely religious, thereby diminishing the ethical claim that
they hold for all people.
This reference to the religious source of Butler’s ethics indicates another
framework for dialogue: Butler is, not least, a Jewish thinker, even though she
is very careful not to treat her different identities as absolute and as the only
explanation for her reflections. In a discussion on Parting Ways, she empha-
sizes: “After all, I am a Jewish person, and that is not really debatable” (Butler
2015: 394). A reading of Butler’s texts from the perspective of Christian theol-
ogy should be aware of where Butler positions herself, since this would prevent
our rashly appropriating her claims to bolster Christian positions. At the same
time, though, Butler’s religious origins can serve as a basis for a theological
reading of her work, since it is apparent that her texts are at least partially
rooted in a theological soil. Butler herself stresses that her positioning does not
mark an end to dialogue, but indeed raises the question of “whether there is an
ethical relation to the non-Jew that is articulated within the Jewish tradition”
(Butler 2015: 395).
Structure of the Book
This book is divided into two parts, each of which can stand alone. Part A intro-
duces Butler’s philosophy chronologically, and reviews and interprets the oeu-
vre of one of the most well-known female philosophers today.2
1 The quote is a transcript from a video of the lecture and is therefore perhaps incomplete. The
video is available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYYdM6FfcZU (accessed December 22,
2019).
2 Part A is based on a revised version of the third chapter of my doctoral thesis on Judith Butler,
published in 2017: Ethik an den Grenzen der Souveränität. Christliche Sozialethik im Dialog mit
Judith Butler.
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