About the Book
Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power.
Contributors. Meltem Ahiska, Athena Athanasiou, Sarah Bracke, Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Basak ErtÜr, Zeynep Gambetti, Rema Hammami, Marianne Hirsch, Elena Loizidou, Leticia Sabsay, NÜkhet Sirman, Elena Tzelepis
Table of Contents:
Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction / Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay 1
1. Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance / Judith Butler 12
2. Risking Oneself and One's Identity: Agonism Revisited / Zeynep Gambetti 28
3. Bouncing Back: Vulnerability and Resistance in Times of Resilience / Sarah Bracke 52
4. Vulnerable Times / Marianne Hirsch 76
5. Barricades: Resources and Residues of Resistance / Başak ErtÜr 97
6. Dreams and the Political Subject / Elena Loizidou 122
7. Vulnerable Corporealities and Precarious Belongings in Mona Hatoum's Art / Elena Tzelepis 146
8. Precarious Politics: The Activism of "Bodies That Count" (Aligning with Those That Don't) in Palestine's Colonial Frontier / Rema Hammami 167
9. When Antigone Is a Man: Feminist "Trouble" in the Late Colony / NÜkhet Sirman 191
10. Violence against Women in Turkey: Vulnerability, Sexuality, and Eros / Meltem Ahiska 211
11. Bare Subjectivity: Faces, Veils, and Masks in the Contemporary Allegories of Western Citizenship / Elsa Dorlin 236
12. Nonsovereign Agonism (or, Beyond Affirmation versus Vulnerability) / Athena Athanasiou 256
13. Permeable Bodies: Vulnerability, Affective Powers, Hegemony / Leticia Sabsay 278
Bibliography 303
Contributors 325
Index 329
About the Author :
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.
Zeynep Gambetti is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at BoğaziÇi University.
Leticia Sabsay is Assistant Professor in the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Review :
"Interdisciplinary, relevant and rich in content, this collection of essays succeeds in thwarting the vulnerability/resistance dichotomy, and offers us plenty of feminist-inspired reimagined political-philosophical situated vocabularies for the here and now." - Evelien Geerts (Angelaki) "This is an important volume for those interested in grammars of resistance, protest cultures, and the mobilization of grief as a route into collective political subjectivity. Its crosscultural range enables us to see overlaps in forms of embodied resistance even when these latter are specific to a milieu and political condition."
- Pramod K Nayar (Journal of International and Global Studies) "A timely and deeply insightful contribution that may be of great interest to those engaged in critical international politics.... One of the greatest strengths of the volume lies in the scope of the essays. Throughout the volume understandings and uses of vulnerability change and morph, refusing any dogmatic definition. The range of engagements that the anthology encompasses manages to tie together disparate concepts and contexts around a simple, yet profoundly provocative, premise: that a theoretical embrace of vulnerability can take us to a new understanding of resistance and the resisting subject." - Jennifer Hobbs (International Feminist Journal of Politics) "For anyone interested in Butler’s work, this volume will be very valuable. Indeed, as a whole, Vulnerability in Resistance is an extremely provocative and valuable contribution to global feminist studies." - Ladelle McWhorter (Contemporary Political Theory) "Highly recommendable for anyone interested at questions related to social movements, performativity, body politics, precarity, and resistance of the political violence." - Mikko Joronen (Space and Polity) "A brilliant experiment that brings together a variety of heterogenous reflections." - Marco Checchi (Ephemera) "The richness of the accounts offered in the book . . . creates a distinctive space at the intersections of feminist, cultural, social and political theory." - Claudia Lapping (European Journal of Women's Studies) "Offers diverse and insightful opportunities for radical politics today. . . . A valuable contribution to feminist geography." - Angharad Butler-Rees (Gender, Place & Culture)
