Butler and Ethics

234 Pages·2015·0.836 MB·English

by  Moya Lloyd

C R I T I C A L C O N N E C T I O N S
SERIES EDITORS: IAN BUCHANAN AND JAMES WILLIAMS
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Explores the relation between Judith Butler’s works and ethics l
e
Judith Butler is best known for Gender Trouble (1990), the book that r
introduced the idea of gender performativity. However, with the publication of

Giving an Account of Oneself in 2005, it appeared as if her work had taken a a
different turn, away from considerations of sex, gender, sexuality, and politics n
and towards ethics. d

This collection of 10 essays offers the first sustained evaluation of that alleged E
turn. Bringing together a group of internationally renowned theorists, the t
volume will explore issues such as whether there has been an “ethical turn” h
in Butler’s work or whether, in fact, the increasing emphasis on ethics is i
merely the culmination of ideas inherent in her earlier work, how ethics c
relates to politics in her work; and how both connect to her increasing concern s
with violence, war and conflict.
‘Butler and Ethics’ will break new ground in scholarship on Butler and will also
advance on-going debates about materiality and the body, biopolitics, affect
theory, precariousness and subjectification.
B u t l e r
MOYA LLOYD xxxxx.
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Edited by Moya Lloyd
Cover image: Two Standing II, 2011 by Jo Ganter, courtesy of the artist.
Cover design: www.paulsmithdesign.com
ISBN 978-0-7486-7885-3
C R I T I C A L C O N N E C T I O N S
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Butler and Ethics
Critical Connections
A series of edited collections forging new connections between
contemporary critical theorists and a wide range of research areas,
such as critical and cultural theory, gender studies, film, literature,
music, philosophy and politics.
Series Editors
Ian Buchanan, University of Wollongong
James Williams, University of Dundee
Editorial Advisory Board
Nick Hewlett
Gregg Lambert
Todd May
John Mullarkey
Paul Patton
Marc Rölli
Alison Ross
Kathrin Thiele
Frédéric Worms
Titles available in the series
Badiou and Philosophy, edited by Sean Bowden and Simon Duffy
Agamben and Colonialism, edited by Marcelo Svirsky and Simone
Bignall
Laruelle and Non- Philosophy, edited by John Mullarkey and Anthony
Paul Smith
Virilio and Visual Culture, edited by John Armitage and Ryan Bishop
Rancière and Film, edited by Paul Bowman
Stiegler and Technics, edited by Christina Howells and Gerald Moore
Badiou and the Political Condition, edited by Marios Constantinou
Nancy and the Political, edited by Sanja Dejanovic
Butler and Ethics, edited by Moya Lloyd
Latour and the Passage of Law, edited by Kyle McGee
Forthcoming titles
Agamben and Radical Politics, edited by Daniel McLoughlin
Rancière and Literature, edited by Julian Murphet and Grace Hellyer
Nancy and Visual Culture, edited by Carrie Giunta and Adrienne
Janus
Balibar and the Citizen/Subject, edited by Warren Montag and Hanan
Elsayed
Visit the Critical Connections website at www.euppublishing.com/
series/crcs
Butler and Ethics
Edited by Moya Lloyd
© editorial matter and organisation Moya Lloyd, 2015
© the chapters their several authors, 2015
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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The right of Moya Lloyd to be identified as Editor of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and
the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
Moya Lloyd
1. Signifying Otherwise: Liveability and Language 15
Nathan Gies
2. Undoing Ethics: Butler on Precarity, Opacity and
Responsibility 41
Catherine Mills
3. Butler’s Ethical Appeal: Being, Feeling and Acting
Responsible 65
Sara Rushing
4. Violence, Affect and Ethics 91
Birgit Schippers
5. Sensate Democracy and Grievable Life 118
Fiona Jenkins
6. Two Regimes of the Human: Butler and the Politics
of Mattering 141
Drew Walker
7. The Ethics and Politics of Vulnerable Bodies 167
Moya Lloyd
8. Subjectivation, the Social and a (Missing) Account
of the Social Formation: Judith Butler’s ‘Turn’ 193
Samuel A. Chambers
Notes on Contributors 219
Index 222
Acknowledgements
For the invitation to put together this volume for the Critical
Connections series, I would like to thank series editors Ian
Buchanan and James Williams. Thanks are also due to Carol
Macdonald and her colleagues at Edinburgh University Press for
their patient assistance with and support for this volume.
I would also like to say a big thank you to all the contributors to
the edited volume itself. It’s been a real pleasure to work with all
of them. I especially appreciated their always prompt responses to
emails, and openness to suggestions for chapter alterations.
Finally, I need to thank Andrew and Daniel for distracting me
when I needed distracting, allowing me to lock myself away in my
study when I needed to write, and providing plentiful cups of tea
to keep me going while I was in there.
Chapter 8 is a revised and shortened version of Chapter 1 of
Samuel Chambers, Bearing Society in Mind: Theories and Politics
of the Social Formation, London and New York: Rowman &
Littlefield International, 2014. Thanks to the publisher for permis-
sion to use this material.
vi
Introduction
Moya Lloyd
As Marjorie Garber, Beatrice Hanssen and Rebecca Walkowitz
write: ‘From Aristotle and Kant to Nietzsche and Hegel to
Habermas and Foucault to Derrida and Lacan and Levinas . . .
the concept of ethics and the ethical has been reconceptualized,
reformulated, and repositioned’ (2000: viii). Originating from the
ancient Greek word ethos, used to denote the customs or character
of the polis and its citizens, ethics, it has been suggested, consists
in the study of ‘what is morally good and bad, right and wrong’
(Singer 2014); and the ‘systematizing, defending, and recommend-
ing concepts of right and wrong behavior’ (Fieser 2012). Jacques
Rancière offers a different formulation, however, classifying ethics
as a mode of thinking in which ‘an identity is established between
an environment, a way of being and a principle of action’ ([2006]
2010: 184). Conventionally, ethics, often distinguished as ‘nor-
mative ethics’,1 has been sub- divided into three fields: deontol-
ogy, which takes duties that are obligatory, irrespective of their
consequences, as the focus of ethics; consequentialism, of which
utilitarianism is the most influential form, and which stresses the
results of actions, as in the maximisation of happiness; and virtue
ethics, which focuses on moral character or ‘the virtues’, such as
generosity or compassion.
Not all recent accounts of ‘ethics’, however, conform easily or
neatly to the three approaches listed. Levinas, for example, defines
ethics as ‘first philosophy’ (1984), and understands it in terms of a
relation to – and an impingement by – the other that precedes the
formation of the self. Within poststructuralism broadly conceived,
ethics has been theorised variously as a mode of self- fashioning or
‘care of the self’ (Foucault 1985, 1991, 2000), and as an ‘ethos of
critical responsiveness’ (Connolly 1995: xvi) or of ‘generosity’ (for
example, Connolly 2002a, 2002b). Just as ethics was once seen as
1
2 Butler and Ethics
the province of ‘an ideal, autonomous and sovereign subject’ and
a universal humanism (Garber et al. 2000: viii), so too of late the
subject has come to be regarded as the ‘problem’ of ethics, not its
ground (Loizidou 2007: 46).
Troubling definitional matters do not end there. Paradoxically,
ethics has been seen simultaneously as ‘the philosophical study of
morality’ (Deigh 1999: 284); as a synonym for both morality (Deigh
1999) and for ‘moral philosophy’ (Singer 2014); and as conceptu-
ally distinct from morality. Thus, according to thinkers such as
Jürgen Habermas, ethics addresses questions about the ‘good life’
while morality focuses on the rules or norms that ought to govern
human interaction, such as principles of justice. Alternatively,
ethos is understood by Theodor Adorno as commonly accepted or
collective ideas, interpreted by Annika Thiem as meaning ‘habitu-
ated frameworks and rationales for action’ (2008: 233),2 whereas
morality, by contrast, is conceived of as a ‘practice of reflection
and deliberation’ (Thiem 2008: 233), of questioning and inquiry
(Adorno 2000; see also Menke 2004; Butler 2005: 3–6).
During the last decade or so of the twentieth century a ‘turn’, or
perhaps more accurately a ‘return’ to ethics took place. It is this
return that sets the context for Butler and Ethics. According to
Peter Dews, this reappearance of ethics was marked by a number of
features, including a re-c entring of questions of obligation, respect,
recognition and conscience that ‘not so long ago would have been
dismissed as the residue of an outdated humanism’; an increased
focus on the work of Levinas; and a growing curiosity about ques-
tions of ‘radical evil’ (2002: 33; see also Garber et al. 2000; Davis
and Womack 2001; Myers 2008; Rancière [2006] 2010).
Not everyone greeted the return to ethics positively. Chantal
Mouffe considers it to be a retrograde step signalling the ‘triumph
of a sort of moralizing liberalism’, and producing a ‘moraliza-
tion of society’ (2000: 86). Ethics, that is, as a ‘retreat from the
political’ (Mouffe 2000: 85). Frederic Jameson views ‘the return to
ethics . . . and its subsequent colonization of political philosophy’
as ‘one of the most regressive features’ of postmodernity (2010:
406). Intriguingly, amongst these critics is Judith Butler, who, in a
now much-c ited conversation with the renowned political philoso-
pher William Connolly, remarks:
I confess to worrying about the turn to ethics, and have recently
written a small essay that voices my ambivalence about this sphere.