Judith Butler (Cleveland, United States, 1961) is an American philosopher who has dedicated her life to the study of feminism.

Among her main contributions to the field of gender and women’s studies, Judith Butler is recognized as one of the leading representatives and ideologues of Queer Theory.

Famous quotes and reflections by Judith Butler

However, Butler is also a prestigious author in the fields of sociology and sexology. Her ideas are based on renowned authors such as Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.

In today’s article we will learn about Judith Butler’s phrases that will allow us to get closer to this essential thinker .

1. After all, the justification for the struggle is in the sensory realm; sound and image are used to recruit us into a reality and to make us participate in it. In a way, all war is a war on the senses. Without the alteration of the senses, no state could wage war.

On the manipulation and populism with which power seduces the population and presents war as something desirable.

2. The belief structure is so strong that it allows some types of violence to be justified or not even considered as violence. Thus, we see that there is no talk of murder but of casualties, and that there is no mention of war but of the struggle for freedom.

On the different types of violence and the manipulation of language. A phrase that refers us to the contributions of another brilliant thinker: Noam Chomsky.

3. Intellectual work is a way to connect with people, to be part of an ongoing conversation. Intellectuals do not lead the way, nor are they indispensable. I believe that theoretical reflection is part of every good policy.

Encouraging critical and academic thinking.

4. Journalism is a place of political struggle… Inevitably.

Whether we like it or not, journalistic objectivity is not feasible.

5. I don’t think literature can teach us how to live either, but people who have questions about how to live tend to turn to literature.

Another one of those famous quotes about books and literature.

6. For me, philosophy is a way of writing.

His view of philosophy may be paradoxical.

7. If Lacan recognizes that women’s homosexuality comes from a disappointed heterosexuality – as the observation is claimed to show – would it not be equally evident to the observer that heterosexuality comes from a disappointed homosexuality?

Dismantling one of the French psychoanalyst’s statements.

8. I’ve always been a feminist. This means that I oppose discrimination against women, all forms of gender-based inequality, but it also means that I call for a policy that takes into account the constraints imposed by gender on human development.

A way of defining the struggle for gender equality.

9. The category of sex is neither invariable nor natural; rather it is a particularly political use of the category of nature for the purposes of reproductive sexuality.

A heterodox view about the definition of the concept ‘sex’.

10. Marriage and same-sex family alliances should certainly be available options, but to make them a model for sexual legitimacy is precisely to constrain the sociality of the body in an acceptable way.

Reflections on the social contract that marriage means.

11. Differences in position and desire mark the limits of universality as an ethical reflection. The criticism of gender norms must be placed in the context of lives as they are lived and must be guided by the question of what maximizes the possibilities of an inhabitable life, what minimizes the possibility of an unbearable life or even of social or literal death.

Other aspects that we may not usually analyze when we talk about gender and interpersonal relationships.

12. Intersex activists work to rectify the erroneous assumption that every body harbours an ‘innate truth’ about its sex that medical professionals can discern and bring to light on their own.

Another reflection that makes us think about the not so direct relationship between biological sex and psychological sex.

13. Sometimes a normative conception of gender can undo a person by undermining his or her ability to continue living a bearable life.

It is at this point that this conception oppresses and reduces us as human beings.

14. Whatever freedom we fight for, it must be a freedom based on equality.

Feminism cannot be conceived without equality of opportunity and treatment.

15. As a consequence, gender is not to culture what sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/cultural medium through which the sexed nature or a natural sex is formed and establishes as pre-discursive, prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts.

Another sentence by Judith Butler in which she reflects on the cultural patterns that need to be challenged.

16. For me, public mourning is not limited to the need to personally mourn the dead. Indeed, that need exists. I think that public mourning gives value to lives. It allows for a kind of increased awareness of the precariousness of those lives and the need to protect them, and perhaps also an understanding that this precariousness is understood across borders.

About grief and its value in our culture.

17. Is there a good way to categorize bodies? What do the categories tell us? Categories tell us more about the need to categorize bodies than about the bodies themselves.

Labels cannot correctly define that which constantly transforms and transforms us.

18. Social movements must unite people’s creative and affirmative energies, not just reiterate the damage and produce an identity as the subjects of the damage. Certainly, I would not deny that there are extreme, persistent and malignant forms of victimization, but to adopt this perspective in a social movement is counterproductive.

Fleeing from victimhood and looking to the future, joining forces: that is the scenario to which Judith Butler aspires.