Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.
[An] intellectual enquiry of public assembly politics...The book
questions the role and aspects of public assembly, performative
space and the performing body...While Notes Toward A Performative
Theory of Assembly posits and comments upon a range of substantial
material in a relatively compact space, the writing and ideas are
far from impenetrable; rather, Butler writes in an uncomplicated
manner about significant ideas. The book should be read by anyone
interested in political science, human rights, social activism,
critical theory, gender studies, socio-legal studies and
philosophy, as well as those who themselves are part of
contemporary movements.
-- Alexis Bushnell LSE Review of Books
Butler's book is everything that a book about our planet in the
21st century should be. It does not turn its back on the
circumstances of the material world or give any succour to those
who wish to view the present (and the future) through the lens of
fantasies about the transformative possibilities offered by
conventional politics... Butler demonstrates a clear engagement
with an aspect of the world that is becoming in many political
contexts almost illicit to discuss: the idea that capitalism,
certainly in its neoliberal form, is failing to provide a liveable
life for the majority of human beings. The rhetorical question that
Butler asks at the conclusion to her introduction--of how we might
act together when we live in worlds in which so many forms of
solidarity are diminishing--is a central question for politics
throughout the world.
-- Mary Evans Times Higher Education
Conceptually rich... Writing in response to the powerful wave of
mass movements whose defining characteristic often involves people
sitting or standing in the same place--Gezi Park, Tahrir Square,
Occupy, etc.--Butler argues that freedom of assembly is an
inextricable part of freedom of expression. And freedom of assembly
is coming under increasing assault, in part because the very spaces
in which people are assembling to voice their protest (which is
often simply the demand for a decent life) are the ones under
threat from capitalist regimes bent on privatizing public space,
public goods and services, and on the violent enactment and
enforcement of the private sphere... Like all of Butler's works,
Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly is a heady immersion
into the thought of one of today's most profound philosophers of
action... This is a call for a truly transformative politics, and
its relevance to the fraught struggles taking place in today's
streets and public spaces around the world cannot be denied. For
those seeking a way to reconcile the waves of refugees, the
alternating violence and silence of the streets, and the democratic
ideals many of us have been raised to hold, Butler offers if not a
way then the beginnings of a coherent way to think about it.
-- Hans Rollman PopMatters
One of the boldest and most radical thinkers of our time, Butler
examines the contemporary state of popular sovereignty, resistance,
and other 'concerted actions, ' as Hannah Arendt termed them, of
political engagement in this series of essays expanding on her
theory of performativity. Looking at recent mass protests,
including events in Tahrir Square and the various Occupy movements,
she explores what freedom of assembly entails in different
spaces--public, private, confined, and virtual--while focusing on
how individuals can take actual, not simply rhetorical, political
action... Butler's examination of popular sovereignty and public
assembly is incisive and exigent.
-- Publishers Weekly
Judith Butler has written a vital, timely, and moving book that
shines new light on the collective dimension of dissent. Instead of
upholding the false division between thought and action, she
recognizes that radical ideas are necessarily embodied. All over
the world people are rising up and saying no to police violence,
racial and gender discrimination, ecological devastation,
austerity, and precarity. This powerful book is for anyone who has
ever assembled with others to demand a more just and equal
future.
-- Astra Taylor, author of The People's Platform: Taking Back Power
and Culture in the Digital Age
In effect, Butler has written a manifesto against the privatization
and individuation of political cultures. Butler's elegant and
detailed philosophical reflections engage seriously and deeply with
the writing of Arendt and some of the debates around humanity and
social and political ontology that her work has generated. This is
a profound and brief but very ambitious book. It is challenging but
not dense, as lucid as it is timely.
-- Paul Gilroy, author of Darker than Blue: On the Moral Economies
of Black Atlantic Culture
Judith Butler wonderfully analyzes the power and promise of
assembly, particularly the assembly of precarious populations, and
in doing so offers a lucid and exciting analysis of contemporary
forms of activism. This is a thinker at the height of her
intellectual powers.
-- Michael Hardt, co-author of Commonwealth
The book's novelty lies in its relatively substantive version of
radical democracy.
-- A. L. Shuster Choice
A work that stands out as perhaps Butler's most concerted attempt
to make sense of constructive human agency...Notes Toward a
Performative Theory of Assembly is nonetheless Butler's most lucid
and successful attempt to show that her views need not lead to
'quietism and retreat, ' and that they have always contained the
seeds of a rich and important, positive contribution to political
thought. Unlike some of her earlier works, this book is genuinely
accessible to the intelligent student of political life who is not
steeped in the abstruse and difficult claims of contemporary
literary theory and cultural studies...Ultimately, Butler's project
in Notes Toward a Performative Theory is valuable not only for its
potential to rehabilitate humanism, but also for the clarity with
which it requires the reader to recognize the political importance
of contemporary media--perhaps especially social media--for the
ways they have altered ethical and political domains.
-- Michele M. Moody-Adams Women's Review of Books
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