Judith Butler, well-known feminist theorist and winner of the „bad writing contest“ (http://www.denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm), will talk about „What is Critique?“. If we look at Butlers critique so far two trajectories occur: one concerned with feminist concepts of bodies, sex and gender and one concerned with slandering Israel. Yet in her most restrained comments she accuses Israel of the systematically „Killing of civilians“.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYhvzqD2iH8
This Attitude of „I have never said this“ and „Surprisingly I was misunderstood on that“ – is stereotype from Judith Butler, well-known for amnesia. Directly or indirectly: in many other occasions she proclaimed the boycott of israeli universities: http://www.badil.org/en/events-calendar/icalrepeat.detail/2010/02/08/492/-/NDRhNjIwY2RjMDMzMzc4NzQxNmM5MWU5MGE3N2MyMzk=
If we ask Butler about any clearance she will give us some hogwash like this: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n16/judith-butler/no-its-not-anti-semitic
According to the speech in the video, just two companies who are indirectly involved into the production of israeli weaponry, should be boycotted. This calls for the disarmament of Israel in a total denial of the self-defensive character of the israeli military. Anyway, Judith Butler calls explicitely for the withdrawal of investive capital of universities in the USA from „the state of Israel“. (135) Not just two companies, but „the state of Israel“.
To be correct: Judith Butler critisizes at least in one quote a boycott that seeks to expell israeli scientists from universities. (145). But she does not question the way, her signature got into appeals that she herself claims to be anti-Semitic. And she denounces Summers through comparing his argument for Israel that she modifies to her liking with the mentality of those who boycott israeli scientists while mixing up jewish and israeli. (145f) Remembering this confusion it is not clear, if Judith Butler is against boycotting PRO-israeli scientists or just against mixing jewish identity with PRO-israeli identity.
She wants to have the term „slaughtering“ used for palestinian fatalities – of a war that she always determines as being planned and wanted by Israel. Israel, so she states, „slaughters“ Arabs in the same way Daniel Pearl had his head cut off in front of the camera by djihadists. The ritual murder of a Jew perpetrated by Djihadists should, referring to her, be thought of as the common method of Israeli military. (Gefährdetes Leben, 29, 31: „In welchem Ausmaß hat die Weigerung, den Tod von Palästinensern als „Abschlachten“ zu verstehen, eine maßlose Wut auf Seiten der Araber erzeugt, die irgendeine legitime Anerkennung und Lösung für diesen anhaltenden Gewaltzustand suchen?“)
This is not singling out, it is malicious propaganda. Israel is not „singled out“ from a pool of genocidal states like Congo or Sudan, but slandered, as it is far away from anything happening in these states.
She sees the primordial cause for 9/11 in American foreign policy. (20) She asks, why Israel calls terrorist acts terrorist but determines its own policy not as „terrorist“. (21) She blends the Chechen war into a „War of Independence“ in which she does not mention fundamentalist terror or islamism (as she is far away from analyzing the violent and abusive Putin-Regime). The pre-2001 Taliban-Afghanistan to her was just a „souvereign state“. (25) She does not mention at all the racist tribal mentality of Pashtuns or the terror against women. In American foreign policy she sees a „circle of revenge“. (27) American foreign policy has according to her „desolated“ (verwüstet) the world and from this world Bin Laden is made of. (27) She questions, if Palestinians are granted the status of life in American media. (29) In short, 9/11 was a reaction toward „US-Imperialism“. (31: „…unter denen diese Reaktionen [9/11] auf den US-Imperialismus weniger wahrscheinlich wird.“)
She does call for a „Gemeinschaft“. (36) She insinuates that Israel would make citizenship dependent on religious membership (119) – „forgetting“ that one fifth of Israelis are arab muslims with full citizen rights. She votes for an international consensus establishing the right of palestine for self-determination against the supposed „… aufgeblähten und gewalttätigen Ausübung der souveränen Prärogative von seiten Israels“. (120) In a double-sentence she compares Israel to Nazi-Germany. (Which she later recalls in a perfect Freudian denial: 152): The accusation of anti-Semitism against Jews (… ruft Erinnerungen an jüdische Kollaborateure der Nazis wach. […] Werden wir schweigen (und ein Kollaborateur illegitimer gewalttätiger Macht [Israels] sein? 123).
There is an irrational subject in Butlers text and this is Israel and the USA. Their politics are not thought to be in defense of precarious lifes, they are portrayed as cynical nazis, denying human status to the muslim victims of wars. This is a delusional perception at least.
She furthermore plays naive when she imputes to Summers that his critique of her slandering of Israel would be „calling any critique against Israel anti-semitic“. (126)
Her definition of anti-Semitism is crude. In the postscriptum for the German edition she suggests some particularities for German pettishness with the charge of anti-Semitism: „Wenn einige jüdische Stimmen entscheiden, daß ein Buch wie das von Ted Honderich antisemitisch ist, weil es Opposition gegenüber Israel (oder Sympathie mit der Intifada) ausdrückt, kann ich mir gut vorstellen, daß es für einige Deutsche sehr schwer ist, sich gegen diese Stimmen auszusprechen.“ (149). Here we have again the picture of a jewish lobby at work denouncing honest, intifada-loving books as anti-Semitic while upright Germans are not able to speak out against this due to a guilt complex. As if the critique against Honderich was just uttered from jews and if there would be no rationale in such a critique. To proof the irrationality, Butler ironically suggests to censor books like Frantz Fanon or Lenin because they „support violent resistance against colonial rule or exploitative economical and political systems“. („…dass sie auf verschiedene Weise gewaltsamen Widerstand gegen Kolonialherrschaft oder gegen ausbeuterische ökonomische oder politische Systeme unterstützen.“ 149) It is very clear that Butler definition of power and violence is a blurring term, not capable of defining the particular historical, social and political layers that conflicts emerge from. She wants to use the „same passion“ for figthing the „illegitime“ violence used by Israel and the one used against Israel. (151) In this definition, the quality of death removes the quality of the cause of death. A dead person is dead. To Butler it is not important, if the person was killed by a maniac fighting against global jewry through suicide attacks or a soldier accidentially missing his aim. To any social scientist who IS interested in causes of violence and therefore preventing it, it is important if you suggest better military training, precise weaponry, cross-cultural training of soldiers to avoid ANY causalities (not only civilian, as Butler proposes in her outmoded division between civilians and „terrorists“ and resistance fighters) or if you have to analyze the psychology of islamic anti-Semitism and the economy of terrorism.
One further quotation makes the ignorance of Butler evident: „Ein paar Tage später besuchte ich eine Konferenz, auf der ich einen Vortrag über die wichtigen kulturellen Bedeutungen der Burka hörte, darüber, wie sie für die Zugehörigkeit zu einer Gemeinschaft und Religion, zu einer Familie, zu einer umfangreichen Geschichte von Verwandtschaftsbeziehungen steht, daß sie eine Übung [SIC!] in Bescheidenheit und Stolz, einen Schutz vor Scham [SIC!] symbolisiert und daß sie auch als Schleier dient, hinter dem und durch den die weibliche Handlungsfähigkeit wirken kann. Die Sprecherin fürchtete, daß die Zerstörung der Burka […] zu einer erheblichen Dezimierung der islamischen Kultur führen würde und zu einer Ausbreitung von US-amerikanischen kulturellen Annahmen, wie Sexualität und Handlungsfähigkeit zu organisieren und darzustellen sei.“ (168)
Thus she quotes in a sympathizing way while critisizing US-military for feminist statements. In this passage her blunting, cynical impudence to follow the propaganda of terrorists who terrorize women throughout the world, imposing on them destructive sanctions if the don’t comply under the veil, becomes more than evident.
Surely Butler is not anti-Semite in a way that she hates Jews. But she is anti-Semite in a way that she does not give a damn on checking facts, on how she is repeating propaganda in a performative way, not questioning it. It is highly likely that her slandering of Israel is intertwined with the future casualities of humans („Palestinians“ and Jews) as she does not contribute to the solution of the conflict but on fudging the way her fans „read“ the conflict between Israel and its haters and in instigating hatred against the rationale in Israels politics. She does, in her own theories words, not question the popular discourse about Israel that creates binaries in which Israel is not considered as a rational option but in which it is forced upon the signature of the irrationale, the other, the alien, the queer. Her theory defends queers. Her political opinion defines Burka-Fans as queers, defines Israel as the discoursive power that is threatening Islam, the queer of todays culturalists. Last but not least Butler has outspokenly supported Hamas as „part of the international left“, an organization that kills anything regarded as queer or feminist by the theory Butler propagates. Maybe we can not state that Butlers theory has lead to her collaboration with anti-Semitism, her anti-Semitic denials and her blindfolding. but we can at least say that Butlers theoretical work did not include any reflection on what Islamism and anti-Semitism is today and that therefore she should at least shut up as long as she has nothing else to contribute than the well-known hegemonic discourse of power imposed on Israel.
Citations from „Gefährdetes Leben. Politische Essays.“ 2004, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag.
Für welche Plattform wurde der Text geschrieben?
mal abgesehen von Ihrem Denglish, das einem die Traenen in die Augen treibt, haben Sie das hier uebersehen? „‘Victim’ is a quickly transposable term: it can shift from minute to minute, from the Jew killed by suicide bombers on a bus to the Palestinian child killed by Israeli gunfire.“ wie nonintentional Israel ihr zum Kindermoerder wird (ideologie, hinterruecks usw. schon klar), die Erinnerung daran wird im Text wiederholt, zusammen mit dem Verweis auf Jenin, aber das mit dem fact checking haben Sie ja erwaehnt.
Nun, ein Vorteil des Bloggens mit Kommentarfunktion ist ja, dass man sich Korrekturen holen kann. Über konkretere stilistische Hinweise zum Englischen freue ich mich, ich lese zwar mittlerweise 70 Prozent der wissenschaftlichen Literatur auf Englisch, kann mich aber nicht zu einem Kursus durchringen, der wiederum von der Lektüre abzöge.
Das Zitat habe ich tatsächlich übersehen.
Der Text wurde einst für einen Facebook-Event erstellt.
wo ist denn dein text „Zur fiktionalität kritischer theorie“ abgeblieben?
Es haben ihn ja nun alle gelesen. Ich hatte nicht den Eindruck als würde ihn außer einer einzigen Person, mit der ich lieber nochmal privat diskutiere, jemand verstehen wollen und als wäre das Problem in dieser Kürze referabel. Weiter entstanden Bedenken für die Lebensläuflichkeit bestimmter diskutierter Personen. Eventuell gibt es demnächst einen Neuversuch, das Antiintellektualismusproblem unter expliziterem Bezug auf die Negative Dialektik zu bestimmen. Zum Widerstandsbegriff gab es ja keine Diskussion, eher eine einzige Zustimmung, von daher verweise ich auf den Singularitäts-Artikel, den ich vor ein paar Monaten schrieb.
Der Artikel selbst findet sich wahrscheinlich noch bei den üblichen Kopisten und Archivaren.
Dein Blog hätte bei einem „bad writing contest“ sicher auch gute Chancen. Vorausgesetzt es würde jemand den teilweise haarsträubenden Unsinn der hier steht veröffentlichen. Butler lehnt essentialistische Identitätskonstruktionen strikt ab, deshalb dürfte ihr Weltbild mit dem von Islamisten wohl kaum zu vereinbaren sein. Sicher muss man Butlers Position zur israelischen Politik nicht teilen aber deshalb mit absurden Antisemitismusvorwürfen zu kommen geht mit Sicherheit an der Sache vorbei.
Keine essentialistische Identitätskonstruktionen, was? Auch nicht im negativen? Die Identität von Israel und den USA ist bei ihr ziemlich essentialistisch konstruiert, ebenso ihre Kategorie „Die Linke“ zu der sie die Hamas zählt. Nochmal Butler lesen täte auch dir gut, auch wenns weh tut.
„Ein paar Tage später besuchte ich eine Konferenz, auf der ich einen Vortrag über die wichtigen kulturellen Bedeutungen der Burka hörte, darüber, wie sie für die Zugehörigkeit zu einer Gemeinschaft und Religion, zu einer Familie, zu einer umfangreichen Geschichte von Verwandtschaftsbeziehungen steht, daß sie eine Übung [SIC!] in Bescheidenheit und Stolz, einen Schutz vor Scham [SIC!] symbolisiert und daß sie auch als Schleier dient, hinter dem und durch den die weibliche Handlungsfähigkeit wirken kann. Die Sprecherin fürchtete, daß die Zerstörung der Burka […] zu einer erheblichen Dezimierung der islamischen Kultur führen würde und zu einer Ausbreitung von US-amerikanischen kulturellen Annahmen, wie Sexualität und Handlungsfähigkeit zu organisieren und darzustellen sei.“
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Butler is an anti-Zionist Jewish radical. As a radical, she is anti-colonial and very sympathetic to the nationalist ambitions of third world peoples. She detests the economic and technological triumphalism common in the USA. That does not make her anti-semite. We forget that before 1967, many Jews on the left were not warm to Israel. She correctly sees that there is a grave danger of treating Arabs and Moslems as despicable and morally inferior Others.
Butler’s academic writings are often bombastic and heavily influenced by arcane French theory. But her anti-Zionist writings are much more lucid. Butler is not an isolated case; look at Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein. Butler is not trained in politics or history, and so has often made bad arguments to advance a good cause. She has trouble being careful with facts. But the core of her thought is grounded in the powerful Jewish ethical tradition.
thank you concerned cynic!
unfortunately the part of the german left of wich this blog arose is apparently tremendously twisted when it come to critisism of israel and us foreign policy…
felix riedel, may i recommend a book to you?
its from zeev maoz and the title is „Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy“
this might diffuse your narrowminded and patternoriented perceptions of ultimate and false dichtonomys between good and evil a little.
Thank you, Fabian Buschtrommel. I’m far from being naive about the contradictions within Israeli society. But as my book-to-read-list exceeds the thousands, could you specify the issue, you put most hopes into convincing me to change my opinion on Judith Butler?
im not trying to change your opinion on judith butler, i knew her work sparsely until the debate began… go on and tell her to keep her mouth shut if you like to… yet i conceive most of your criticism as obviously distorted and diligently hostile.
the book came to my mind just by randomly picking out one of the more obvious misrepresentation:
„According to the speech in the video, just two companies who are indirectly involved into the production of israeli weaponry, should be boycotted. This calls for the disarmament of Israel in a total denial of the self-defensive character of the israeli military.“
„This calls for the disarmament“ <– thats pretty much of a strech and this becomes obvious, once one would question your assumption, that the character of the IDF as it appears in its actual operations, was "self-defensive". Its not that the Israeli military has not a legit commission to selfdefense, nobody is questioning that, but at least since incidents like "operation cast lead" – to give one example – the list of attributes to characterize the israeli military needs to be extendet to terms that go more into the direction of things like "atrocity", "against international law" etc etc i guess you know the goldstone report. In that context a call for boycott of the military industry, should be understood as a sanction for an "illegal" and inhuman operative doctine rather than "a call for disarmment" as you are indicating.
since i doubt that we will agree on this topic within the frame of this thread id like to point out once more why i favor zeev maozes book, its because of the unmistrusted neutrality of the author and the oustanding academic achievment he made with "defending the holy land"… therefor after reading it the only thing left to disagree about is basicly the interpretation of the narratives rather than the narratives themself.
Do you know, Goldstone has meanwhile abrogated his copy-and-paste-from-online-rumour-„report“? You will find more on Cast Lead using Google. Main problem were some thousands of Quassam-Rockets flying into Israel. Of course, no reason to get excited (to quote Jimi Hendrix)… Critisizing white phosphor is one point, negating the military option is hypocritical. Any country would have raided Gaza and most would have raded it several more times since. During Olympia, hundreds of Qassams hit Israel. Who cared? Goldstone? Olympia? Europe?
funny how you call your blog „nichtidentisches“ and be so sensitive about the meanings of the words you use. relativation = abrogation??
i shouldnt bring up goldstone because of this foreseeable pretense to whitewash the whole story.
beside your implicit call for collective punishment of the palestineans your whole argumentation has no foundation, because if israel would demonstrate submission to international law just the slightest bit, israel wouldnt even have to deal with quassam rockets themself, a palestinean state could be submitted to international sanctions and interventions, besides that, the blockade of gaza was there before the hamas in the first place. hamas as well as hezbollah, meaning, the leadership in damascus and the leadership in the gaza have repeatedly made statements they’re willing to settle the conflict in the june 1967 border.
as you mentioned your sensibility to the contradiction within the israeli society, dont you think the refusal to submit to international law has anything to do with nationalreligious settlers that would – selfproclamedly – make the resolution of the illegal settlements in the westbank „a costly business“?
ok i dont really want to cycle though all the coliding narratives all over again,
the fact is, israel has indeed been following a doctine of escalation as an expression of not priorising peace as „its foremost intresst“. You dont need to be „anti-israel“ (wich i am not) nor a genius to acknowledge this.
By apologizing the intrests of hard right israeli intrestgroups you are ultimately dointg damge to the israeli people, wich makes you an tertiary antisemite or something by you own logic, just saying.
„the leadership in the gaza have repeatedly made statements they’re willing to settle the conflict in the june 1967 border“ – that is exactly the problem. What happens then? They did not agree on a state including jewish people, they indicated time and again to throw all jews out of a new palestine. And the Gaza experience has shown, what a security-threat such a second homebase of Iran and Saudi-Arabia will be – foremost for palestinian women and homosexuals. Anyhow, it’s not the Jews who prevented a peace treaty they offered several times, but Arafat, Abbas and their aloof conditions. I don’t have to like the settlements nor antizionist jews to detest the threat of another Katjusha-Base in close range of Tel Aviv.
You accuse Israel for prefering peace for its own jewish, arab and christian inhabitants, while you mix up peace for palestine with the totally unclear character of a nation state, which might be equally a threat to the peace of palestinians.
Are you aware, by the way, that Palestinians in arab states suffer extreme conditions, discrimination and racism? Why not starting there rather than to put the blame on Israel?
„because if israel would demonstrate submission to international law just the slightest bit, israel wouldnt even have to deal with quassam rockets themself“
Of yourse, „the slightest bit“. Womens rights, childrens rights, democracy, leaflet warnings before airstrikes to prevent civilian casualities, going in with infantery to prevent casualities on side of the civilians. All not even the slightest bit to bigot Europeans? You just want to blame Israel for the Hamas and this is, where you make yourself immune against reason and experience. You pretty much smell like anti-Semitism and you should look for treatment of that disease immediately.
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http://www.egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler/bibliography/
If you can diagnose Judith Butler with amnesia and state that she only modes of operation (gender and feminism stuff and antizionism) i will state that someone is severely hurt noticing that s/he hasnt bought a lifelong option for bein on the bleeding edge of theory by reading the franfurt school again and again… you must be in pain, kleiner Adornit. Oh, and your english really really sucks.
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@Leo: Excuse me please? You share a link to Butlers blog? She hasn’t bought anything, she sells! And obviously pretty good.
‚That was great, al‘ that reading‘ ye did! said Rob Anybody. ‚I didnae undestand a single word o‘ it!‘
‚Aye, it must be powerful language if you cannae make oout what the heel it’s goin’ on aboot!’ said another pictsie.
(Terry Pratchett: The wee free men)
You read Butler (did you really?) but complain about some edges in critical theory? Proves me totally right, no sorry. People rather work themselves to pieces instead of thinking something easy, but unpleasant to their own narcicissm.
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