Butler and Ethics

Moya Lloyd’s edited volume Butler and Ethics represents a valuable contribution to scholarly literature on the work of Judith Butler. One merit of the volume is that, far from speaking in a uniform voice, the authors take up a diversity of positions on Butler’s thought, diverging with respect to the value of central concepts (such as recognition, livability, grievability and vulnerability), the status of normativity and Butler’s ‘ethical turn', and the strength or radicalness of her politics. Common themes include the role of affect in ethics, the relationship between politics and ethics, political demonstration, contestation or appeal and Butler’s appropriation of other thinkers (e.g., Althusser, Levinas). The volume also performs the helpful service of forging connections between Butler’s more recent work (e.g., Giving an Account of Oneself, Frames of War, Parting Ways and Dispossession) and the concepts at the heart of her earlier work, such as performativity, intelligibility and subjection. -- Erinn Cunniff Gilson, University of North Florida * Contemporary Political Theory *
There is no better guide to Judith Butler’s work to date, and to the ‘ethical turn’ debate about it, than this carefully structured volume. Lloyd and her contributors tackle all the definitional questions, including the concept of ethics itself, as well as key terms, including grief, liveability, vulnerability and violence. * Terrell Carver, Professor of Political Theory, University of Bristol *