Editing Judith Butler (section)

===''Excitable Speech'' (1997)===
{{further|Performativity#Judith Butler}}

In ''Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative'', Butler surveys the problems of [[hate speech]] and censorship. They argue that censorship is difficult to evaluate, and that in some cases it may be useful or even necessary, while in others it may be worse than tolerance.<ref name="Jagger">{{cite book |last=Jagger|first=Gill |title=Judith Butler: Sexual politics, social change and the power of the performative |url=https://archive.org/details/judithbutlersexu00jagg|url-access=limited|year=2008 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | pages=[https://archive.org/details/judithbutlersexu00jagg/page/n121 115]–8 |isbn=978-0-415-21975-4 |ol=OL10187608M |lccn=2007032458}}</ref>

Butler argues that hate speech exists retrospectively, only after being declared such by state authorities. In this way, the state reserves for itself the power to define hate speech and, conversely, the limits of acceptable discourse. In this connection, Butler criticizes feminist legal scholar [[Catharine MacKinnon]]'s argument against pornography for its unquestioning acceptance of the state's power to censor.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative|last=Butler|first=Judith|publisher=Routledge|year=1997|isbn=978-0-415-91588-5|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl/page/22 22]|quote="Similarly, MacKinnon's appeal to the state to construe pornography as performative speech and, hence, as the injurious conduct of representation, does not settle the theoretical question of the relation between representation and conduct, but collapses the distinction in order to enhance the power of state intervention over graphic sexual representation."|url=https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl/page/22}}</ref>

Deploying [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]]'s argument from the first volume of ''[[The History of Sexuality]]'', Butler states that any attempt at censorship, legal or otherwise, necessarily propagates the very language it seeks to forbid.<ref>{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |author-link=Judith Butler |title=Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative |url=https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl |url-access=registration |year=1997 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | pages=[https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl/page/129 129–33] |isbn=978-0-415-91588-5}}</ref> As Foucault argues, for example, the strict sexual mores of 19th-century Western Europe did nothing but amplify the discourse of sexuality they sought to control.<ref>For example, {{cite book |last=Foucault |first=Michel |author-link=Michel Foucault |others=Trans. Robert Hurley |title=The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol 1. |url=https://archive.org/details/historysexuality02fouc |url-access=limited |orig-year=1976 |year=1990 |publisher=Vintage |location=New York | page=[https://archive.org/details/historysexuality02fouc/page/n27 23] |quote=A censorship of sex? There was installed [since the 17th century] rather an apparatus for producing an ever greater quantity of discourse about sex, capable of functioning and taking effect in its very economy.}}</ref> Extending this argument using [[Derrida]] and [[Jacques Lacan|Lacan]], Butler says that censorship is primitive to language, and that the linguistic "I" is a mere effect of a primitive censorship. In this way, Butler questions the possibility of any genuinely oppositional discourse; "If speech depends upon censorship, then the principle that one might seek to oppose is at once the formative principle of oppositional speech".<ref>{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Judith |author-link=Judith Butler |title=Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative |url=https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl |url-access=registration |year=1997 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York | page=[https://archive.org/details/excitablespeechp0000butl/page/140 140] |isbn=978-0-415-91588-5}}</ref>