Editing Judith Butler (section)

===''Precarious Life'' (2004)===

''Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence'' opens a new line in Judith Butler's work that has had a great impact on their subsequent thought, especially on books like ''Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?'' (2009) or ''Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly'' (2015), as well as on other contemporary thinkers.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lorey |first1=Isabell |author-link=Isabell Lorey|title=State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious |date=2015 |publisher=Verso Books |location=London |isbn=9781781685969}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Puar |first1=Jasbir K. |author-link=Jasbir Puar|title=Terrorist Assemblages Homonationalism in Queer Times |date=2007 |publisher=Duke University Press |location=Durham, NC |isbn=9780822390442}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Han |first1=Clara |title=Precarity, precariousness, and vulnerability |journal=Annual Review of Anthropology |date=2018 |volume=47 |issue=47 |pages=331–343 |doi=10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041644 |s2cid=149738954 |doi-access=free }}</ref> In this book, Butler deals with issues of precarity, vulnerability, grief and contemporary political violence in the face of the [[War on terror]] and the realities of [[Guantanamo Bay detention camp|prisoners at Guantanamo Bay]] and similar detention centers. Drawing on Foucault, they characterize the form of power at work in these places of "indefinite detention" as a convergence of [[sovereignty]] and [[governmentality]]. The "[[state of exception]]" deployed here is in fact more complex than the one pointed out by [[Giorgio Agamben|Agamben]] in his ''Homo Sacer'', since the government is in a more ambiguous relation to law —it may comply with it or suspend it, depending on its interests, and this is itself a tool of the state to produce its own sovereignty.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=55, 61–62, 66, 83}}</ref> Butler also points towards problems in [[international law]] treatises like the [[Geneva Conventions]]. In practice, these only protect people who belong to (or act in the name of) a recognized state, and therefore are helpless in situations of abuse toward [[Statelessness|stateless people]], people who do not enjoy a recognized citizenship or people who are labelled "terrorists", and therefore understood as acting on their own behalf as irrational "killing machines" that need to be held captive due to their "dangerousness".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=86–87, 73–74, 76}}</ref>

Butler also writes here on vulnerability and precariousness as intrinsic to the human condition. This is due to our inevitable interdependency from other precarious subjects, who are never really "complete" or autonomous but instead always "dispossessed" on the Other. This is manifested in shared experiences like [[grief]] and loss, that can form the basis for a recognition of our shared human (vulnerable) condition.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=20}}</ref> However, not every loss can be mourned in the same way, and in fact not every life can be conceived of as such (as situated in a condition common to ours).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=32–33}}</ref> Through a critical engagement with [[Emmanuel Levinas|Levinas]], they will explore how certain representations prevent lives from being considered worthy of being lived or taken into account, precluding the mourning of certain Others, and with that the recognition of them and their losses as equally human.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |title=Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence |date=2004 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn= 978-1-84467-544-9 |language=en|pages=147}}</ref> This preoccupation with the dignifying or dehumanizing role of practices of framing and representations will constitute one of the central elements of ''Frames of War'' (2009).