Talk and discussion with Terrell Carver (University of Bristol, UK) (in English)

Tue 05 December 2017, 7pm
aquarium (Südblock), Skalitzer Str. 6, Berlin-Kreuzberg, U-Kottbusser Tor 

Judith Butler has been received (and acclaimed or denigrated) as a feminist/queer theorist of sexuality, making an influential gendered critique of the supposed biological facticity of the sex binary itself. She has also featured as a public intellectual deploring interpersonal and state-sponsored violence, taking considerable risks in the immediate post-9/11 American context and with the on-going militarised occupations in Israel-Palestine. Her work has had considerable traction in the former area, but relatively little in the latter. Why is this? I suggest that there is not very much queering in Butler’s political work on violence, whereas a queered view of that work – offered here – could take Freud and Nietzsche where Donald Trump fears to tread.

Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol, UK, and co-author (with Samuel Chambers) of the book Butler and Political Theory (2009). He writes and teaches on Engels, Marx, Marxism as well as Gender and Queer Studies.

https://www.facebook.com/events/147737795985238/

Talk and discussion are part of the series When does it become violence?