Abstract
This chapter offers an introduction to the American philosopher Judith Butler based on her work in a systematic perspective. In doing so, we are following four central trajectories in Butler’s thinking – (a) Impacts on Gender and Queer Theory; (b) Questions of Contingency, Difference, and Performativity; (c) Theories on the Subject, Subjection, and Subjectivation; and at least (d) Ethical and Political Implications. And we will thus present commentary regarding her reception within the fields of philosophy of education and pedagogy. Having given such an overview, we will turn to the third aspect in her work, ‘Theories on the Subject, Subjection, and Subjectivation’, and will show how the previous aspects converge in this point. We will put emphasis on the context of subjectivation, in the sense of becoming a ‘subject’, with respect to the meaning of social norms and the dependency of the human subject on others (also in its ethical dimension) that follows from this. In this way, we will show to which extent Butler’s thinking questions concepts in present-day philosophy, especially heteronomy and autonomy, which are often envisioned in a dualistic and oppositional manner. We deem Butler’s thoughts on subjectivation as highly significant and relevant, so that we will point to some perspectives that emerged in receiving her work in pedagogy and the philosophy of education. We also hope to show what is to be gained if we place a human subject that is radically and existentially depended on others at the center of all our deliberations on education.
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- 1.
For more biographical details, insight into her academic and nonacademic commitments, the prizes she won and a full bibliography of her work, see her university homepages: http://complit.berkeley.edu/?page_id=168, www.egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler, www.egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler/bibliography/
- 2.
Though not elaborated here, there is a shift in Butler’s attention on bodily performance in her earlier books to an speech act theory based understanding of performativity, relying on Austin as much as on Derrida, especially discussed and developed in Exitable Speech (1997b).
- 3.
For instance, relying only on the German context this is suggested lately by the works of Nicole Balzer, Bettina Kleiner, Kerstin Jergus, Hans-Christoph Koller, Norbert Ricken, Nadine Rose, and Christiane Thompson, for an overview see Ricken and Balzer (2012), Kleiner and Rose (2014), and especially Jergus (2012) for Butler’s reception in Germany. For instance, a special issue of the British Journal of Sociology of Education (David et al. 2006) is giving an overview on Butler’s reception and her relevance for educational thinking in the UK as well.
- 4.
Already in Gender Trouble Butler was – in terms of footnotes – taking other lines of difference (beyond gender) into account, but especially race (and religion) she considers broader in her later works, such as Exitable Speech (Butler 1997b), Precarious Life (Butler 2004b), Frames of War (Butler 2009), or Who Sings the Nation-State? (Butler and Spivak 2007).
- 5.
Leading subject constitution into a melancholy (form of) gender as she unfolds there, relying on and shifting central notions of Freud (see Butler 1997a: 132ff.).
- 6.
Original term of Althusser – Butler is relying on Althusser here, as we state a few line later.
- 7.
See especially Excitable Speech for a more detailed conception of that argument, also Balzer (2007) on the question of recognition leading into misrecognition.
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Rose, N., Ricken, N. (2018). Judith Butler. In: Smeyers, P. (eds) International Handbook of Philosophy of Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72761-5_7
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