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Judith Butler and the Politics of Protest

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Social Theory and Social Movements

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Abstract

In particular, there are two aspects of Butler’s theory that contribute to social movement theory: recognition and performativity. Recognition as a human need evolves out of performative acts of being recognized by others. In contrast to Honneth, Butler underlines that the recognition can be both positive and negative. People cannot escape the ascription of qualities and characteristics by others’ performative acts. New social movements are locked in the contradiction of claiming recognition in respect to prevailing norms and the intention to change these norms. Lack of recognition and at the same time challenging norms relevant for (not) granting recognition become visible as central issues of new social movements. The concept of performativity helps to explain what social movements actually do. Butler’s own political stance illustrates this ambiguity. The possibility of changing norms by resignification explains the close link of ironic performance and the goal of gaining recognition.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    With reference to psychoanalysis, Butler explains: “Called by an injurious name, I come into social being, and because I have a certain inevitable attachment to my existence, because a certain narcissism takes hold of any term that confers existence, I am led to embrace the terms that injure me because they constitute me socially” (Butler 1997c, p. 104).

  2. 2.

    With reference to Foucault, Butler goes on: “Indeed, we might understand this contemporary phenomenon as the movement by which a juridical apparatus produces the field of possible political subject. […] In this sense, what we call identity politics is produced by a state which can only allocate recognition and rights to subjects totalized by the particularity that constitutes their plaintiff status” (Butler 1997a, p. 100).

  3. 3.

    Honneth explains as follows: “[…] thanks to their underlying principles, the social spheres of recognition that together make up the socio-moral order of bourgeois-capitalist society possess a surplus of validity, which those affected can rationally assert against actual recognition relations” (Honneth 2003, pp. 149–150).

  4. 4.

    In direct response and contrast to Honneth, Robin Celikates bases his interpretation of struggles for recognition on conflict theory. According to Celikates, struggles for recognition can never be solved or ended (Celikates 2007). For a further discussion also see Pettenkofer (2010).

  5. 5.

    James Tully emphasizes the circumstances of struggles for recognition in a democratic society (Tully 2000).

  6. 6.

    For a further discussion see Bedorf (2010, p. 96).

  7. 7.

    Butler goes on: “The critical task is […] to locate strategies of subversive repetition that are enabled by those constructions, to affirm the local possibilities of intervention through participating in precisely those practices that constitute identity and, therefore, present the immanent possibility of contesting them” (Butler 1999, p. 188).

  8. 8.

    For instance Butler was critical when the US army declared that to say you are homosexual meant to act homosexual. Likewise she questions that pornography effects relationships that represent the gender norms of pornography (Butler 1997b).

  9. 9.

    An example of this ambivalent relationship is Butler’s rejection of the award Preis für Zivilcourage at the Berlin Christopher Street Day in 2010. Butler declared to the audience at the Brandenburger Tor that the event was too commercial and that the organizers are not sufficiently active against racism (www.spiegel.de/panorama/eklat-bei-christopher-street-day-butler-lehnt-preis-ab-a-701729.html, accessed November 11, 2015).

  10. 10.

    For an overview of Butler’s work, see: www.egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler/bibliography/, accessed November 11, 2015.

  11. 11.

    Butler goes on “[…] consider that normativity has this double meaning. On the one hand, it refers to the aims and aspirations that guide us, the precepts by which we are compelled to act or speak to one another, the commonly held presuppositions by which we are oriented, and which give direction to our actions. On the other hand, normativity refers to the process of normalization, the way that certain norms, ideas and ideals hold sway over embodied life, provide coercive criteria for normal ʻmenʼ and ʻwomenʼ. (Butler 2004b, p. 206).

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  1. Universität Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany

    Dorothea Reinmuth

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  1. Dorothea Reinmuth
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  1. University of Wrocław, Willy Brandt Center for German and Europ University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland

    Jochen Roose

  2. Institut für Soziologie, Georg-August University of Göttingen Institut für Soziologie, Göttingen, Niedersachsen, Germany

    Hella Dietz

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Reinmuth, D. (2016). Judith Butler and the Politics of Protest. In: Roose, J., Dietz, H. (eds) Social Theory and Social Movements. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-13381-8_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-13381-8_8

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