From the Verso Books Blog (14/03/20249 …
In response to remarks they gave at an event in Paris earlier this month, Judith Butler has received hate mail while Zionist publications have attacked them. In this article, Butler defends and clarifies their position.
This article was originally published by Médiapart on 11 March.
My sojourn in France this academic year has been full of interesting twists and turns. First, an event was cancelled by the Mayor of Paris in early December on anti-zionism and antisemitism in which I had hoped to draw a distinction between the two. The event was rescheduled to take place at Pantin and many people arrived for the conversation on that topic that I had with Francoise Vergès, Michèle Sibony, Olivier Marbouf, producer and author associated with the Relais de Pantin. The sponsoring organizations included two anti-Zionist Jewish groups, and several other left organizations. After the event, Paroles d’honneur posted a recording of the event, and then critics circulated an extracted portion in which I am featured as saying that the attacks perpetrated against Israelis on October 7th was part of a resistance movement. I proposed that we think about Hamas not as a terrorist group, but as part of that movement. What the extract failed to include was the next part of my argument, namely, that we can, and must, disagree with the tactics of such a movement, and that my view is that the atrocities committed then, and the genocidal actions of the State of Israel, are both to be opposed. I then went on to talk about non-violence and what it means, emphasizing that my aspiration for the region, shared by many others, is a form of governance that would embody principles of equality, justice, and freedom for all, regardless of religion, race, national original.
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Giorgio Agamben: The experience of language is a political experience
From Quodlibet (16/02/2024) …
How would it be possible to really change the society and culture in which we live? Reforms and even revolutions, although they transform institutions and laws, relations of production and objects, do not question those deeper strata that shape our vision of the world and which would have to be reached for the change to be truly radical. However, we have daily experience of something that exists differently from all the things and institutions that surround us and that conditions and determines them: language. We are primarily concerned with named things and, yet, we continue to talk in vain and, as is often the case, without ever questioning what we are doing when we speak. In this way, it is precisely our original experience of language that remains stubbornly hidden from us and, without us realising it, it is this opaque zone inside and outside us that determines our way of thinking and acting.
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