Who is Judith Butler?

Substack

Who is Judith Butler? Does one really need to ask?

Butler is the academic flavor of the last three decades, our very own home-grown Lacan, a “performance” artiste par excellence.

Butler is known for advancing the thesis that gender/sex do not exist, that everything is socially constructed, and that "gender/sex" are performed; they are not biologically based. In a sense, for Butler nothing is real; it is only what one feels or says that matters; reality is something with which one can "play," at least linguistically. Thus, in her view, only grammar is real, and she demands to be referred to as "they," not as "he" or "she" because both are concepts, or insults, that do not even exist. Her writing is postmodern, obscure, sometimes incomprehensible, always affected, and domineering. Her own chosen identity is a queer performance. Back in the day, "they" might have been described as a butch dyke or a lesbian who wears no makeup, keeps her hair very short, and could "pass" as a man. (No crime of course but, nevertheless, a bit startling.)

Butler became internationally known in 1990, when she published her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Although Butler's Ph.D. is in philosophy, "they" are also very well known for "their" anti-Zionism and "their" preference for Jewish vulnerability in an endangered and stateless form because, in Butler's view, that is a more moral way of being Jewish. I just checked Butler's Wikipedia entry and found it disturbing that the editors have adopted Butler's demand that "they" be described as "they." I will no longer follow her instructions in this brief sketch.

Incredibly, like every Islamic Jihadist, Butler believes in a one-state solution—yes, despite the long history of how Arab Muslims have routinely taxed, impoverished, murdered, and exiled its Jewish citizens; despite the fact that the Arab Muslim Middle East has been rendered Judenrein for quite a while; despite the fact that Arab leaders have rejected a Palestinian state over and over again.

To Butler, such facts do not exist; she prefers an abstract solution to a very dangerous reality. In her view, Zionism is a racist, European, and colonial practice. She has supported versions of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, has criticized Israel for what she calls the "apartheid" wall (not the security barrier), and has savagely critiqued Israel for its various wars of self-defense. 

She is one tough Jew, mightily admired in both Berlin and Berkeley.

In her 2012 work, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, she notes that many important 19th-century Jewish thinkers also opposed Zionism, and it was not necessarily viewed as antisemitic. According to Corinne E. Blackmer in her excellent 2020 work Queering Anti-Zionism: Academic Freedom, LGBT Intellectuals, and Israel/Palestine Campus Activism:

"Two possible lessons or conclusions can be drawn from the fact that Jews experienced considerable state-sponsored violence, persecution, and discrimination in the galut [diaspora] culminating not only in the Holocaust but also the forced removal of nearly one million Mizrachi [Arab] Jews from their ancestral homes in the Middle East....the only plausible means for Jews to realistically preserve themselves requires having a state of their own."

However, in Butler's view the alleged, non-factual, and exaggerated harm done to Arab Muslim Palestinians now demands a one-state solution, a state in which Butler requires that Jews "perform" an "identity makeover" and become part-hybrid Muslim and Christian Arabs, and reject Zionism. Blackmer describes Butler's proposal in this way:

"Just as Herzl was wrong to conclude that creating a Jewish state would end anti-semitism, so too does Butler err in contending that eliminating Zionism would also end hatred of Jews...Butler desires that Greater Palestine become an entity inhabited by Jews and Palestinians who have deconstructed their particular mono-national identities and then reconstructed themselves with binational identities."

Butler's malicious mischief is somewhat insane. And because it is, she has become very popular and very celebrated. Butler is quite literally "playing" with lives but at a safe distance.

At least she does not identify herself as a Palestinian. Butler actually climbed the ladder to the stars by following in Derrida's and Lacan's paths and by claiming she was "queer." I am grateful for this small mercy.