Vulnerability in Resistance - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822362902 ISBN 13: 9780822362906

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2016

Synopsis

Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays  offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power.

Contributors. Meltem Ahiska, Athena Athanasiou, Sarah Bracke, Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Başak Ertür, Zeynep Gambetti, Rema Hammami, Marianne Hirsch, Elena Loizidou, Leticia Sabsay, Nükhet Sirman, Elena Tzelepis

About this title

Review:

"This book presents an outstanding chorus of political theorists who are engaged in vivid conversations not only with each other but also with the many activists and citizens invested in devising and practicing different politics in public squares, in courts, and in the media. They ask what resistance is and how to conceptualize the vulnerability that is implicated in it while turning a broad spectrum of lived experiences into reflective practice and informed theory. These fascinating contributions delineate the terrain of civil struggles that have emerged in the last decade and generate an original and much-needed lexicon of counterpolitics." (Ariella Azoulay, author of Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography)

"Vulnerability in Resistance marks an exciting step forward in discussions of the concept of vulnerability, signaling important and distinctive directions in how we understand human rights, forms of protest, and debates on the 'necropolitical.' Theoretically ambitious, this collection opens up new possibilities for collaborative thinking across the humanities." (Vikki Bell, author of The Art of Post-Dictatorship)

About the Author:

Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.

Zeynep Gambetti is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University.

Leticia Sabsay is Assistant Professor in the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0822362902
• ISBN 13: 9780822362906
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Butler Judith, Gambetti Zeynep, Sabsay Leticia