Review:
War is 'framed' in the media so as to prevent us from recognising the people who are to be killed as living fully 'grievable' lives, like ours. That is the thesis pursued in this collection...[with] bracing close readings of the pope, Melanie Klein, Michael Walzer, Susan Sontag and poems written by Guantánamo prisoners. The best essay is the excellent 'Sexual Politics, Torture and Secular Time', in which, addressing the Abu Ghraib photos, Butler notes that 'The torture was also a way to coercively produce the Arab subject and the Arab mind', and advances the impressive gambit: 'I want to suggest that a civilisational war is at work in this context that casts the army as the more sexually progressive culture.' Elsewhere she excoriates lazy rhetoric about 'tolerance' and Islamic 'taboo', and deplores in a general way the 'inversions of discourse' in warlike rhetoric. --Guardian
“A trenchant and brilliant book.”- Utne Reader
“It's clear that its author is still interested in stirring up trouble—academic, political and otherwise.” – Bookforum
“Judith Butler is quite simply one of the most probing, challenging, and influential thinkers of our time.” – J. M. Bernstein
“Judith Butler is the most creative and courageous social theorist writing today. Frames of War is an intellectual masterpiece that weds a new understanding of being, immersed in history, to a novel Left politics that focuses on State violence, war and resistance.” – Cornel West
“An impressive and challenging book from one of the leading intellectuals of our time.” – Diva
About the Author:
JUDITH BUTLER is Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of many books, including Giving an Account of Oneself, Precarious Life, and Gender Trouble.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.