Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons^™

Violence, Mourning, Politics, Judith Butler

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I’d like to speak to you this evening on the matter of politics and, specifically, how the struggles of gender and sexual minorities might offer a perspective on current issues that are before us, questions of mourning and violence, which we have to deal with as part of an international community. I'd like to start, and to end, with the question of the human, of who counts as the human, and the related question of whose lives count as lives, and with a question that has preoccupied many of us for years: what makes for a grievable life. I believe …