Butler, Judith; Gambetti, Zeynep; Sabsay, Leticia (editors).
Vulnerability in resistance. Barcelona: International Catalan Institute for Peace and Bellaterra Edicions, 2024.
Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as incompatible realities, with the assumption that the former requires protection and dedication at the expense of the latter. This book focuses on the analysis of diverse political movements and cultural practices in France, Turkey, Palestine, the former Yugoslavia, Spain and Kurdistan, among others. The authors of the book articulate a proposal for understanding the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They masterfully analyze 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.
This book offers a feminist account of political agency by exploring practices such as the occupation of public space, barricades, hunger strikes, mourning, mobilizations and various forms of solidarity, as well as various forms of aesthetic and artistic interventions that expose power and build memory. Thus, it points us to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal alliances and bodily resistance that does not disavow vulnerability and that does not renounce the radical transformation of our society.
About the authors
Judith Butler is the Maxine Elliot Chair in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. They are the author of, among others, Frames of War, Undoing Gender, Precarious Life and Gender Trouble, and one of the most influential philosophers in the field of Gender Studies.
Zeynep Gambetti is an independent researcher specializing in Political Theory and a former professor of Political Theory at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bogaziçi University. She has written several works on political thought and subjectivity.
Leticia Sabsay is a sociologist with a PhD in Gender Studies and a researcher in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her main line of research involves interrogating the relationship between sexuality, subjectivity and ideals of freedom and justice. She is the author of works such as Sexual Borders: Urban Spaces, Bodies and Citizenship and The Norms of Desire: Sexual Imaginary and Communication.