Judith Butler: on COVID-19, the politics of non-violence, necropolitics, and social inequality

In this event (hosted by the Whitechapel Gallery and British Library, on the occasion of Verso's 50th anniversary), Judith Butler presents a lecture taking in all the complexities of the global pandemic, followed by a live Q&A chaired by Amia Srinivasan.
The pandemic is a crisis in itself but also one that exacerbates pre-existing crises of capital, care, race, and climate. If we seek to repair the world or the planet then it must be unshackled from the market economy that profits from its distribution of life and death. The state directed imperative to open the economy mid-pandemic, comes at the cost of human lives, and those lives are generally Black and Brown lives working in service economies. In short, the global pandemic has revealed "the death drive at the heart of the capitalist machine".
"If Foucault thought there was a difference between taking another’s life and letting another die, we see that police violence works in tandem with health systems that let people die. It is systemic racism that links the two forms of power." - Butler
Judith Butler's most recent book, The Force of Nonviolence, argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a passive practice that emanates from a calm region of the soul, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power. But, in fact, nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field. See more here: www.versobooks.com/products/8...
Amia Srinivasan is the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford. She is currently finishing two books. The first is about the practice of critical genealogy, entitled The Contingent World: Genealogy, Epistemology, Politics. The second is a set of feminist essays entitled The Right to Sex, forthcoming with Bloomsbury in the UK and FSG in the US. She is a contributing editor of the London Review of Books, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The New York Times and TANK. .
This event is hosted by the Whitechapel Gallery, and presented in collaboration with the British Library as part of Feminist Resistance: Strategies for the 21st Century. It is part of a programme of live events, and series of author videos, to mark 50 years of radical publishing at Verso Books. See all the author videos on our youtube channel, and a list of live events here: www.versobooks.com/blogs/4802...

[@tormunnvii3317]

Very interesting. I love the framing in terms of Economic Health as an almost vampiric relation upon Biological Health, and the concept of Interdependence against the right-wing ideal of Independence and Individualism. Also, the discourse around non-violence is fascinating. Thanks for this Interview, it was very enlightening.

[@DippingAtoe]

A wonderful conversation thank thank you 😊

[@mindheartmouth]

What is the date of this talk?

[@bogeyworman6102]

Judith says "as of july" so probably a similar time of upload (1-24 July)

[@JLuck88]

Thank you so much for this chat!!!!

[@becksundgras]

what kind of chat is this were every person talks like 10 minutes? My ADHS kicks in too strong to keep following?...

[@memel9514]

KZbin should've shown me this long ago

[@indonesiamenggugat8795]

Great show, Amia. Warm hug for you and Judith. Best wishes from indonesia

[@growingmelancholy8374]

I liked the part where both scholars' privileges were called into question and where Butler was questioned about her May, 11, 2018 letter to NYU.

[@tcmackgeorges12]

What about Fanon? How does butlers analysis stand up against, Fanon’s analysis of violence, which itself is also very Marxist and Hegelian?

[@tayouhanzatsu5347]

Sounds like your notion of interdependence(y) is purely prescriptive. What I'm particularly struggling with it your description is whether this can be turned around to say 'this hurts me more than you' while you stab someone. It also sounds you would be well off taking a course on data visualisation, instead of projecting so much on the line as an abstract object.

[@juankshalonga7190]

It is important to consider that the 'flattening the curve' was not designed to save lives, but to spread the numbers across a longer timeline. It is only a means of avoiding overwhelming the hospitals. Unfortunately, these measures always end in the same number of lost lives. And, unfortunately, deaths of despair from loss, and from the extra stress on mental health alone are a catastrophic addition to the tragedy.

[@larshalvorsen5990]

That's not quite right. Overwhelming hospitals lead to much higher death rates as there isn't enough resources to treat everyone. Flattening the curve would then lead to a lower death rate as more people can get treatment.

[@juankshalonga7190]

@@larshalvorsen5990 Point taken. If the hospitals are pushed beyond functionality, unnecessary deaths would occur, adding to the overall number that would have been the same otherwise. Still, the lockdowns going beyond flattening the curve won't save more lives, and demonstrably has been taking far more lives in extending lockdowns beyond curve flattening. So much that I would bet far more damage and loss of life has been caused locking down, than if they had let it overwhelm hospitals. Both outcomes are tragic. The best formula is to run at full hospital capacity as much as possible, locking down as little as possible. The deaths from the lockdowns are only beginning, and will ripple on for generations already. How many deaths does the doubling of world poverty cause? I think I should have said thr number of infections would be no different. My bad there.. it was 5 months ago.

[@steffg8351]

‘always end in the same number’ - No because avoiding overwhelming hospitals prevents even more lives from being lost. It’s not just a case of spreading the deaths over a longer period. If deathrate is 0.1% (just for example) and hospitalization rate is 10% (let’s say) and then the hospitals become full, your new deathrate is closer to 10%. Edit: sorry just realised someone else said the same thing. I think you’re still underestimating quite how much social chaos would entail when every hospital is overwhelmed by covid patients for weeks/months. Just read accounts from doctors in hospitals in Italy ~March 2020. It took about a week for it to be described as a ‘warzone’.

[@juankshalonga7190]

@@steffg8351 Perhaps I didnt articulate that once the curve is flattened enough to not overwhelm hospitals, the same number of people will die. There seems to be a push to eradicate the virus by locking down, and that simply will not happen. What is happening, is the poorest become much poorer, and our future is being gutted, sucked out of the economy, with every local business dollar lost, straight to the corporations who buy up businesses or replace their services with walmart, amazon, etc.. it may seem less pressing than covid, but we are stuck the effects, including deaths of despair, suicides, education system halted, all social functions shut down longer term, etc. the pandemic will pass, enslavement ala technocratic surveillance tyranny, will not. jussayin

[@steffg8351]

oh for sure, there are no good outcomes

[@johnsonjr.butalon3374]

Say Hi if you see this

[@russeljohnduetiz4667]

Hi HAHAHAHAHA

[@Questioner365]

"Nothing is more Capitalist Monopoly than Communism." - Jonathan Alder

[@gregoryallen0001]

this is so sad

[@joanginsberg9604]

No agendaspeak here then!

[@draftnotion]

I'm 30 minutes in and so far I am a little underwhelmed. I was hoping it would have expanded a bit more on Foucault's biopolitics and how it was applied in a statistical mode of governance, but they instead seem to be taking their time linking ideas of violence and slow-killing in a very roundabout way - with some currents of social inequality and anti-capitalism sprinkled in. I was hoping for a lecture but they are just reading their essay and speak in a really stilted way, and the writing isn't even as poetic as I think they believe. Perhaps they will develop this into something deeper but I am not engaged enough to have the patience of gambling another 36 minutes to close the heurmeneutic circle. I would much rather description provided a link to the text she is flipping through rather than pushing for book sales. A little ironic considering "the death drive at the heart of the capitalist machine". Watching this literally felt like it was draining the health from my body.

[@grayarcana]

The resort to violence closes minds on partisan lines: the advance of the Radical can only begin by the opening of minds. Thereafter, the flow of events may engulf a polity in violence: violence is the risk the Radical must run, however averse to violence one may wisely be.

[@thesacredvowsdrsamirvyas2938]

Non-violence is non-existent in western philosophy.East has lived and walked the path for eons,indic civilisation has many of examples like Buddha,Mahavir and Gandhi.

[@khwiik4706]

This is simply not true. Erasmus of Rotterdam and Jesus just to give two examples

[@DorotheaAntonio]

There was the Fabian Society (a group of intellectual socialist in London in 1880) who preferred a gradual, non-violent socialist revolution rather than the violent revolution Marx was endorsing.

[@no-tg4me]

Ah yes Jesus. Everyone's favorite westerner.

[@joebloggs144]

Anything Butler says, please discount. She is completely misguided and her outlook is darkened and evil.

[@whatifiputsomethingsilly]

How?

[@rappakalja5295]

​@@whatifiputsomethingsillyShe doesn't hate trans people so she must be evil.