Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative‘When we claim to have been injured by language, what kind of claim do we make?’ - Judith Butler, Excitable Speech Excitable Speech is widely hailed as a tour de force and one of Judith Butler’s most important books. Examining in turn debates about hate speech, pornography and gayness within the US military, Butler argues that words can wound and linguistic violence is its own kind of violence. Yet she also argues that speech is ‘excitable’ and fluid, because its effects often are beyond the control of the speaker, shaped by fantasy, context and power structures. In a novel and courageous move, she urges caution concerning the use of legislation to restrict and censor speech, especially in cases where injurious language is taken up by aesthetic practices to diminish and oppose the injury, such as in rap and popular music. Although speech can insult and demean, it is also a form of recognition and may be used to talk back; injurious speech can reinforce power structures, but it can also repeat power in ways that separate language from its injurious power. Skillfully showing how language’s oppositional power resides in its insubordinate and dynamic nature and its capacity to appropriate and defuse words that usually wound, Butler also seeks to account for why some clearly hateful speech is taken to be iconic of free speech, while other forms are more easily submitted to censorship. In light of current debates between advocates of freedom of speech and ‘no platform’ and cancel culture, the message of Excitable Speech remains more relevant now than ever. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author, where she considers speech and language in the context contemporary forms of political polarization.
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From inside the book
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... language is hence of acute significance to anyone concerned with the sociopolitical and theoretical implications of hate speech.” The Lesbian Review of Books “This book offers a challenging analysis of the free speech debates. As she ...
... language as action. Butler has provided us with a sustained demonstration that we should fill in the moat that separates law schools from the human sciences, and quickly.” Janet Halley, Harvard Law School, USA “In this relentlessly ...
... language from its injurious power. Skillfully showing how language's oppositional power resides in its insubordinate and dynamic nature and its capacity to appropriate and defuse words that usually wound, Butler also seeks to account ...
... language that is used? Does the language manifest racist intent? Should the punishment for the act be intensified since the language makes clear that the problem is not only bodily injury but also of racial discrimination? Jurists have ...
... language can and sometimes does injure, and that racist language is responsible for specific kinds of race-based injuries. One approach is to call into question the primacy of “free speech” in U.S. jurisprudence, asking why speech that ...
Contents
on linguistic vulnerability | 1 |
1 Burning acts injurious speech | 43 |
2 Sovereign performatives | 70 |
paranoia and homosexuality in the military | 103 |
4 Implicit censorship and discursive agency | 127 |
NOTES | 165 |
INDEX | 181 |