Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence.(Book Review)

Precarious Life:

The Powers of Mourning and Violence

By Judith Butler

Verso Books, 160 pages

Like Buck-Morss, Judith Butler wants to create a different kind of space in which "suffering, unexpected loss, and reactive aggression are not accepted as the norm in political life." Butler collected these essays into a book after 9/11 to share her own attempt to grieve in a way that does not seek revenge. She affirms that mourning, anxiety and utter depression should prompt critical analysis and praxis rather than violence and militarization. She explores the theme of dispensability--how only some lives are worth mourning, protecting, defending and discussing. In doing so, she eloquently poses a nonviolent ethos that re-humanizes those who suffer and die without anyone noticing. Butler's writing style is the most difficult but most cohesive and persistent of these authors.

I remember an interesting scene from Control Room, the documentary about Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq war. A blonde, blue-eyed U.S. soldier is shocked to hear that Iraqis connect the U.S. occupation to the Israeli oppression of Palestinians. I considered whether these books adequately get at the reasons for this soldier's disbelief. I suspect that even some who would wholeheartedly agree with the main themes of each book would struggle with the ultimate problem at the heart of the racialization of Arabs and Muslims: the political move to render any criticism of the Israeli state tantamount to anti-Semitism, thus making it impossible to critique Israeli policy. The conflation of Zionism and ...