---
layout: post
status: publish
published: true
title: Judith Butler at Sussex on Arendt, Cohabitation, and the Dispersion of Sovereignty

wordpress_id: 701
wordpress_url: https://www.martineve.com/?p=701
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categories:
- Academia
- Philosophy
- Judith Butler
tags:
- ethics
- Judith Butler
- Hannah Arendt
- Death Penalty
- Genocide
- Eichmann
- Holocaust
comments:
- id: 6167
  author: ! 'Tweets that mention A writeup of Judith Butler at Sussex, (attn: -- Topsy.com'
  author_email: ''
  author_url: http://topsy.com/trackback?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.martineve.com%2F2011%2F02%2F04%2Fjudith-butler-at-sussex-on-arendt-cohabitation-and-the-dispersion-of-sovereignty%2F&utm_source=pingback&utm_ca
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  content: ! '[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Laura Purll, Martin Eve.
    Martin Eve said: A writeup of Judith Butler at Sussex, http://bit.ly/gMA5Cd (attn:
    @alexjblandford) [...]'
- id: 6171
  author: Naomi Booth
  author_email: nb84@sussex.ac.uk
  author_url: ''
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  content: Excellent summary of Butler's talk. I wrote a letter to the editor about
    Cohen's defensive jabberings. I am indignant from Brockley.
- id: 6179
  author: Emile
  author_email: traxt01@ymail.com
  author_url: ''
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  content: ! "Forgive me, but I don't think the question eliciting Butler's thoughts
    on Greer was particularly ridiculous. The student probably just took their opportunity
    to ask a question of this famous philosopher that they knew they would never have
    again. \r\n\r\nFor you to lampoon the student for provoking a little laughter
    in the audience and having the bravery to ask a question in front of so many people
    is a reflection perhaps on your own stolidly stoic and uncompromising seriousness.
    \r\n\r\nWe should be encouraging young minds, not attempting to quash their curiosity
    with arrogant accusations of irrelevance.\r\n\r\nHumbly yours,\r\nEmile"
- id: 6180
  author: Martin Paul Eve
  author_email: martin@martineve.com
  author_url: ''
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  content: ! 'Emile:


    Perhaps you are right, particularly on not wanting to dissuade people from asking
    questions, but I still believe it was misplaced. It would be akin to me asking
    you on your opinion on early twentieth-century dime novels in response to the
    comment you just made because you once wrote on twentieth-century fiction... 20
    years ago. I''m not saying a response wouldn''t have been interesting, but it
    is a non sequitur in terms of what you just took the time to write about and the
    same goes for Butler''s talk. To ask about something utterly unrelated, out of
    the blue, portrayed an indifference to the topic at hand: "can''t we talk about
    the interesting stuff", although I''m prepared to admit I might be reading too
    much into it there.


    Secondly, in terms of seriousness and laughter: as far as I''m aware, in comedy,
    timing is everything. I''m not sure that a lecture considering the ethics of genocide
    -- specifically the Holocaust -- and the death penalty is the time for a light
    hearted crack.


    Best wishes,


    Martin'
---
<p><img src="https://www.martineve.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IMAG0008-300x179.jpg" alt="Judith Butler at Sussex University" title="Judith Butler" width="300" height="179" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-702" style="margin-top:0px;" /></p>
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<p>Anybody reading this weekend's Comment is Free piece by Nick Cohen might have felt somewhat dispirited at the concept of attending a lecture by Judith Butler, who was invited to Sussex this week (2nd February, 2011) to speak as part of the Hannah Arendt Lecture in Modern Jewish Thought series. Indeed, in an article full of the most banal anti-academic tripe, Cohen accuses Butler of an elitism which alienates the general populous and thereby plays into the hands of the right. Asides from being a load of codswallop, Butler's lecture was articulate, comprehensible and, in her question and answer manner, consistently generous and civil (even in the face of a ridiculous, utterly unrelated question on Germaine Greer). Butler's piece was entitled “Arendt, Cohabitation, and the Dispersion of Sovereignty” and I will here try to write a little by way of summary and gentle questioning.</p>
</div>
<p>Taking as her focus Arendt's final address to Eichmann in <i>Eichmann in Jerusalem,</i>, Butler teased out the inconsistent logic in Arendt's thought whereby she agrees with the verdict of the Israeli court that Eichmann should face the death penalty, but criticizes them for arriving at the conclusion for the incorrect reasons. Butler's reading of Arendt is one of co-habitation and plurality wherein we do not have, upon this earth, the right to choose with whom we live. Simultaneously, Butler explored Arendt's conception of thinking as a splitting of Kant's Transcendental Unity of Apperception into a fragmented, plural individual whose multiple voices are consistently in dialogue. Eventually, Butler concluded that the crime for which Arendt condemns Eichmann is arguing for duty, as opposed to thinking; this structure of dialogue. Indeed, much of Arendt's project is, according to Butler, an attempt to wrest Kant away from Eichmmann's appropriation of his moral philosophy.</p>
<p>Butler pointed out the many problems involved in such a reading. The inconsistency of condemning someone to death for their enactment of genocide (choosing with whom to live) is, itself, a selection which would cause an infinite regress; the historical contingency of the subject, a view to which Arendt does not subscribe, gives no criteria for judgement, there is supposedly some transcendental law to which we can appeal in judgement. Furthermore, the final address, “for which you must hang” is problematic as, Butler contends, this is an illocutionary speech act which reconstitutes the subject which Arendt claims has forfeited personhood. This seems to me, given the anthroprocentric nature of the death penalty and murder laws, the weakest part of Butler's argument; does the second person appellation apply solely to human subjects. Dog and cat owners worldwide would probably argue not, yet they do not imagine that the illocutionary force of such an address might be to call forth a human subject.</p>
<p>Eventually, in light of these conflicting readings, Butler proposed a system of ethics predicated upon our shared corporeality. We are all vulnerable to the same physical forces and all need, in a worldwide system of cohabitation, protection from those forces. This is a system derived from the most basic of human needs, on top of which all economic and social factors are abstractions. However, for this to work, these forces need to be exposed as abstractions, which in the current social climate they certainly are not. At the end of this event, however, one of the most seemingly innocent questions actually proved the most incisive: was it not, in actuality, emotion that commissioned Arendt's death sentence to Eichmann, over and above any transcendental logic she could pose? Butler thought for several moments before replying, with the merest of humble nods, with a yes.</p>