Lecture: Judith Butler and Legal Violence

This lecture from Judith Butler was delivered in March 2016 at Yale University and is a great introduction and argument on the issue of violence, racism, grievability and the role of the institutions in implementing legal violence.

The loss of grievability characterises the living and also expresses the systematic forms of neglecting some lives. This shows that we are living in a violent system.

Whose lives are considered ungrievable are important because those are the lives that are not considered to be safeguarded.

One of the crucial points that Butler makes is that responsibly of violence must be shared for its effectiveness and this corresponds to the violent system which effectively continues to exist.

The lecture prompts these questions for further discussion:

• How does violence shape your mind ?

• In which situations can violence be acceptable ?

• Whose violence is acceptable ?

• Is there a hierarchy on who implements violence ?

• How can violence be justified ?

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