The unlivable is the most extreme point of human suffering and
injustice. But what is it exactly? How do we define the unlivable?
And what can we do to prevent and repair it? These are the
intriguing questions Judith Butler and Frederic Worms discuss in a
captivating dialogue situated at the crossroads of contemporary
life and politics. Here, Judith Butler criticizes the norms that
make life precarious and unlivable, while Frederic Worms appeals to
a "critical vitalism" as a way of allowing the hardship of the
unlivable to reveal what is vital for us. For both Butler and
Worms, the difference between the livable and the unlivable forms
the critical foundation for a contemporary practice of care. Care
and support, in all their aspects, make human life livable, that
is, "more than living." To understand it, we must draw on the
concrete practices of humans who are confronted with the unlivable:
the refugees of today and the witnesses and survivors of past
violations and genocide. They teach us what is intolerable but also
undeniable about the unlivable, and what we can do to resist it.
Crafted with critical rigor, mutual respect, and lively humor, the
compelling dialogue transcribed and translated in this book took
place at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) on April 11, 2018, at a
time when close to two thousand migrants were living in nearby
makeshift camps in northern Paris. The Livable and the Unlivable
showcases this 2018 dialogue in the context of Butler's and Worms's
ongoing work and the evolution of their thought, as presented by
Laure Barillas and Arto Charpentier in their equally engaging
introduction. It concludes with a new afterword that addresses the
crises unfolding in our world and the ways a philosophically
rigorous account of life must confront them. While this book will
be of keen interest to readers of philosophy and cultural
criticism, and those interested in vitalism, new materialism, and
critical theory, it is a far from merely academic text. In the
conversation between Butler and Worms, we encounter questions we
all grapple with in confronting the distress and precarity of our
times, marked as it is by types of survival that are unlivable,
from concentration camps to prisons to environmental toxicity, to
forcible displacement, to the Covid pandemic. The Livable and the
Unlivable at once considers longstanding philosophical questions
around why and how we live, while working to retrieve a philosophy
of life for today's Left.
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