Judith Butler is best known for Gender Trouble (1990), the book that introduced the idea of gender performativity. However, with the publication of Giving an Account of Oneself in 2005, it appeared as if her work had taken a different turn, away from considerations of sex, gender, sexuality and politics and towards ethics. This collection of 10 essays offers the first sustained evaluation of that alleged ethical turn. Bringing together a group of internationally renowned theorists, the volume will explore issues such as whether there has been an 'ethical turn' in Butler's work or whether, in fact, the increasing emphasis on ethics is merely the culmination of ideas inherent in her earlier work: how ethics relates to politics and how both connect to her increasing concern with violence, war and conflict. Butler and Ethics will break new ground in scholarship on Butler and will also advance on going debates about materiality and the body, biopolitics, affect theory, precariousness and subjectification. It explores the relation between politics and ethics in Butler's writings. It explores Butler's understanding of the body in relation to both politics and ethics, feminist and non feminist. It looks at work from the full span of Butler's career right up to her most recent book, Frames of War.

This book addresses the idea of radical democracy and, in particular, its poststructuralist articulation. It analyses the approach to radical democracy taken by a number of contemporary theorists and political commentators:, including Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler, William Connolly, Jacques Ranciere, Claude Lefort, Sheldon Wolin, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri, and Giorgio Agamben. By examining critically the critiques accounts of democracy advanced by these theorists, this volume explores how a more radically conceived theory of democracy might be extended in a more egalitarian and inclusive direction. developed. The strand of radical democracy examined in this book is defined by a number of characteristics: *Democracy is conceptualised understood as a fugitive condition, being open to perpetual disruption and reinvention *The relationship between the state and civil society is regarded as the site where the open-ended 'promise' of democracy is fought out *There is an emphasis on questions of political renewal *There is a deep suspicion of identity-based political claims *Politics is conceived as either the site of or as one of the mechanisms for identity construction * Democratic politics is understood as a politics of contestation and disagreement * Democracy is regarded as always at least partially conflictual and not a means through which violence and conflict can be permanently eradicated *There is a deep suspicion of identity-based political claims *The political is assumed to be ontologically conflictual, with such conflict being understood as ultimately ineradicable from politics, though the form it takes necessarily varies from time to time and context to context The book clarifies the concept of radical democracy by mapping the field, and elaborates it further through a critical engagement with the works of its key proponents. In addition, it draws on the insights of radical democratic theory to explore a range of concrete political cases (e.g. the struggles of indigenous people, same-sex marriage, societies emerging from prolonged social and political strife, and the role of social movements in opposing processes of globalization) in order to illustrate its practical nature.

Recent debates in contemporary feminist theory have been dominated by the relation between identity and politics. Beyond Identity Politics examines the implications of recent theorizing on difference, identity and subjectivity for theories of patriarchy and feminist politics.

Organised around the three central themes of subjectivity, power and politics, this book focuses on a question which feminists struggled with and were divided by throughout the last decade, that is: how to theorize the relation between the subject and politics. In this thoughtful engagement with these debates Moya Lloyd argues that the turn to the subject in process does not entail the demise of feminist politics as many feminists have argued. She demonstrates how key ideas such as agency, power and domination take on a new shape as a consequence of this radical rethinking of the subject-politics relation and how the role of feminist political theory becomes centred upon critique.

A resource for feminist theorists, women's and gender studies students, as well as political and social theorists, this is a carefully composed and wide-ranging text, which provides important insights into one of contemporary feminism's most central concerns.

Judith Butler is best known for Gender Trouble (1990), the book that introduced the idea of gender performativity. However, with the publication of Giving an Account of Oneself in 2005, it appeared that her work had taken a different turn: away from considerations of sex, gender, sexuality and politics, and towards ethics. Bringing together a group of internationally renowned theorists, the volume asks: has there been an 'ethical turn' in Butlers work or is the increasing emphasis on ethics the culmination of ideas in her earlier work? How do ethics relate to politics in her work, and how do they connect to her increasing concern with violence, war and conflict?