Giving an Account of Oneself 2/e

Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. Their books include Who's Afraid of Gender? (2024), What World Is This? A Pandemic Phenomenology (2022), The Force of Nonviolence (2020), Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015), Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009), Giving an Account of Oneself (2005), Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence (2004), and Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990).

Preface to the Twentieth-Anniversary Edition vii Acknowledgments xiii Abbreviations xv 1. An Account of Oneself 3 Scenes of Address 9 Foucaultian Subjects 22 Post-Hegelian Queries 26 ''Who Are You?'' 30 2. Against Ethical Violence 41 Limits of Judgment 44 Psychoanalysis 50 The ''I'' and the ''You'' 65 3. Responsibility 83 Laplanche and Levinas: The Primacy of the Other 84 Adorno on Becoming Human 101 Foucault's Critical Account of Himself 111 Notes 137 Index 147

"A brave book by a courageous thinker."---Hayden White, Author of Metahistory "Hailed when it was first published, Giving an Account of Oneself is all the more significant for us now. Butler elegantly executes a double helix of argument that thinks sexuality as dispossession and, at the same time, the ethical demands of this dispossession--against settler-colonial statecraft, against occupation, and toward a political relationality for which we are still fighting."---Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox "A powerful exploration of the intersection of identity and responsibility, Giving an Account of Oneself shows us Judith Butler at their best, in dialogue with some of the foremost thinkers of our age: Adorno, Foucault, Levinas, and Laplanche. Confronting the problem of identities that emerge only in relation to social and moral norms they may seek to contest, Butler proposes a rethinking of responsibility in relation to the limits of self-understanding that make us human."---Jonathan Culler, Cornell University "In a time when moral certitude is used to justify the worst violence, Butler's nuanced reworking of what it means to be ethically responsible to ourselves and to others is welcome indeed."---Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University "In stunningly original interpretations of Adorno and Levinas, Judith Butler compellingly demonstrates that questions of ethics cannot avoid addressing the moral self's complicity with violence. By laying out the premises of a creative rereading, this study proves that the discussion of these two authors and their future legacy has, in a sense, barely begun. Butler writes in a truly Spinozistic spirit, mobilizing the greatest forces and joys of philosophical intelligence to counteract and redirect the cruelest and most destructive of human passions. Brilliantly argued and beautifully written, Giving an Account of Oneself is destined to become a classic, a must read for philosophers and students of present-day culture and politics alike."---Hent de Vries, New York University