Some images are forbidden from appearing in the media, certain names of the dead are never spoken
Some losses are not acknowledged as losses, while the violence that erases them is normalised and spreads unchecked
Precarious life refers to those who perish in war but cannot be mourned, or those whose lives are permanently imprisoned. These lives are expelled from the community and public sphere, deemed unworthy of recognition as “human,” and thus stripped of their basic rights to a fair trial under the law. They are denied the dignity of public acknowledgment of their deaths, their passing rendered invisible, their mourning forbidden. What forces enable such treatment of these lives?
When dissent is attacked as hate speech, when cameras focus solely on faces deemed “symbols of victory,” when the truth and goodness in criticism are rejected, when the fragility of human bodies is buried, and when the reality of violence is numbed, our obligation becomes clear: to rediscover “humanity” in the precariousness of human life and in its capacity to create meaning.
Peace lies in recognising the precarity of the other.
Author: Judith Butler
Translator: Shen Yun-yen
Translation reviewer: Lina Xie, Enoh Yee-lok Tam
Editor: Enoch Yee-lok Tam, Lina Xie
Art & Design: Somely So, Hsu Wai-lun (mmmmor studio)
Edition: First edition, August 2023
ISBN: 978-988-74162-6-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70783/precariouslife
Page: 184
Price: HKD118
Content
Acknowledgement
Preface
1. Explanation and Exoneration, or What We Can Hear
2. Violence, Mourning, Politics
4. The Charge of Anti-semitism: Jews, Israel and the Risk of Public Critique
Translator’s Note by Shen Yun-yen
About the authors
Judith Butler is a leading intellectual at the forefront of gender studies and political philosophy. In the 1990s, her works, including Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, revolutionised the field of gender studies. She has continued to write prolifically, addressing various socio-political phenomena. For instance, in Excitable Speech, she examines the pros and cons of regulating speech through law, while in Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly and The Force of Nonviolence, she explores the significance and potential of increasingly common assemblies and protests in the fight for equality.
About the translator
Shen Yun-yen, a native of Kaohsiung, is currently studying philosophy at Sizihwan. He has translated Frames of War.
Precarious Life’s Notebook
Praises and Reviews
Precarity is the most important keyword in this book. Precarity refers to the fragile, vulnerable, and perilous nature of life. Butler uses this concept as a starting point to rethink the foundations of community.
Precarious Life, written by feminist thinker Judith Butler in the aftermath of 9/11, has recently been translated into Chinese. This translation undoubtedly prompts us to reconsider the internal connections between this series of “historical events” and how they challenge our ethical judgement.
Butler’s Precarious Life (published in 2004) and Frames of War (published in 2009) both reflect on themes of life “after war.” These works examine how the media reports and narrates war, how it selectively constructs the image of victims, and how political and legal frameworks under the guise of “states of emergency” are distorted to justify indefinite detention, torture, and the perpetuation of the war machine.