Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

Precarious Life:

The Powers of Mourning and Violence

By Judith Butler

Verso Books, 160 pages

Like Buck-Morss, Judith Butler wants to create a different kind of space in which "suffering, unexpected loss, and reactive aggression are not accepted as the norm in political life." Butler collected these essays into a book after 9/11 to share her own attempt to grieve in a way that does not seek revenge. She affirms that mourning, anxiety and utter depression should prompt critical analysis and praxis rather than violence and militarization. She explores the theme of dispensability--how only some lives are worth mourning, protecting, defending and discussing. In doing so, she eloquently poses a nonviolent ethos that re-humanizes those who suffer and die without anyone noticing. Butler's writing style is the most difficult but most cohesive and persistent of these authors.

I remember an interesting scene from Control Room, the documentary about Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq war. A blonde, blue-eyed U.S. soldier is shocked to hear that Iraqis connect the U.S. occupation to the Israeli oppression of Palestinians. I considered whether these books adequately get at the reasons for this soldier's disbelief. I suspect that even some who would wholeheartedly agree with the main themes of each book would struggle with the ultimate problem at the heart of the racialization of Arabs and Muslims: the political move to render any criticism of the Israeli state tantamount to anti-Semitism, thus making it impossible to critique Israeli policy. The conflation of Zionism and Judaism, as well as the soldier's inability to immediately grasp the relevance of Palestinians to the Iraq war, spell disaster for effectively countering anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Buck-Morss and several authors in Hagopian's anthology discuss the collusion of U.S. and Israel in monopolizing the definition and response to terrorism in order to deflect attention from their own state terrorisms. But these authors do not explain why criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic or how the issue of anti-Semitism is at the root of much of what they are discussing. Butler, however, effectively discusses these issues, while eloquently capturing the suffering and fears of both Jews and Palestinians. She courageously examines the difficulty in simultaneously critiquing Israel while exploring Israel's importance to Jews and the prevention of anti-Jewish hate speech/crimes. If one explores the viewpoints of Jews uncomfortable with Israeli policy, the Christian far right's simultaneous anti-Semitic and pro-Israel position, and the early Zionist leaders' changing positions on Zionism, the Palestinians and British colonialism, one sees a much more fractured narrative about Israel that could allow some humanity to Palestinians and a better understanding about the racialization of Arabs, Muslims and Jews alike. Indeed, while all three books restrict their focus to anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias, they prompt readers to consider the persecution of multiple communities.

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Meghana V. Nayak is assistant professor of political science at Pace University, New York City.

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