Book Review: JEAN-LUC NANCY, The Creation of the World or Globalization. Translated by François Raffoul and David Pettigrew. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007, ISBN 978—0791470268, $16.95 (hbk)
| Date | 01 September 2008 |
| Published date | 01 September 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639080170030707 |
| Author | Lilian Moncrieff |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
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Loizidou should be applauded for following Butler’s path, and her work should be
celebrated for bringing Butler’s inquiries to CLS – for reading Butler’s work produc-
tively as an important critique of law. This volume will be required reading for anyone
interested in Butler and CLS and for most readers of CLS literature more broadly.
Yet the process of translation should also come with a warning, since an important gap
must remain between the sovereign subjects of law and Butler’s performative subjects.
Loizidou makes a very similar point herself when she criticizes Nussbaum for preserv-
ing the sovereignty of law at the expense of those others whom Nussbaum would
casually render as victims. She calls Nussbaum to task precisely for presenting, ‘in the
mode of knowability[,] what the Other needs or desires’ (p. 165). Yet, in trying to
make Butler speak clearly to the law, Loizidou occasionally presents what ‘we’ need
or desire in this same mode. In translating Butler to the field of CLS (and perhaps to
others) it proves crucial not to lose sight of one of her most important insights: the
livable life is exactly that which cannot be presumed.
REFERENCES
Armour, Ellen and Susan St. Ville (2006) Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Breen, Margaret Sonser and Warren J. Blumenfeld (eds) (2005) Butler Matters: Judith
Butler’s Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies. London: Ashgate.
Butler, Judith (1999 [1990]) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
London and New York: Routledge.
Butler, Judith (2004) Undoing Gender. London and New York: Routledge.
Carver, Terrell and Samuel A. Chambers (eds) (2007) Judith Butler’s Precarious Politics:
Critical Encounters. New York and London: Routledge.
Chambers, Samuel A. and Terrell Carver (2007) Judith Butler and Political Theory:
Troubling Politics. New York and London: Routledge.
Davies, Bronwyn (ed.) (2007) Judith Butler in Conversation: Analyzing the...
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