The quote of the week for this week (though it’s only Thursday) ushers in the publication of Judith Butler’s first book on gender in a decade: Who’s Afraid of Gender? Readers and listeners of my work on the apparatus of disability recognize how formative Butler’s claims about the performativity of gender and nonjuridical forms of power have been for the development of the analytical and conceptual framework of this work. In particular, the importance of Butler’s claims about gender, power, and performativity (especially when augmented with Foucault’s) for my own analyses of the historical and cultural specificity of disability are most evident in the genealogy of gender that I elaborate in “On the Government of Disability,” which can be found here.

Indeed, it would be difficult to overstate the vital role that Butler’s work on gender has played for the development of current philosophical analyses of gender (and sex), though some (most?) “analytic” feminist philosophers continue to minimize and dismiss Butler’s influence within the discipline, downplaying the philosophical import of their work. Nevertheless, Butler is unquestionably first and foremost a philosopher. In a recent interview, Butler, addressing the rising tide of transphobic right-wing fascism and the backlash that they expect from the publication of the latest book, situated themself* amongst philosophers:

I think people have every right to be angry, but sometimes the calm exposition helps you see more clearly why we need to be angry. But calm exposition isn’t performed in the sense of an act on my part, it’s always been my way. I turned to philosophy as a very young person. It gave me a calm discourse. Let’s read about the passions of Spinoza, then maybe I’ll understand my passions! Philosophy for me has always been a way of ordering things. That’s my self-soothing, or my way of slowing things down, making things less dramatic so that I can see. And especially with feminists, and people on the left – we need to be in an alliance here. Screaming at someone and then telling them they need to be in an alliance with me, that’s probably not so effective. And I want them to change. I want them to wake up.

*Note: this interview demonstrates that Butler has yet to fully appreciate the impact of ableist speech that they employ to underscore their remarks.