Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (Radical Thinkers)

underneath all the vocabulary the actual thinking backing her opinions, at least 20% of the way through the book, is surprisingly mediocre. This will be a gratifying read for 20 year old undergraduates but if you have any background combining philosophy with either history or military history you won't like this book. She comes across as naive and overstated in most of her opinions.As with several of her books, if you've actually read the authors she refers to and quotes, its hard not to come away with the conclusion that she wrote this book to satisfy a publishing requirement pressed down by the university she's working for.

Arrived as expected. Good read.

Her writing style is dry but the topics are timely in this climate of uncertainty.

Some very liberal rhetoric here, but another great work by Butler.

Warfare has become part of the fictive character designations that can be imposed like Plato's demography for a society that functions with rulers and those who are ruled, but Judith Butler prefers to think of all the people involved. Many have precarious lives whether we expect to defend them or consider them a population center filled with human shields that will die of weapons that match the strategic thinking of the rulers. I find it difficult to read the abstract nature of reasoning in this context. My life included some military training and ground combat operations that were almost winding down for draftees like me, as the number of American bodies declined while I was serving, but the sanctification rituals were tough if the biggest threat was the stupidity of your peers.There is an extremely perverse praise of irony when Judith Butler mentions Hegel as a thinker she is perversely attracted to for insight into society's way of coming out on top in the individual subjection racket. People being set up illustrate a meaning of framing. I was born with a spleen of ill humor, or I would not have read so much in my life.

This is not Butler's best book. It is,however, one of the more interesting books she's written. But theoretically it is kind of weak. She argues that we have a responsibility not to life as such (because people dying is a part of life); but rather our responsibility is to sustain the conditions which allow life to flourish. The problem is she doesn't define 'flourish', so all her talk about philosophy informing social policy is hollow. The other problem is she doesn't connect the dots: if our responsibility is to sustain the conditions which allow life to flourish, and we acknowledge that present conditions don't do that, then don't we also have a responsibility to change our conditions? She shies away from this issue. The other problem is her notion of 'frames' -- this is conceptually retrograde. D&G's concept of abstract machine + assemblage is a much more efficient concept.

Butler continues her profound reflections in Precarious Life, offering insightful analyses of torture, photography, and the probem of mourning in the context of war. It is not just about media analysis of war, but about the question of recognition, survival, destructiveness, and non-violence

An insightful and challenging read. Used it for my university philosophy unit and got a very high mark! Well worth the read.

私たちにとって、命は平等に尊いものではありません。ある命は守られるべきで、その他はそうでない。でも誰が何のためにそれを決めるのか、何が私たちのその判断の根拠になっているのか。著者の問いかけはそこから始まります。各章はアメリカと同盟国によるイラク侵攻、グァンタナモの囚人によってコップに刻まれた詩やアブグレイブの凄惨な写真とメディアの関係についてや、「自由」や「寛容」といった先進国の価値観がどのように移民（主にムスリム）を圧迫する手段として使われているか、といった考察でなっています。できる限り根本的なところから考え、偽の二者択一を破っていこうとするバトラーの手法は「ジェンダー・トラブル」から一貫しています。「ジェンダー・トラブル」が読みにくい、と言う人は、このあたりのバトラーから入ってもいいのではないでしょうか（「ジェンダー・トラブル」の難しさを批判する人には、個人的には、じゃあカントの「純粋理性批判」は読みやすいか、と反論したいのですが）。彼女はチョムスキーやフィンケルシュタインと並んで、イスラエルのパレスティナ政策を批判する有力なユダヤ人知識人であることも、ここに付け加えておきます。