書介part I
《憂鬱的文化政治》的跨界視野，讓憂鬱重新解放。
這裡沒有對憂鬱的定論，沒有對理論的定論，也沒有更燦爛的憂鬱，更沒有一定要走向光明未來的答案。哀悼殘存 / 持續，在拒絕結束的憂鬱裡，開啟失落的意義。
給精神病患者：愛密麗．馬汀的〈我現在宣布，你是個躁鬱症患者〉，讓精神病院的的喘息與腳步聲可以被聽見，讓田野筆記中的人告訴你他們服藥與看診的故事。
給失語的詩人：麥克思．潘斯基〈憂鬱的辯證．序〉告訴你怎麼珍惜荒蕪的話。
給運動分子：海澀．愛〈拒絕的政治〉會告訴你為什麼總有人不陽光，走不出去，不敢參加遊行。
給左派與懷疑左派的人：溫蒂．布朗的〈抗拒左派憂鬱〉，以憂鬱症作為一種政治修辭，詮釋了左派的情感結構。
給期待快樂的人：在嘆逝與追憶之外，凱莉．漢彌爾頓在〈快樂的回憶〉裡重讀了但丁的話，「最巨大的悲傷，莫過於在悲慘中回想起快樂的時光」。
給不想不分的女同志：海澀．愛〈壞毀的身分認同〉裡有最驕傲、最不堪、最不被容許、最不應該被忘記的身分記憶。
給總覺得自己理論讀得太少的人：伊芙．可索夫斯基．賽菊蔻的〈梅蘭尼．克萊茵與情感造成的差異〉，從她小時候一個無法買到的大娃娃談克萊茵，讓理論成為一種互相了解的溫柔語意。
給groupies：愛密麗．馬汀的〈躁鬱簡史〉會告訴你為什麼我們會隨著樂團吶喊。
給當代的好孩子們：這個世紀要當活潑、快樂的小朋友才能上電視，能夠開朗、大方才會推甄得上不會讓爸爸媽媽失望的學校，克里斯多夫．連恩的〈不能再靦腆了〉會告訴你害羞是怎麼不見的。
給失落的人：朱帝斯．巴特勒在〈失去之後，然後怎樣？〉從歷史的尖叫聲裡告訴你哀悼的意義。
書介part II
憂鬱（症）的討論，常溯及佛洛依德的〈憂鬱與哀悼〉，在早期的精神分析中，哀悼是對失落的摯愛，或對某種抽象體所經歷的一種「成功」的心理過程，而憂鬱症則是這種轉化的失敗；但晚近討論這些語詞，已走向非單純的個人性或精神分析脈絡，《憂鬱的文化政治》主張哀悼、憂鬱症、懷舊、哀感、創傷、沮喪，不再只是一種失敗性的病態，憂鬱（症）或憂鬱書寫，其實是政治的──「情感」不只是精神分析論述處理的內容，而是一種社會、政治、法律、美學關係的建構，同時也漸漸形成一種情感政治。
伍德堯和大衛．卡贊堅在〈哀悼殘存 / 持續〉（“Mourning Remains”）所言：「失落」是一種「理論性的虛構」，“remains”不只是一種殘留，只是剩下的、得丟掉的殘渣般的過去，哀悼歷經著歷史、文化的政治性過程，而憂鬱具有它自己的意義。
當代人類學家愛密麗．馬汀《雙極探險》其中的〈躁鬱簡史〉，將藝術品味、流行文化視為一分析對象，敘述躁狂在美國如何成為一種病癥，以及躁狂如何成為當代被擁戴的文化現象。〈躁鬱簡史〉提到了許多中文讀者所熟悉的藝術家，紀德、梵谷、馬勒、普拉絲……在1980年代以後，他們因為憂鬱與躁狂而被認證為更「真誠」、「真實」的藝術家──憂鬱症的建構與行銷並不只建立在藥廠與醫院的消費關係，在一個躁狂歷史脈絡中，憂鬱被戴上花冠，輕躁狂是最受享譽的成功人格，這讓人看不清憂鬱所帶來的難捱與苦痛。
而愛密麗．馬汀在她的另一篇文章〈我現在宣布，你是個躁鬱症患者〉中，做了令人敬佩與感動的田野，她記錄了精神病院中的八個故事，所謂的譫妄、躁狂、情緒週期、思考障礙……等等病徵，是怎麼真實地發生在醫生與病人之間的權力關係，她批判性地讓讀者知道「病」是怎麼被宣稱、運作。而文中提到的藥物，全部都是台灣的藥單上看得見的，這份田野的中文化非常重要，它提供了病例書寫的中文視野，更拓寬了服用這些藥物的在地讀者能夠說出自己感受的可能性。
引爆在地的閱讀意義一直是《憂鬱的文化政治》的初衷。克里斯多夫．連恩的〈不能再靦腆了〉收於他的《害羞》一書，除了甫發行的英文版，在三、四年內間已譯有日文、韓文、法文等不同版本。希望連恩的作品第一次的中文化，能夠讓台灣很少被討論的「害羞」爭取一些發言空間。文中論述的是「害羞」、「靦腆」等詞彙所形容的人格特質，漸漸地在1980年代成為了一種需要被定名與治療的疾病。扭捏、內向、古怪、拘謹等等與害羞相關的氣質，漸漸成為了「社交恐懼症」、「逃避型人格障礙」等等病徵。「害羞」的修辭內涵與其所指徹底的轉化了，面對「社交焦慮」的疾病與威脅，只能夠「不再靦腆」。
盡力想讓「憂鬱」能展現出最大張力，《憂鬱的文化政治》選譯了溫蒂．布朗的〈抗拒左派憂鬱〉，布朗以「憂鬱症」作為一種政治修辭，她所批評的左派，總眷戀著過去，總凝視著過往的政治依附，不願意卸下悲傷，也不憧憬復元，於是自戀 / 戀物的憂鬱症結構，讓政治只能朝向一種永遠失落的哀痛；抱緊過去的耽溺慾望，超越了任何現今對於政治動員、結盟，或是轉變的投資的可能性。
當代最重要的理論家之一朱帝斯．巴特勒，她在〈失去之後，然後怎樣？〉一文，鄭重地面對憂鬱，以哀悼的特殊位置，回應了「時間」與「歷史」的複雜性，她認為正是在「失去」裡，銘刻了所受的磨難、暴力、汙名，而早期精神分析中「癱瘓業已麻木」的狀態，其實正賦予了歷史的新的創造性，哀悼可以賦予主體戰鬥力、能動性。哀悼的暴露與「由內翻外」，正是她「然後怎樣？」的問題，哀悼的「時間」、「歷史」，就是身體性地、肉體地與物質相遇的政治。
《憂鬱的文化政治》透過麥克思．潘斯基在〈憂鬱的辯證．序〉試圖延伸對憂鬱書寫的關注，在台灣已經擁有了中文化的傅柯關於「自反性語言」的思想資源，提供了許多關於沈默、空白的話語的政治，而克里斯德瓦的《黑太陽》可以說是做了一種失語的重要標誌，她試著將語言的解構與作者的情感狀態做出連結，《黑太陽》裡誠懇的告訴讀者，書寫憂鬱的意義，正是因為遭受憂鬱折磨的人所書寫的每一個文字都是來自憂鬱──而麥克思．潘斯基接著說，這是「以書寫填滿了『蒼白的倦怠』，那空白的一頁」。麥克思．潘斯基藉班雅明對歷史主義者的批判，對憂鬱書寫作出了進一步的解釋，他認為正是憂鬱書寫可以抵抗這收編的歷史體系，而「那空白的一頁」就是憂鬱書寫。凱莉．漢彌爾頓在〈快樂的回憶〉一文裡圍繞著雷納多．阿里納斯的自傳《在夜幕降臨前》展開分析，她強調了「快樂」在政治中如何地得來不易，更告訴讀者書寫「快樂」背後的重要與艱難。「快樂的政治」絕非是企圖擦拭掉壓迫與悲傷的記憶，也不是要把所有的事都看成快樂，更不可能是對悲傷與憂鬱的「超克」或是「放手」。〈憂鬱的辯證．序〉與〈快樂的回憶〉分別回應了中文語境裡對「失語」的寫作語言狀態的認知，以及對文學史中「嘆逝」的追憶傳統，企圖讓文學中的憂鬱能夠更深的問題化。
瑞克里芙．霍爾的《寂寞之井》在英語世界有著曖昧性的崇高地位，它既是最被廣泛閱讀的同志文本，同時也是讓拉子困擾、憎恨的作品。書中主角史蒂芬太過時、太逕渭分明的陽剛認同，在訴求流動、進步、拋下悲情的當代論述中，實在太不政治正確，並且滿溢的絕望、自恨，讓理論家們想要從中找正面的可能性都無法辦到。在〈壞毀的身分認同〉裡，海澀．愛認為史蒂芬之所以受爭議，正因為她受苦、自厭、愛的挫敗與絕望，都恰恰為近代同志形象的相反典型，她批判性認為越是閃避、跳躍、轉化甚至是誤讀史蒂芬的困境，反而越顯示出造就同志困境的社會規範的有效性；但正是要回頭看待自身的厭惡、羞慚又難以切割的拉鋸，才有可能接納並且開始處理酷兒歷史的艱難性。〈拒絕的政治〉裡，海澀．愛延續了她的關懷，把命題放在美國酷兒運動裡常被拒絕、抹拭的壞情感。她認為情感裡不論好的與壞的，兩者都構成了運動的可能；她追認這些沮喪、不正確的情感，試圖為這幾乎是羞恥的秘密的長遠歷史作些辯護。雖然這些壞情感看似根本就是對行動無益，更甚者就任何傳統意義上的能動性而言，它們會使得那些如此感受的人喪失資格。但海澀．愛的訴求，正是期待一種政治能動性的視野，而它所處理的政治性，是可以將所經歷的壞情感，納入希望修復的傷害之中；因為，能夠認可這些苦難的存在，並藉此發展出的相關論述，才是能夠處理酷兒經驗的運動。
當代酷兒與女性主義運動中重要的推動者伊芙．可索夫斯基．賽菊蔻，在逝世前完成了〈梅蘭尼．克萊茵與情感造成的差異〉，她在罹患乳癌多年後，想到了從年幼時就經常幻想能夠抱著的、卻一直沒能買到的大娃娃，並且以這個大娃娃替克萊茵的理論做了一個巧妙、溫暖而厚實的譬喻。賽菊蔻從情感層面來理解理論，直接靠近讀者的真實人生，在「抑鬱型位態」的概念中，她看見「憂鬱」能動性與創造力的可能，在「妄想型—分裂型位態」中，她充滿同理心地試圖解釋1980、90年代初期面對愛滋恐懼時，酷兒理論所衍發出來的動能，及其後續發展的疲態及限制，她的文字並不是為了批判運動路線的正確與否，更像是期盼著讓參與運動的人可以減少一些生活中的困頓與煎熬。在這篇文章中讀到的是賽菊寇理解理論的溫暖、寬大的大格局，雖然她小時候沒有買到合意的大娃娃，但閱讀她的文字，正如抱著一個她給讀者的大娃娃。
希望《憂鬱的文化政治》也會是讀者手中的棉花糖與大娃娃，希望在這本書的盡頭，不論是不是藥效的副作用，不論酒精與政治正確的比例，不論我們的身體毀壞與不宜人居的程度，我們都可以靠近一點。

Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world.

In "Bodies That Matter," Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in "Gender" "Trouble," Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex" from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She offers a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in "Gender Trouble" and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory.

This classic work by one of the most important philosophers and critics of our time charts the genesis and trajectory of the desiring subject from Hegel's formulation in Phenomenology of Spirit to its appropriation by Kojeve, Hyppolite, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze, and Foucault. Judith Butler plots the French reception of Hegel and the successive challenges waged against his metaphysics and view of the subject, all while revealing ambiguities within his position. The result is a sophisticated reconsideration of the post-Hegelian tradition that has predominated in modern French thought, and her study remains a provocative and timely intervention in contemporary debates over the unconscious, the powers of subjection, and the subject.

Undoing Gender constitutes Judith Butler's recent reflections on gender and sexuality, focusing on new kinship, psychoanalysis and the incest taboo, transgender, intersex, diagnostic categories, social violence, and the tasks of social transformation. In terms that draw from feminist and queer theory, Butler considers the norms that govern--and fail to govern--gender and sexuality as they relate to the constraints on recognizable personhood. The book constitutes a reconsideration of her earlier view on gender performativity from Gender Trouble. In this work, the critique of gender norms is clearly situated within the framework of human persistence and survival. And to "do" one's gender in certain ways sometimes implies "undoing" dominant notions of personhood. She writes about the "New Gender Politics" that has emerged in recent years, a combination of movements concerned with transgender, transsexuality, intersex, and their complex relations to feminist and queer theory.

In this volume, four leading thinkers of our times confront the paradoxes and dilemmas attending the supposed stand-off between Islam and liberal democratic values. Taking the controversial Danish cartoons of Mohammad as a point of departure, Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood inquire into the evaluative frameworks at stake in understanding the conflicts between blasphemy and free speech, between religious taboos and freedoms of thought and expression, and between secular and religious world views. Is the language of the law an adequate mechanism for the adjudication of such conflicts? What other modes of discourse are available for the navigation of such differences in multicultural and multi-religious societies? What is the role of critique in such an enterprise? These are among the pressing questions this volume addresses.

The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does& mdash;or should& mdash;religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while Jürgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.

This classic work by one of the most important philosophers and critics of our time charts the genesis and trajectory of the desiring subject from Hegel's formulation in Phenomenology of Spirit to its appropriation by Kojeve, Hyppolite, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze, and Foucault. Judith Butler plots the French reception of Hegel and the successive challenges waged against his metaphysics and view of the subject, all while revealing ambiguities within his position. The result is a sophisticated reconsideration of the post-Hegelian tradition that has predominated in modern French thought, and her study remains a provocative and timely intervention in contemporary debates over the unconscious, the powers of subjection, and the subject.

"For the most part, feminist theory has assumed that there is some existing identity, understood through the category of women, who not only initiates feminist interests and goals within discourse, but constitutes the subject for whom political representation is pursued."

What is the contemporary legacy of Gramsci's notion of Hegemony? How can universality be reformulated now that its spurious versions have been so thoroughly criticized? In this ground-breaking project, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek engage in a dialogue on central questions of contemporary philosophy and politics. Their essays, organized as separate contributions that respond to one another, range over the Hegelian legacy in contemporary critical theory, the theoretical dilemmas of multiculturalism, the universalism- versus-particularism debate, the strategies of the Left in a globalized economy, and the relative merits of post-structumalism and Lacanian psychoanalysis for a critical social theory. While the rigour and intelligence with which these writers approach their work is formidable, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality benefits additionally from their clear sense of energy and enjoyment in a revealing and often unpredictable exchange.

Profound exploration of the current wars, looking at violence, gender and different forms of resistance.In Frames of War, Judith Butler explores the media’s portrayal of state violence, a process integral to the way in which the West wages modern war. This portrayal has saturated our understanding of human life, and has led to the exploitation and abandonment of whole peoples, who are cast as existential threats rather than as living populations in need of protection. These people are framed as already lost, to imprisonment, unemployment and starvation, and can easily be dismissed. In the twisted logic that rationalizes their deaths, the loss of such populations is deemed necessary to protect the lives of 'the living.' This disparity, Butler argues, has profound implications for why and when we feel horror, outrage, guilt, loss and righteous indifference, both in the context of war and, increasingly, everyday life. This book discerns the resistance to the frames of war in the context of the images from Abu Ghraib, the poetry from Guantanamo, recent European policy on immigration and Islam, and debates on normativity and non-violence. In this urgent response to ever more dominant methods of coercion, violence and racism, Butler calls for a re-conceptualization of the Left, one that brokers cultural difference and cultivates resistance to the illegitimate and arbitrary effects of state violence and its vicissitudes.

What does it mean to lead a moral life?In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practice-one responsive to the need for critical autonomy and grounded in a new sense of the human subject.Butler takes as her starting point one's ability to answer the questions What have I done?and What ought I to do?She shows that these question can be answered only by asking a prior question, Who is this 'I' who is under an obligation to give an account of itself and to act in certain ways?Because I find that I cannot give an account of myself without accounting for the social conditions under which I emerge, ethical reflection requires a turn to social theory.In three powerfully crafted and lucidly written chapters, Butler demonstrates how difficult it is to give an account of oneself, and how this lack of self-transparency and narratibility is crucial to an ethical understanding of the human. In brilliant dialogue with Adorno, Levinas, Foucault, and other thinkers, she eloquently argues the limits, possibilities, and dangers of contemporary ethical thought.Butler offers a critique of the moral self, arguing that the transparent, rational, and continuous ethical subject is an impossible construct that seeks to deny the specificity of what it is to be human. We can know ourselves only incompletely, and only in relation to a broader social world that has always preceded us and already shaped us in ways we cannot grasp. If inevitably we are partially opaque to ourselves, how can giving an account of ourselves define the ethical act? And doesn't an ethical system that holds us impossibly accountable for full self-knowledge and self-consistency inflict a kind of psychic violence, leading to a culture of self-beratement and cruelty? How does the turn to social theory offer us a chance to understand the specifically social character of our own unknowingness about ourselves?In this invaluable book, by recasting ethics as a project in which being ethical means becoming critical of norms under which we are asked to act, but which we can never fully choose, Butler illuminates what it means for us as fallible creaturesto create and share an ethics of vulnerability, humility, and ethical responsiveness. Judtith Butler is the Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. The most recent of her books are Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence and Undoing Gender.

This profound appraisal of post-9/11 America considers the conditions of heightened vulnerability and aggression that followed from the attack on the US, and US retaliation. Judith Butler critiques the use of violence that has emerged as a response to loss, and argues that the dislocation of first-world privilege offers instead a chance to imagine a world in which that violence might be minimized and in which interdependency becomes acknowledged as the basis for a global political community. Butler considers the means by which some lives become grief-worthy, while others are perceived as undeserving of grief or even incomprehensible as lives. She discusses the political implications of sovereignty in light of the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. She argues against the anti-intellectual current of contemporary US patriotism and the power of censorship during times of war. Finally, she takes on the question of when and why anti-semitism is leveled as a charge against those who voice criticisms of the Israeli state. She counters that we have a responsibility to speak out against both Israeli injustices and anti-semitism, and argues against the rhetorical use of the charge of anti-semitism to quell public debate.

The celebrated author of Gender Trouble here redefines Antigone´s legacy, recovering her revolutionary significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and sexual politics. Butler´s new interpretation does nothing less than reconceptualize the incest taboo in relation to kinship -and open up the concept of kinship to cultural change. Antigone, the renowned insurgent from Sophocles´s Oedipus, has long been a feminist icon of defiance. But what has remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power that she opposes. Antigone proves to be a more ambivalent figure for feminism than has been acknowledged, since the form of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Butler argues that Antigone represents a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. Moreover, Antigone shows how the constraints of normative kinship unfairly decide what will and will not be a livable life. Butler explores the meaning of Antigone, wondering what forms of kinship might have allowed her to live. Along the way, she considers the works of such philosophers as Hegel, Lacan, and Irigaray. How, she asks, would psychoanalysis have been different if it had taken Antigone -the "postoedipal" subject -rather than Oedipus as its point of departure? If the incest taboo is reconceived so that it does not mandate heterosexuality as its solution, what forms of sexual alliance and new kinship might be acknowledged as a result? The book relates the courageous deeds of Antigone to the claims made by those whose relations are still not honored as those of proper kinship, showing how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be.

This now classic work by one of the most important philosophers and critics of our time charts the trajectory of desire and its genesis from Hegel's formulation in Phenomenology of Spirit through its appropriation by Kojeve, Hyppolite, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze, and Foucault, presenting how French reception of Hegel posed successive challenges to his metaphysics and view of the subject and revealed ambiguities within his position. Subjects of Desire provides a sophisticated account of the post-Hegelian tradition that has predominated in modern France and remains timely in thinking about contemporary debates concerning desire, the unconscious, subjection, and the subject.

As a form of power, subjection is paradoxical. To be dominated by a power external to oneself is a familiar and agonizing form power takes. To find, however, that what "one" is, one's very formation as a subject, is dependent upon that very power is quite another. If, following Foucault, we understand power as "forming" the subject as well, it provides the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire. Power is not simply what we depend on for our existence but that which forms reflexivity as well. Drawing upon Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, and Althusser, this challenging and lucid work offers a theory of subject formation that illuminates as ambivalent the psychic effects of social power. If we take Hegel and Nietzsche seriously, then the "inner life" of consciousness and, indeed, of conscience, not only is fabricated by power, but becomes one of the ways in which power is anchored in subjectivity. The author considers the way in which psychic life is generated by the social operation of power, and how that social operation of power is concealed and fortified by the psyche that it produces. Power is no longer understood to be "internalized" by an existing subject, but the subject is spawned as an ambivalent effect of power, one that is staged through the operation of conscience. To claim that power fabricates the psyche is also to claim that there is a fictional and fabricated quality to the psyche. The figure of a psyche that "turns against itself" is crucial to this study, and offers an alternative to describing power as "internalized." Although most readers of Foucault eschew psychoanalytic theory, and most thinkers of the psyche eschew Foucault, the author seeks to theorize this ambivalent relation between the social and the psychic as one of the most dynamic and difficult effects of power. This work combines social theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis in novel ways, offering a more sustained analysis of the theory of subject formation implicit in such other works of the author as "Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" "and" Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity."

The celebrated author of Gender Trouble here redefines Antigone's legacy, recovering her revolutionary significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and sexual politics. Butler's new interpretation does nothing less than reconceptualize the incest taboo in relation to kinship -- and open up the concept of kinship to cultural change. Antigone, the renowned insurgent from Sophocles's Oedipus, has long been a feminist icon of defiance. But what has remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power that she opposes. Antigone proves to be a more ambivalent figure for feminism than has been acknowledged, since the form of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Butler argues that Antigone represents a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. Moreover, Antigone shows how the constraints of normative kinship unfairly decide what will and will not be a livable life. Butler explores the meaning of Antigone, wondering what forms of kinship might have allowed her to live. Along the way, she considers the works of such philosophers as Hegel, Lacan, and Irigaray. How, she asks, would psychoanalysis have been different if it had taken Antigone -- the "postoedipal" subject -- rather than Oedipus as its point of departure? If the incest taboo is reconceived so that it does not mandate heterosexuality as its solution, what forms of sexual alliance and new kinship might be acknowledged as a result? The book relates the courageous deeds of Antigone to the claims made by those whose relations are still not honored as those of proper kinship, showing how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be.

What does it mean to lead a moral life?In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practice-one responsive to the need for critical autonomy and grounded in a new sense of the human subject.Butler takes as her starting point one's ability to answer the questions What have I done?and What ought I to do?She shows that these question can be answered only by asking a prior question, Who is this 'I' who is under an obligation to give an account of itself and to act in certain ways?Because I find that I cannot give an account of myself without accounting for the social conditions under which I emerge, ethical reflection requires a turn to social theory.In three powerfully crafted and lucidly written chapters, Butler demonstrates how difficult it is to give an account of oneself, and how this lack of self-transparency and narratibility is crucial to an ethical understanding of the human. In brilliant dialogue with Adorno, Levinas, Foucault, and other thinkers, she eloquently argues the limits, possibilities, and dangers of contemporary ethical thought.Butler offers a critique of the moral self, arguing that the transparent, rational, and continuous ethical subject is an impossible construct that seeks to deny the specificity of what it is to be human. We can know ourselves only incompletely, and only in relation to a broader social world that has always preceded us and already shaped us in ways we cannot grasp. If inevitably we are partially opaque to ourselves, how can giving an account of ourselves define the ethical act? And doesn't an ethical system that holds us impossibly accountable for full self-knowledge and self-consistency inflict a kind of psychic violence, leading to a culture of self-beratement and cruelty? How does the turn to social theory offer us a chance to understand the specifically social character of our own unknowingness about ourselves?In this invaluable book, by recasting ethics as a project in which being ethical means becoming critical of norms under which we are asked to act, but which we can never fully choose, Butler illuminates what it means for us as fallible creaturesto create and share an ethics of vulnerability, humility, and ethical responsiveness. Judtith Butler is the Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. The most recent of her books are Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence and Undoing Gender.