Having and Being Judith Butler

I had high hopes for this book. Iconic critical theorist and public intellectual Judith Butler teaming up with exciting young feminist theorist Athena Athanasiou to work towards an understanding of dispossession beyond the logic of possession. That is, to seek an understanding of, and take a normative stance in relation to urgent political issues of dispossession (such as forced migration, homelessness, foreclosures, and extreme disparities in wealth) without resorting to an argument that rests on a counterclaim to possession of whatever is ‘lost’. This is an excellent and worthwhile project, necessary for the progress of debates on property that move past liberal solutions of redistribution, and helpful in thinking through issues of settler colonialism and seemingly incommensurable competing claims to the same areas of land. The book also promised engagements with recent uprisings from Cairo to Zuccotti Park in a discussion of the politics of street protest