{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","id":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","uuid":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","normalized_title":"democracyandotherneoliberalfantasiescommunicativecapitalismandleftpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":229,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Democracy%20and%20Other%20Neoliberal%20Fantasies%20Communicative%20Capitalism%20and%20Left%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/search"},"page":{"printed_page":129,"pdf_page":139,"physical_index":139,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"2a395aaca3391811820f3fdf7f9fff3aa4499e3df3571b283998c4d1cf744fad"},"chapter":"Comunicative Capitalism & Left Politics","content":"This is particularly true with respect to Butler's argument against former Harvard president Lawrence Summers's charge that criticism of Israel is efectively anti-Semitic. For rather than resignifying that charge and identity, rather than noting the ways that Summers's speech might misfire, might open up opportunities for insurrection, rather than attending to the repetitions and citations enabling Summers's speech, as one might expect from her arguments in Excitable Speech, Butler criticizes Summers for identifying Israel with the Jewish people and for attempting to stifle critical debate $\\left( P L , \\mathfrak { m } , \\mathfrak { n } 2 6 \\right)$ . I agree with Butler's criticisms. Yet I am surprised she attributes to Summers's words \"a chilg efect on political discourse\" that stokes \"the fear that to criticize Israel during this time is to expose oneself to the charge of anti-Semitism\" $\\left( P L , \\ 1 0 2 \\right)$ . Butler imbues Summers's speech with the very sovereignty she criticizes critical legal studies scholars for attributing to hate speech (is this a fantasy of sovereign return occasioned by the loss of U.S. sovereignty on $9 / 1 1 ? )$ . Her arguments in Excitable Speech tell us we should recognize how Summers's words do not have the power to determine the limits of what can and cannot be said.\n\nButler's move away from resignification unfolds against a refinig ofher account of the relationship of governmentality and sovereignty. Whereas her concern in Excitable Speech is with the encroachment of law via the fantasy of a sovereign power attributed to speech, in Precarious Life she attends to the way law's suspension itself produces sovereignty. In this later book, sovereignty appears where law is not. Sovereignty is unbounded by law, \"outside the law;' in excess of law $( P L , { \\mathfrak { s } } 1 )$ . Butler continues to- assert that governmentality operates through law as a \"set of tactics\" $( P L , _ { 5 ^ { 2 } } )$ . Yet she focuses on sovereignty's \"resurgence within the field of governmentality\" $\\left( P L , \\ _ { 5 3 } \\right)$ . She argues that in this new formation, sovereignty is exercised through acts that ''suspend and limt the jurisdiction of law itself\" $( P L , \\ 5 3 )$ . So while Excitable Speech analyzes the way a fantasy of sovereign power accompanies extensions of the law, Precarious $L i f e$ confronts situations wherein an anachronistic sovereignty is \"reintroduced in the very acts by which the state suspends law, or contorts law to its own uses\" $( P L , { \\mathfrak { s } } 4 )$ . In each case, the resurgence of sovereignty is compensatotyj compensating for sovereignty's loss $( P L , { \\mathfrak { s } } 6 )$\n\nThe cases difer insofar as resignification is a contestory practice opposed to sovereignty in Excitable Speech and an aspect of the very operation of sovereignty in Precarious Life. In the earlier book, Butler treats resignification as a practice external to law} a practice she links to the subversion of authority. In the later one, resignification is figured as a means of consolidating authority as sovereign power. Thus, discussing U.S. assertions that it treats the prisoners held in the camp at Guantanamo \"humanely\" and in a way consistent with the Geneva Conventions, Butler writes: \"When the U.S. says, then, that it is treating these prisoners humanely, it uses the word in its own way and for its own purpose, but it does not accept that the Geneva Accords stipulate how the term might legitimately be applied. In efect, it takes the word back from the accords at the very moment that it claims to be acting consistently with the accords. In the moment that it claims to be acting consistently with the accords, the U.S. efectively maintains that the accords have no power over it\" (PL, 82). As it takes the word back and applies it in its own fashion, the United States resignifes \"humanely,\" denying the Geneva Accords the power to determine the condition of the term's use. In so doing, the United States asserts its singular sovereignty over and against international norms.\n\nETHI CS\n\n129","previous_page":128,"next_page":130}