Dispossession(S) and Judith Butler's ethics of humanization

Abstract

This paper takes up the question of the "human" as Butler discusses this in its relation to "intelligibility," "critique," "the opacity of the subject" and "dispossession." I believe that Butler's perspective helps us not only to understand the terms of dehumanization but also offers ways of conceptualizing a more humane world. I argue that a major concern for Butler is a sort of humanism arising from the awareness of the primordial relationality of our existence and of our lives, which we pursue in a primary sociality as interdependent embodied beings.