Giving an Account of Oneself

Judith Butler’s argument is complex, but it is developed in a lucid and engaging style. Above all, the book is about the things that matter. Using a range of sources, including Adorno, Levinas, and Foucault, Butler undertakes an exercise in moral philosophy in “a contemporary social frame” meaning “that moral questions not only emerge in the context of social relations, but that the form these questions take changes according to context”.Key themes include - this is a process, we cannot do it alone, it depends on others, hence the importance of the theme of relationality. And, in this process, we must be responsible for telling the truth about ourselves. In simple terms then, 'Giving an Account of Oneself' is about living an ethical life in-community. Moreover, being ethical and being human go together. Of course, Butler recognizes the task of becoming human is complex. The key to understanding this complexity, however, is the concept of 'subject formation'. In other words, how we have been formed, with all its flaws, is the key to understanding how we are re-formed.It is a brilliant book. Maybe her best. In the process, academic integrity is demonstrated as she critiques her work (e.g. The Psychic Life of Power) and the work of revered others, even Foucault.Steven Ogden, Charles Sturt University, author “The Church, Authority, and Foucault”

Bought this product to enhance my reading in a course I took on Butler. The book arrived in a timely manner. The book's description was accurate in the profile provided.

Kown yourself is the fundamental stance that must be taken in any kind of research. Its possibly the hardest to give an account of that self if there is no reflexivity of the author/researcher's positioning.

Butler is a great philosopher. Her writing is clear and pedagogical, regardless of what they say. And her ethical outlook is the kind of outlook that we need today.

This book is terrific! I recomend it to anyone familiar with Butler's work (though it is very distinct from much of her older work) or for anyone who thinks it looks even the slightest bit interesting. Even if you disagree with Butler, the book won't disappoint!

This is really a good read. It is a very challenging read, but it is also extremely relevant and rewarding. I highly recommend this book.

At the heart of Judith Butler’s complex and pathbreaking reflections on gender has always been a concern with simply making the world a better place. A place at once more hospitable and more challenging than it has been, less exclusionary and less indifferent than it is. A concern, in other words, with ethics. In Giving an Account of Oneself, Butler opens the question of the very possibility of ethics; what kind of subject could be an ethical subject? What are the sorts of conditions by which we can act ethically in the world? In what manner can one be held to be accountable, and to give an account of oneself?Against conceptions of subjectivity which hold that only subjects in full control of their wills and destinies can be responsible - and hence ethical - Butler argues, following in the footsteps of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean Laplanche, that responsibility flows only from the implication of the self in an order that rather dispossess the self of mastery; that our entwinement with forces and powers not (entirely) of our own making is in fact the very condition of our being responsible.Liberal ears will no doubt bleed at the very idea, but Butler’s arguments are both immaculately conceived and powerfully conveyed. Central to Butler’s project is the concern with the very ‘appropriability’ of ethics to living beings. How can we, as human beings, cultivate a living relation to the ethical ideals we hold so dear? What sorts of violence follows when we fail to attend to the social conditions which enable and constitute ethical relations in the first place? Following from her work on speech-act theory in her previous writings, Butler goes on to to elaborate the need to take into account just these relations, relations which exceed the ability of a self to give a full and comprehensive account of itself.As the spiritual follow up to her excellent The Psychic Life of Power, Giving an Account of Oneself is perhaps Butler’s best book to date. For all its theoretical perspicacity and complexity, it is a deeply humane book, a book written by an author with a passionate concern for the human condition and its contemporary travails. While it’s not the last word on ethics - does outlining the possibility of ethics constitute an ethics proper? And where, given the importance of the theme of ‘life’ and ’the human' in the book, are the reflections on biopolitics? - that ethics is about more than just about words means that at the very least, Butler’s book holds out a hope that is needed now more than ever.

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