don't be a judith butler

make your words count; open yourself up to speaking clearly

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a fiction writer (it’s still something I may return to some day). I wanted to write extremely literary, impenetrable, high fiction. The kind of stuff that if you sell 2,000 copies and some lit crit profs talk about you, you’re ecstatic. In that past life, I encountered Judith Butler and a lot of other what I’m going to call criticism theorists—Derrida, Baudrillard, etc. If you pick up a literary theory journal you will inevitably see the genre of writing I’m talking about—it’s as if the writer is penning a heroic missive from the ends of the earth after a great calamity. The prose is incredibly dense, it folds in on itself, you get sucked in to its reality. It has a psychological horror movie vibe.

Criticism theory which makes up much media/art/literary criticism is, well, critical. It’s critical (in the ordinary sense of the word) of everything that we would normally call reality—critical of politics, social mores, things people do for entertainment, and so on. And in the middle of this, the artist—championed by the heroic critic—is a light in the darkness. A strike against the fallenness of the world. Pulling the cart of humanity.

In more practical terms, much academic media criticism relies on a verbal display of force and a worldview which might charitably called clinically depressed.

And in the midst of this, criticism theorists often have the mistaken view that they are doing the realest politics anyone has ever done. That they are changing the world. I’d instead argue that they are certainly writing a lot of words, but aren’t communicating much. And they aren’t communicating much out of a fear of taking a concrete stance, which could be considered wrong or insufficiently critical.

In contrast with last post’s focus Noam Chomsky, who said very definite things that were wrong, criticism theorists say very ambiguous things in very complex language that are also often wrong (or so banal it’s like why are you even saying it?). In this sense, I much prefer Chomsky—at least the claims are specific and the language is reasonably normal.

Let’s get to it.

the basic tropes of criticism theory

There are a few things you need to understand to make sense of this genre of writing. Most importantly, the whole ecosystem relies on approval by high status academics in the humanities. This creates an environment with particularly bizarre rules. Some of these rules are: it is gauche to express yourself clearly; it is unfortunate to take a stance that is common, as common stances are inevitably insufficiently “progressive”; it is better to say something new than something true; you must never admit you made a mistake (this is a commonality with Chomsky), but if you do make a mistake instead of ignoring it you should write a *lot* of words about it.

This leads to byzantine prose which often spends a lot of time meaninglessly redefining common terms, asserting that such terms cannot possibly be defined, lamenting we must define terms at all, lamenting the limitations of words and language, and so on. Because some common stances must be taken, such common stances like “killing people is bad” are said with great fanfare and buried in the middle of an ocean of prose like a long lost keepsake. And such common stances are often taken equivocally, questioning whether anyone really believes them, etc.

There is also a lot of Marxism, the kind of worldview that we must “(class) struggle” for a better future, that we can’t even imagine what life will be like after the revolution happens. You’ll see rote criticism of capitalism or neoliberalism or a hipper buzzword that can be substituted for these. I personally view this stuff these days as close to content-less because it never engages with all of the social science things we understand about the world or the very real progress that has been made.

let’s read more politics

Let’s get a little specific here, with an assist from Judith Butler, one of the most highly regarded contemporary writers of what I’m calling criticism theory. Let’s focus on their “The Compass of Mourning” which was written in the Fall of 2023 about the Israel/Palestine conflict that was ignited (this round) by Hamas killing and/or kidnapping hundreds of civilians on Oct 7, 2023. This is the first paragraph, which I present in its entirety.

The matters most in need of public discussion, the ones that most urgently need to be discussed, are those that are difficult to discuss within the frameworks now available to us. Although one wishes to go directly to the matter at hand, one bumps up against the limits of a framework that makes it nearly impossible to say what one has to say. I want to speak about the violence, the present violence, the history of violence and its many forms. But if one wishes to document violence, which means understanding the massive bombardment and killings in Israel by Hamas as part of that history, one can be accused of ‘relativising’ or ‘contextualisation’. We are to condemn or approve, and that makes sense, but is that all that is ethically required of us? In fact, I do condemn without qualification the violence committed by Hamas. This was a terrifying and revolting massacre. That was my primary reaction, and it endures. But there are other reactions as well.

This is a lot of nothing. It basically says: “Hamas killing people is bad, but Israel has also killed people too, and I am worried if I say that Israel has also killed people I will be derided in the press.” But there’s this weird third person thing going on (“one wishes”) and there’s a lot of fear at being ridiculed for saying what I personally think is a pretty reasonable stance—that although the violence on October 7 was the fault of Hamas, the Israeli government has sustained conditions that make such violence more likely. This is a common stance that is discussed in the popular press every day and not in need of a paragraph-long windup.

In general, there is no need for Butler to be so vague here, or so long-winded. It makes me think they have nothing to say—whenever I encounter prose like this, I assume the writer is trying to fill space.

If we dig a little deeper into the situation, we realize that this piece is so defensive because Butler called October 7th an “armed resistance” a few days earlier, implying that the massacre was a legitimate military action. Now, they are seeking to explicate their own statements. In politics, we would call this walking it back. Of course there is no explicit admission in the piece that their previous statement was in error. There is an oblique statement that they oppose violence and “have no alibi to offer.”

Let’s return to Butler’s opening statement, where they claim that the crisis is “difficult to discuss within the frameworks now available to us.” I personally find this laughable. It’s incredibly wrong. In the year 2023 we had plenty of moral frameworks available to us, and Butler’s inability to figure out how to view the situation says more about their own knowledge and judgement than it does about moral frameworks writ large. Here we encounter another trope of criticism theory—if the writer does not understand something, they claim the thing is unknown or unknowable.

In the specific case being discussed, the moral calculus seems fairly clear to me: Hamas is bad, the Israeli government is currently run by bad warmongers, there are longstanding legitimate grievances on both sides which would mean perpetual war if you wanted to go eye-for-an-eye, and civilians on both sides are innocent and do not deserve harm. Our moral responsibility is to work through our government (and of course do other action like writing, activism, etc) to push for a peaceful solution (no eye-for-eye) which likely would need to be brokered and enforced by a coalition of nations. In fact, this is exactly what major world powers including the United States are currently doing. As of this writing, there has been a ceasefire resolution passed at the UN, there is a peace deal on the table, and the last holdout party is Hamas.

Far from being an unfathomable moral quandary, as Butler asserts, we have a politically difficult but morally clear situation!

Whew, that was a lot to write about one paragraph, but it really does encapsulate the point I’m trying to make here.

just say the bad thing is bad!

As Butler winds through the essay, they write this paragraph, which I will also reproduce in full because it’s so epic,

If we think that moral condemnation must be a clear, punctual act without reference to any context or knowledge, then we inevitably accept the terms in which that condemnation is made, the stage on which the alternatives are orchestrated. In this most recent context, to accept those terms means recapitulating forms of colonial racism which are part of the structural problem to be solved, the abiding injustice to be overcome. Thus, we cannot afford to look away from the history of injustice in the name of moral certitude, for that is to risk committing further injustice, and at some point our certitude will falter on that less than firm ground. Why can’t we condemn morally heinous acts without losing our powers to think, to know and to judge? Surely we can, and must, do both.

Again, a lot of words. There is a weird argument being made here, as far as I can tell, that if we clearly condemn Hamas killing hundreds of innocent people we are committing the further injustice of ignoring the history of the conflict. I don’t think this is true! And, ironically, Butler spends at least a thousand words demanding we pay attention to this history without really discussing the history itself!

This is what we might refer to as a hipster take, or a “yes, but” take. “Yes killing is bad BUT…” In my mind, this tendency comes from the weirdness of the academic landscape I mentioned above where repeating any commonly held “commonsense” view is anathema. Butler cannot say “Hamas killing people is bad” because like people on Fox News are also saying it. This is a basic error in reasoning that you see a lot in criticism theory—if someone you don’t like is saying something, it automatically means that the thing is bad and used for nefarious political ends. In fact, the best thing pro-Palestine activists can do is loudly criticize violence from Hamas, because it then gives them the stance of humanitarian peace protestors and undercuts their critics rather than rooting for one of the combatants in a conflict (which is what many of them are actually doing).

We also see a bleed into the “omnimovement” here, where everything is connected to everything via an underlying “structure” to reality (hello again, Marxism!) that links like climate change and the Israel/Hamas war. This is where the clinical depression comes in. Depression gives you a perspective that solving one problem is worthless because there will still be other problems in the world. So why do anything if you can’t do everything? Why end this conflict if it does not rectify every grievance anyone has in the Middle East? I recommend therapy.

soviet men and soviet women

Butler closes with a common call in this genre of writing—a call for something completely new. So new, in fact, that we can’t even imagine it now. It’ll be so awesome, so cool, that you won’t even believe it (note that Trump and Musk also use this technique from a very different perspective).

Butler writes,

The world I want is one that would oppose the normalisation of colonial rule and support Palestinian self-determination and freedom, a world that would, in fact, realise the deepest desires of all the inhabitants of those lands to live together in freedom, non-violence, equality and justice.

I mean, sure I want that too. But what does that look like? Is the peace deal on the table now a path towards that or no? What steps should we *actually take* to get there? What should our protests look like? Who should we vote for?

In this genre of writing, you will never find answer to questions like these because the authors don’t know. Judith Butler doesn’t have any advice on protest tactics to advance a ceasefire in the Middle East, and instead of posturing as if they have some advice, they should provide references to people who do have advice.

making it more complicated than it is; dr manhattan

Being a human is complicated and difficult. It is crucially important to not make life more complicated than it already is. By writing a litany of questions that generally have answers as if they have no answers, Butler needlessly complexifies reality. They *also* position themselves as the brave question asker, akin to the brave social media truth teller who will tweet things that neither party wants you to hear. In fact, the questions mostly have answers and Butler either rejects those answers but can’t say so openly, or they are unaware of the answers, or they don’t care about the answers because they get points in their status game for acting as if there are no answers. This might sound a little harsh, but the main question in the essay is “can’t we pay attention to history even as we say Hamas’ violence is bad?” and the answer to this is an unequivocal “yes!” In fact, this is being done by our actual elected representatives right now.

The position of the speaker in these criticism theory essays is always on the outside, never tangled up in the messy specifics, never needs to make a tough decision with competing interests. The position is Dr. Manhattan sighing and criticizing humans. And, in my view, that’s not a good way to spend your time as a writer or a reader.