Judith Butler, born on Feb. 24, 1956, is an American feminist, queer philosopher and gender studies scholar known for their many books, as well as their feminist and queer theories. Even if you’re not well-read on those topics, odds are you’re still familiar with things inspired by their work, which has impacted philosophy, ethics, cultural theory, queer theory, political philosophy and more, per Britannica. And even if you don’t think that their work or words could be relevant to you, our quote of the day by Butler might. It’s not just a nice sentiment, but it’s a valuable opinion many have about reading.
Butler studied at Bennington College, then went on to receive a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. They’re best known for their 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and its sequel, 1993’s Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ In these books, Butler focuses a lot on the concept that gender is a social construct and introduces their theory of gender performativity, which has had a massive influence on queer theory and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole.
According to Britannica, Butler’s Gender Trouble was “one of the founding texts of queer theory,” and all of their work continues to further influence cultural theory. They’re currently Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at UC Berkeley, in the Department of Comparative Literature.
As an academic, philosopher and scholar, Butler has so many good words of wisdom, spanning across many topics. And today’s quote is, again, about the transformative power of reading.
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Quote of the Day by Judith Butler
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“We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and part of a more expansive world.”
Butler said this in their Honorary Doctorate Address at McGill University in 2013, where they received the Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, per the McGill Reporter. Their speech was titled, “What value do the humanities have?” according to Speakola.
The full quote is: “Ideally, we lose ourselves in what we read only to return to ourselves transformed, and part of a more expansive world. In short, we become more critical and more capacious in our thinking and in our acting.”
Before they shared this sentiment, Butler spoke about the humanities, which are degrees that study human society and culture and include disciplines such as philosophy, religion, history, language arts and more. Butler commiserated with the students about what they might be thinking as they graduated, wondering how their humanities degrees could help them in their careers. The philosopher then shared that they are all “very lucky” to have taken courses that showed them appreciation for other cultures, ancient writings, other perspectives and more.
“How else can we imagine living together without this ability to see beyond where we are, to find ourselves linked with others we have never directly known, and to understand that, in some abiding and urgent sense, we share a world?” they said to the crowd.
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Deeper Meaning of Judith Butler’s Quote—the Transformative Power of Reading
In the context of Butler saying this to a group of graduating humanities students, they’re saying that these students are better off and have a richer view of culture and the world around them because of what they read in their classes. All that those graduates have read and studied allows them to better enrich their lives within their current culture and the modern world.
“I am made hopeful by the fact that you had this quite marvelous chance to take this time to learn, to question and to discover, and that you could actually take the time to consider this world in which you live, and for which you now assume a rather awesome and exciting responsibility,” Butler went on to say.
Their responsibility, as Butler explained, was to go on and make the world a better place, living among those different from them, to “live our passions without causing harm to others, and to know the difference between raw prejudice and distortion, and sound critical judgment.”
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However, even without the context of Butler’s quote, the sentiment still holds up strong. We’ve all had those moments where we get lost in a good book, some of us even getting swept up in nonfiction or academic reading. At face value, without the humanities context, Butler is saying that reading can expand our world and transform us in doing so.
Reading is something that can take us to faraway lands, immerse us in fantasy and teach us many things about those who are different than us. How can we not transform from something so powerful?
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More Quotes from Judith Butler
- “Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.”
- “Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread.” ― Judith Butler, Undoing Gender
- “To operate within the matrix of power is not the same as to replicate uncritically relations of domination.” ― Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
- “Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something.”
- “…laughter emerges in the realization that all along the original was derived.” ― Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
- “What is most important is to cease legislating for all lives what is liveable only for some, and similarly, to refrain from proscribing for all lives what is unlivable for some.” ― Judith Butler, Undoing Gender
- “If the category of ‘woman’ is the subject of feminism, and the inquiry into its meaning is taken as the very task of feminism, then that category ought not to be presumed in advance of the analysis.” — Gender Trouble
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