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A review by books_ergo_sum
What World Is This?: A Pandemic Phenomenology by Judith Butler
informative
3.0
I love Judith Butler. And I love when philosophers reflect on Zeitgeist-y moments like the pandemic.
But this book was just okay.
It did something I expected: it applied my favourite part of Butler's philosophy, grievability, to the pandemic. That is, their ideas about how some people live a life with the knowledge that their death doesn't matter, that society won't grieve them. The way that the economy was prioritized over people's lives, the unequal access to medical care, Zoom funerals—Butler talked about it all.
But, I don't think greivability was explained as deeply in this book as in their other books, The Force of Nonviolence especially. And Butler seemed to agree (there was a lot of 'see The Force or Nonviolence for more info' going on). So, the book didn't add a ton to the way l'd already mentally applied grievability to the pandemic going into this.
And the book's main focus was a part of the pandemic mindset that... I don't think has persisted, unfortunately. That is, the concept of a post-pandemic radical permeability of the self and interconnectedness of society. Like, a concrete awareness that we all breathe the same air, for example.
And, I don't know. Has this stuck around? I feel like we've returned (since this book was published in
2022) to the fantasy of liberal individualism pretty hard, ngl.
But this book was just okay.
It did something I expected: it applied my favourite part of Butler's philosophy, grievability, to the pandemic. That is, their ideas about how some people live a life with the knowledge that their death doesn't matter, that society won't grieve them. The way that the economy was prioritized over people's lives, the unequal access to medical care, Zoom funerals—Butler talked about it all.
But, I don't think greivability was explained as deeply in this book as in their other books, The Force of Nonviolence especially. And Butler seemed to agree (there was a lot of 'see The Force or Nonviolence for more info' going on). So, the book didn't add a ton to the way l'd already mentally applied grievability to the pandemic going into this.
And the book's main focus was a part of the pandemic mindset that... I don't think has persisted, unfortunately. That is, the concept of a post-pandemic radical permeability of the self and interconnectedness of society. Like, a concrete awareness that we all breathe the same air, for example.
And, I don't know. Has this stuck around? I feel like we've returned (since this book was published in
2022) to the fantasy of liberal individualism pretty hard, ngl.