Ontology and Politics

The chapter explains why Butler’s text needs to be understood as philosophical and political. It opens with the claim that Butler’s philosophy is queer, organized around insurrection at the level of ontology, and interested in opening up of possibilities. Butler’s understanding of politics centres on the political in medias res, the new and collective struggle. The chapter further elucidates Butler’s notion of performative universality and cultural translation. The chapter functions as a sort of glossary of the key ontological and political linkages in Butler’s work, among which the notion of the human has a particularly significant place.