Judith Butler – “Regimi di guerra. O della vita che non merita lutto” (2024)
Castelvecchi Editore
Introduction: Olivia Guaraldo
Cured by Giacomo Mormino
Why do we remain indifferent in the face of the countless shattered lives we hear about every day—precarious lives of refugees, innocent people tortured, immigrants enslaved by hunger and forgotten by the law? How can we transform the suffering we witness on screens into something that touches us deeply? At a time when war, from Ukraine to Gaza, dominates the news and our minds, Judith Butler invites us to reflect on how military violence has profoundly transformed not only the geopolitical landscape but also our perception of reality. The dehumanizing rhetoric of war and the media narrative of armed conflicts have accustomed us to rationalizing the death of entire populations, presented not as victims in need of protection, but as existential threats. Lives that do not conform to the “Western norm of the human” appear to us as already lost, lives unworthy of our mourning. The most urgent challenge is therefore to learn to make others’ suffering our own, by adopting a critical perspective that questions the “frames of interpretation” imposed on us. Only by asking if and how these subjects exist beyond such normative frameworks, and by recognizing the radical and shared precarity of every human life, can we rethink the forms of coexistence on our planet, beyond any military logic.