Publishers Weekly
09/26/2022
This punchy philosophical treatise from UC Berkeley philosopher Butler (The Force of Nonviolence) considers what a more equitable post-pandemic world could look like. Drawing on such phenomenologists as Max Scheler and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Butler contends that because humans are politically, socially, ecologically, and economically interdependent, they have an obligation to “organize the world... on principles of radical equality.” Covid-19 drew attention to the porous boundaries of bodies, communities, and nations, Butler posits, encouraging readers to see the pandemic as an opportunity to fashion a social fabric that recognizes this interconnectedness by offering guaranteed income and single-payer healthcare, as well as abolishing prisons. The author argues that such movements as Black Lives Matter in the U.S. and Not One Less in Argentina illustrate how recognizing shared dependencies enables activists to confront racism, sexism, and wealth inequality. Through a thorough philosophical accounting of the moral imperatives of living in a globalized society, Butler makes a rousing case for pushing progressive policies as a response to the disruptions of the pandemic. Thoughtful and profound, this hits the mark. (Nov.)
Amy Hollywood
In this timely and important book, Butler pays careful attention to the specifics of our contemporary situation with startling clarity, bringing their inimitable voice and philosophical resources to the questions of what it means for life to be livable, what it means for the earth to be inhabitable, what it means for an entity to be grievable, and the ways the COVID-19 pandemic has cast these questions into relief, at the same time marking how intimately entwined with each other they are.
Philosophy in Review
By investigating the world's disunity, Butler provides an excellent text where readers can reflect on how the pandemic affected us all and what it revealed about the nature of our national and global realities. . . Butler challenges readers to think more deeply about how they share their physical and social space with other humans to assemble a more interconnected and livable world.
Jacqueline Rose
In this remarkable meditation, Judith Butler draws together the key strands of their thought—from bodies that matter to melancholia to grievability to nonviolence—and offers a manifesto for our time. Turning to phenomenology, they make the urgent case for a new form of global responsibility based on the deepest entwinement of everyone to each other, to the earth we live on, and to the air we breathe. Nobody else could have made it. What World Is This? offers hope in a cruel and endangered world.
Lisa Guenther
A thoughtful meditation on what it means to share a world with others in a time of global pandemic and climate change, from a philosopher who has already taught us so much about livable and grievable lives. This book offers a deeply human perspective on life at the edge of disaster.
Lewis R. Gordon
'Death and illness have been quite literally in the air,' writes Judith Butler in this stunningly poignant study. Phenomenology, they argue, speaks to moments when, every now and then, many, if not all of us, are reminded of the eventual end of the world, and, even more, worlds. That harbinger knocks at the door in 'this' world in which 'all' now at least attempt, despite and even because of tragedy, to live. Addressing the pan-demos, the people everywhere and our interconnectedness, permeability, and irreplaceability, Butler challenges the hubris of imagined protection from the 'external' and articulates the ebb, flow, fragility, and precarity of life beyond idols—beyond, in their word, 'pretense'—of self-sustained and hoarded power. In the spirit of repair, they ask us to embrace responsibility for conditions of radical equality and nonviolence on which livable lives depend, a common world of the symbiosis of breath and touch in the sociality of life. A beautiful and profound offering for our times and beyond.
