The force of nonviolence

In ‘The Force of Nonviolence’, author Judith Butler shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. Further, it argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a passive practice that emanates from a calm region of the soul, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power. But, in fact, nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field. Butler draws upon Foucault, Fanon, Freud and Benjamin to consider how the interdiction against violence fails to include lives regarded as ungrievable.