ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the notion of normative violence formulated in Judith Butler’s theory of gender. For Butler, a norm becomes violent and, in turn, legitimizes violence when it is naturalized; when it imposes a pattern of normality that is portrayed as being natural, objective, ahistoric, and universal instead of being cultural, constructed, and contingent. She provides a description of violence that derives from this generalized condition. Butler underlines that non-violence is not the naïve and unproblematic position of a beautiful soul; rather, ‘it is precisely because one is mired in violence that the struggle exists and that the possibility of non-violence emerges.’ Butler maintains that the action of non-violence is embodied and performative: it requires bodies that appear and act, but also points in the direction that might constitute ‘a different world from the one it encounters, and that means encountering violence without reproducing its terms. Butler’s notion of ‘critique’ has two main sources: Michel Foucault and Walter Benjamin.
