ABSTRACT
This chapter makes the transition from ‘terms of political analysis’ to ‘the-
ories of the political’. It focuses less on those terms in Butler’s work already
familiar to most of her readers and it offers more specific and targeted
engagements with contemporary politics and theory. Here we articulate the
content and demonstrate the importance of Butler’s concept of normative
violence. Doing so requires rereading Gender Trouble through the lens of
normative violence, an exercise that proves both counter-intuitive (since the
term does not appear in the text itself) and productive (since this reading reveals afresh the impact that Gender Trouble should have upon political
theory). Beyond this ‘contribution’ to the field of political theory, however,
lies the power of Butler’s concept of normative violence to grasp and eluci-
date contemporary political phenomena. Thus, just as we read normative
violence back into Butler’s famous text, we also read it forward into politics
today.
