COMENTARIO DE LA ENTREVISTA PÚBLICA A LA DRA. JUDITH BUTLER, EN EL ENCUENTRO NACIONAL DE PENSAMIENTO, REALIZADO EN EL MARCO DEL FESTIVAL DE CINE MIGRANTE EN LA CIUDAD DE BUENOS AIRES, EN SEPTIEMBRE 2015.:

Review of the public interview to Dr. Judith Butler, at the National Encounter of Thoughts, taken place within the frame of the Migrant Cinema Festival at the city of Buenos Aires, September 2015. Judith Butler is a relevant figure in gender studies and queer theory. She is a professor in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkley and at the Hanna Arendt Institute at the European Graduate School. She is the author to numerous books among which “Gender trouble”, “Bodies that matter” and “Undoing Gender” outstand as well as the volume co-written with Ernesto Laclau andSlavojZizek: “Contingency, hegemony, universality. She was distinguished with the following:  2013: Doctorate of Letters, honoris causa, McGillUniversity (Canada) 2012: Theodor W. Adorno Award 2010: 25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World, Utne Reader 2008:  Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Achievement Award,University of California, Berkeley. In September 2015, she took part of the National Encounter of Thoughts that took place within the frame of the Migrant Cinema Festival by giving a public interview. Her interlocutors were two CONICET researchers: Laura Fernandez Cordero, PhD. in Social Science, feminist; and Virginia Cano, lesbian and feminist activist, PhD. in Philosophy. At the opening of the activity the “Butler effect” was outlined in the scientific production in Argentina, specially her books “Gender trouble” and “Bodies that matter”.  Butler approached several subjects from the questions asked by her interviewers and the attending public. The time was rather short, which is why the answers were brief, although each one of them could have been an axis of an important discussion itself.  The speaker defined herself: “I am a feminist and I do not deny being a feminist, which does not mean that everything that I am is only a feminist” and she stated that even if she does not agree with all feminisms, she does not think of herself a post-feminist and she linked that to theorizations and manifested that definitions enclose abbreviated forms of theory and that categories lead to enclosure: “life is easier when we lead it outside categories”.  When referring to femicides, Butler emphasized gender inequality: “the most extreme form of domination on women is death. Some women are killed, others know they might get killed. Subordinate or die. The practice of killing women is a terrifying example to others, what could possibly be more powerful than that type of terror?”As an answer to the question on the movement #NiUnaMenosthat developed in Argentina, Butler referred tofemicides in Ciudad Juarez – Mexico- and in other countries, such as Honduras and Argentina, and she made a special emphasis in complicities from state institutions that accept this reality and they reproduce the format in a certain way. So they become State crimes and in response to this summons to partaking in street, park gatherings and manifestations mean that “people that have been abandoned, left aside are telling ‘here we are, we exist’”, expressed Butler.  The philosopher from USA laud the laws in Gender Identity and Equal Marriage in Argentina, although only two genders are mentioned and we should think about expanding the concept. This means an opening to new gender forms that is not divided in a binary vision of it.  Facing the prostitution problem, Judith Butler was decisive regarding the fact that children trafficking and migrant exploitation must be stopped. Nevertheless, sexual workers’ rights must be supported in order for them to have a dignifying work, better working conditions and retirement rights.  Regarding the refugees, she expressed that increasing forms of racism are observed, as well as people without a State that are being rejected and she referred to the great number of women and men that walk from America to the US, who are invisible to the mass media, and underlining in her intervention the status of the refugee, who must be taken as belonging to a worldwide problem that exceeds each country’s frontiers.  As for the legalization of abortion and “reproductive freedom”, an expression coined by the exponent, her position is centered in economic inequality and racism. She sustains her position by stating that movements that tend to criminalize abortion end up by criminalizing poor women, since the ones with resources have access to this illegal practice with a health insurance coverage that does not put their health at risk and the decision of interrupting pregnancy stays as a private matter, thus guaranteeing that it will stay unpunishable. She completes her position with the idea that sustaining abortion as an illegal intervention is promoting a business and a profitable activity on this practice.  In sum, the speaker went over several controversial subjects of current relevance, femicides, violence against women, legalization of abortion, refugees and excluded settling her position, whether we share it or not, but her ideas contribute certainly to a productive debate.

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