Excitable speech: a politics of the performative

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -- PREFACE TO THE ROUTLEDGE CLASSICS EDITION -- Introduction: on linguistic vulnerability -- 1 Burning acts, injurious speech -- 2 Sovereign performatives -- 3 Contagious word: paranoia and "homosexuality" in the military -- 4 Implicit censorship and discursive agency -- NOTES -- INDEX.

With the same intellectual courage with which she addressed issues of gender, Judith Butler turns her attention to speech and conduct in contemporary political life, looking at several efforts to target speech as conduct that has become subject to political debate and regulation. Reviewing hate speech regulations, anti-pornography arguments, and recent controversies about gay self-declaration in the military, Judith Butler asks whether and how language acts in each of these cultural sites