The Encounter Between Ethics and Politics in Judith Butler’s Conception of Performativity

Abstract

The article examines the “encounter” between ethics and politics in Judith Butler’s theory of performativity through her dialogue with the Levinasian notion of vulnerability. It begins by analyzing how Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics—shaped by the trauma of antisemitism and the experience of Nazi extermination—establishes a transcendent responsibility toward the Other, one that often discourages embodied political action. The article then shows that Butler challenges this metaphysical ethics by reconfiguring it through the lens of performativity: vulnerability becomes a condition for political resistance and public appearance, rather than a reason to withdraw from the field of struggle.