[Book review] A philosophy that keeps mattering - Bodies that still matter : resonances of the work of Judith Butler, (eds.) Annemie Halsema, Katja Kwastek and Roel van den Oever (Amsterdam university press, 2021)

Abstract

This volume, Bodies That Still Matter: Resonances of the Work of Judith Butler (2021), is a welcome addition to scholarship about the work of Judith Butler, as well as extensions and applications of their work across various disciplines. Most of the contributions to this volume originated from a conference that was held on 5-7 April 2017 at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, titled Critical Theory in the Humanities: Resonances of the Work of Judith Butler. The title of this volume is the title of Butler’s keynote lecture on that occasion, and is both a nod to the title of Butler’s 1993 Bodies That Matter, as well as a re-animation of the concern that Butler’s work has with bodies, lives and identities that are rendered as not mattering. This essay will review each chapter in the volume, outlining the authors’ engagement and use of Butler’s work. Moreover, in the final section, a more detailed engagement with Butler’s own essay in this volume, and the contextualisation of this essay within their more recent work, will be pursued.