Thinkers that Matter: On the Thought of Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero

Abstract

The work presents the standpoint of two important contemporary feminist philosophers, Adriana Cavarero and Judith Butler, on subjectivity and relationality, showing how both moved away from the specific feminism motif in order to deepen and broaden their reflection on politics and ethics. Calling tradition into question, Cavarero agrees neither with the metaphysical binary, nor with the post-modern impersonality, combining a feminist and the arendtian perspectives of the subjectivity based on relationality. Contrary to Cavarero’s thought, though, under Butler’s deconstructionist standpoint language shapes body and identity. Subjectivity is “trapped” into social norms and values. Both Butler and Cavarero rethink subjectivity based on relationality, that is, displacing politics from the immune individual and reallocating it on the vulnerable individual in relation with the other and with the social rules and values imposed on them.