The 2021 Holberg Debate on Identity Politics: J. Butler, C. West, G.Greenwald and S. Critchley.

Holberg Prize
Holberg Prize
346,189
0
Published 2021-12-04
The 2021 Holberg Debate: "Identity Politics and Culture Wars"
Starts at 3:00.

Does identity politics as it is currently manifesting itself offer a suitable avenue towards social justice, or has it become a recipe for cultural antagonism, political polarization, and new forms of injustice?

Panel: Judith Butler, Cornel West, Glenn Greenwald.
Moderator: Simon Critchley

Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, queer theory, rhetoric and literary theory. She is the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School. Butler has written more than 20 books, and her best known works are Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (1993), and Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997), in which she challenges conventional notions of gender and develops her theory of gender performativity. Butler argues that being born male or female does not determine behaviour. Instead, people learn to behave in particular ways to fit into society. What society regards as a person's gender can be seen as a performance made to please social expectations, rather than a true expression of the person's gender identity.

Cornel West
Cornel West is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, actor, and public intellectual. West is presently Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy & Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He has previously held professorships at Harvard University and Yale University. West focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and the means by which people act and react to their "radical conditionedness". A socialist, West draws intellectual contributions from multiple traditions, including Christianity, the Black church, Marxism, neopragmatism, and transcendentalism. He has written 20 books, and among his most influential works are Race Matters (1994), Democracy Matters (2004), and his memoir Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud (2010). West has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – “a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice”.

Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald is an American investigative journalist and author. A former constitutional lawyer, he founded and wrote for the online global media outlet The Intercept with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill in 2014 until his departure in 2020, when he moved his writing to the online platform Substack. He is the author of several best sellers, among them, How Would a Patriot Act? (2006); With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful (2011) and No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State (2014). Living and reporting in Brazil, he was central to investigations that ultimately helped free Luis da Silva from prison after a parliamentary coup against the former President. Greenwald has received numerous awards for his investigative journalism. In 2009 he was awarded the Izzy Award by the Park Center for Independent Media for his “path breaking journalistic courage and persistence in confronting conventional wisdom, official deception, and controversial issues.” In 2010 he received an Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the arrest and detention of Chelsea Manning. In 2013 he led The Guardian’s reporting team that covered Edward Snowden and the NSA, which earned the newspaper the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013.

Moderator: Simon Critchley
Simon Critchley is a British philosopher and the Hans Jonas Professor at the New School for Social Research. His books include Very Little…Almost Nothing (1997), Infinitely Demanding (2007), The Book of Dead Philosophers (2009) and The Faith of the Faithless (2012). Recent works include a novella, Memory Theatre, a book-length essay, Notes on Suicide and studies of David Bowie and Football and Apply-Degger (Onassis, 2020). His most recent books are Tragedy, The Greeks and Us (Pantheon, 2019) and Bald (Yale, 2021). He was series moderator of ‘The Stone’, a philosophy column in The New York Times and co-editor of The Stone Reader (2016). He is also 50% of an obscure musical combo called Critchley & Simmons.

For more information: See the Holberg Prize website, holbergprize.org/en/2021-holberg-debate-identity-p…
All Comments (21)
  • @PsychologyCheckup
    Cornell West: "if you stay woke for too long you're going to develop insomnia"
  • @ceelar
    After Butler says a black woman should be in the debate (later clarified that she was talking about a black academic woman*), Greenwald says they should have a working-class person as well. You can hear the other debaters groan, because either they see themselves as working class, or as people who understand what it is like to be working class. Greenwald then goes on to call them out, and himself, as people who moved away from working class lives, and are now working in elite environments. Debaters change the subject... ...and this moment perfectly characterizes the entire debate. *who she agrees with
  • @renatinho_cabeleira
    Butler talks and talks, but says nothing. Glenn is the only one who speaks English, who is concise, and delivers clear-cutting points. The most exclusionary thing you can ever do is to make language complex for people that are out of academia. Intellectuals should learn to communicate simply and precisely as possible.
  • @nomadproductions2812
    butler is really good at saying a bunch of buzzwords without actually saying anything of substance
  • @Hist_da_Musica
    Butler thinks "women of color" are a concept, not individuals. Glenn pointed this out very well, he wasn't confrontational but he was quite clear.
  • @chrisyoung2179
    I still feel like they tip-toed around Greenwald’s critiques and attempts to dive deeper into the complexities and contradictions.
  • @FinneySP
    Been waiting twelve years for someone to call butler out on her bs
  • @bobwobbabble5151
    Am I too stupid to understand what Judith is saying or is she basically saying nothing?
  • @ks-lf6of
    I have a v hard time summarizing Butler’s meandering and quibbling statements
  • @michaelthornton5360
    The Identity/Perspective that is ALWAYS excluded from these types of discussions is that of the “Non College Educated” Working Class person!
  • @sunrae3971
    1:10:50 "if you stay woke forever you´re going to suffer from insomnia". C. West
  • @thepeak78
    I'll just say one thing about this ... I'm glad Glenn was there.
  • @emileconstance5851
    The irony that when I saw an announcement for this debate posted on FB, the majority of the comments were asking, "Why is Greenwald being included?" Greenwald's comments were consistently the most relevant and lucid. I have respect for West and Butler, but they're very much saying the same things they were saying 30 years ago, w/ very little to say about our present moment (w/ very few exceptions). One of the pitfalls some academics fall into, is finding their "lane" and never really venturing beyond it--I will give West credit for also being an activist, and so at least putting his ideas/politics into practice.
  • @richardburt9812
    Butler donated to Kamala Harris in 2020 the maximum amount of money one is allowed to donate. Terry Castle donated thousands to Hillary Clinton in 2020. Angela Davis endorsed Biden. Shocking and disappointing.
  • @AntonDoesMusic
    I really tried to give Judith Butler a fair shot, but it seems like over and over it takes her 10 minutes and 10,000 words to say, "We should talk more about stuff that we're not usually talking about." and she never really actually talks about anything.
  • @hungrydave1977
    I like Cornel, he's a truly nice guy. But its Greenwald bringing the interesting points here.
  • @twatts1523
    Cornell is so lovely and inspirational. He and Glenn make a perfect duo. Glenn gives a concise, literal narrative which is rational and organized, slamming each point down with precision. Then Cornell takes it over and interprets it for us in artistic form. What a special treat!
  • @kakistocracyusa
    Greenwald is brilliantly on point, as usual. In contrast, J. Butler appears to have made a career out of stringing buzzwords together.