Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations the contributors to this book articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neoliberal discourse, the politics of war, resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence
Butler explores the way that recent US-led wars have enforced a distinction between those lives that are recognized as grievable (the lives of Americans), and those that are not (the lives of Muslims and Iraqis). Especially examined is the Iraq war. Essays written and revised between 2004 and 2008.