Who Says 'I Do'? (Reviewing Judith Butler & Gayatri Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging)

Abstract

This Book Review offers an analogy between two forms of resistance to legal discrimination by marginalized minorities: singing the national anthem in Spanish on the streets of Los Angeles in the spring of 2006 by undocumented immigrants, and possible future public marriage ceremonies by LGBT people and other marriage outlaws. Based on the conceptual grounds laid by Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak, and earlier by Hannah Arendt, the Review uses an analogy to the public singing of the anthem in Spanish in order to argue that the performance of public marriage ceremonies by LGBT people and other marriage outlaws may achieve two significant political goals: performative contradiction and political speech acts

Keywords: Proposition 8, same-sex marriage, marriage equality, immigration, Arendt, Butler, Spivak, speech acts