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

17 Pages Posted: 6 Sep 2009

See all articles by Noa Ben-Asher

Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Date Written: September 3, 2009

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

Suggested Citation

Ben-Asher, Noa, Who Says 'I Do'? (Reviewing Judith Butler & Gayatri Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging) (September 3, 2009). Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, Vol. 21, No. 245, 2009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1467874

Noa Ben-Asher (Contact Author)

Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University ( email )

78 North Broadway
White Plains, NY 10603
United States

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