Abstract

This chapter offers an introduction to the American philosopher Judith Butler based on her work in a systematic perspective. In doing so, we are following four central trajectories in Butler’s thinking – Impacts on Gender and Queer Theory; Questions of Contingency, Difference, and Performativity; Theories on the Subject, Subjection, and Subjectivation; and at least Ethical and Political Implications. And we will thus present commentary regarding her reception within the fields of philosophy of education and pedagogy. Having given such an overview, we will turn to the third aspect in her work, ‘Theories on the Subject, Subjection, and Subjectivation’, and will show how the previous aspects converge in this point. We will put emphasis on the context of subjectivation, in the sense of becoming a ‘subject’, with respect to the meaning of social norms and the dependency of the human subject on others that follows from this. In this way, we will show to which extent Butler’s thinking questions concepts in present-day philosophy, especially heteronomy and autonomy, which are often envisioned in a dualistic and oppositional manner. We deem Butler’s thoughts on subjectivation as highly significant and relevant, so that we will point to some perspectives that emerged in receiving her work in pedagogy and the philosophy of education. We also hope to show what is to be gained if we place a human subject that is radically and existentially depended on others at the center of all our deliberations on education.