In this workshop, based on the final chapter of the book ‘Judith Butler and Politics’ (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), the author of the book - Dr Adriana Zaharijević - will walk us through Judith Butler’s conception of an ontology of the body
In their Force of Nonviolence, Butler claims that nonviolence is a way of acknowledging social relation. One might wish to ask – is this all there is to nonviolence? Or, are there not many and various social relations that are harmful, such that we may not wish to acknowledge them? Dr Adriana Zaharijević will walk us through Judith Butler’s conception of an ontology of the body, developed in opposition to what is in their work often called liberal versions of ontology. Dr Zaharijević’s claim is that in this moment, shaped by multiple wars, dreams of invulnerability, aggrandized masculinism and call for a return to a glorious past – the past of profound inequality – Butler’s philosophy of nonviolence must be read as a philosophy of peace. One such philosophy takes stock of vulnerability, interdependence, plurality and cohabitation seriously, as it acknowledges the relation between the body and the world.
About the speaker
Dr Adriana Zaharijević is a Principal Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Her work combines political philosophy, feminist theory and social history. She is the author of four monographs (in Serbian) Becoming a Woman [2010], Who Is an Individual? [2014, 2019], Life of Bodies [2020], and Judith Butler and Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2023; Judith Butler in Politika, Univerza u Ljubljani, 2025). She published in East European Politics and Societies, European Journal of Women Studies, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Redescriptions, Signs, Social Politics, and Women’s Studies International Forum. Her texts have been translated into Albanian, Bulgarian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Slovenian, Turkish, and Ukrainian, and she has been translating feminist theory and philosophy into Serbian for two decades. She writes short pieces for a wider public, in which she tackles social inequalities, antinationalism and antimilitarism. Adriana is the 2022 Emma Goldman Snowball awardee.
This activity is funded by the EUI Widening Europe Programme. The EUI Widening Europe Programme, backed by contributions from the European Union and EUI Contracting States, is designed to strengthen internationalisation, competitiveness, and quality in research in Widening countries, and thus foster a more cohesive European Higher Education and Research Area.
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