Nonviolence is perhaps best described as a practice of resistance that becomes possible, if not mandatory, precisely at the moment when doing violence seems most justified and obvious. In this way, it can be understood as a practice that not only stops a violent act, or a violent process, but requires a form of sustained action, sometimes aggressively pursued. So, one suggestion I will make is that we can think of nonviolence not simply as the absence of violence, or as the act of refraining from committing violence, but as a sustained commitment, even a way of rerouting aggression for the purposes of affirming ideals of equality and freedom.
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About Judith Butler
Judith Butler was a contemporary American feminist and queer philosopher. Judith Butler is an American feminist and queer philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, psychoanalysis, and the fields of feminist and queer theory, academic freedom, and literary theory. Read more on Wikipedia →