On Judith Butler and Ethics

In bereavement as in fury we are beside ourselves. Love and pain are experiences of self-loss and dependence. Embarrassment always requires another's gaze, even if they are imaginary others. The dynamism of emotions runs from person to person. If it did not, we would have no literature. To proivatise an emotion as 'mine' is worse than to take credit for someone else's emotion without taking responsibility for it.

(Pictures of grief, shock, even of love, risk stealing an emotion wwe observers have not deserved. The critical act observes under the condition that the observed is changed by observation, but so too is the observer. The pretence of objectivity is the opposite of ethical. This is why psychology is like a fish]