Written in the aftermath of September 11, Precarious Life is Judith Butler’s meditation on this specific type of grief.

It is a weaving of philosophy, political theory, and public discourse. Butler examines how violence is justified through differential recognition and how some deaths are mourned publicly while others are invisible.

Butler positions mourning as a site of ethics, responsibility, and the limits of national belonging, it serves as a foundational text for thinking about war, state violence, precarity, and the politics of recognition in the 21st century.