Below are some thoughts from Marga van Mechelen which she would have liked to contribute to the 3rd meeting of the Usual Suspects with Judith Butler: [please do not cite without the author's permission]
“Living with and without Judith Butler
Let me first say that my opinion about Butler changed a lot since let say 1986-1993, the years in which I published an article about the concept of Empathy (Einfühlung) in the work of Julia Kristeva( 1986) and my dissertation in 1993. I criticized her for her very restricted, short by the curve interpretation of Kristeva, apparently caused by not knowing her work entirely. This criticism does not play a role anymore in what I wrote in my Appel book, as you can read underneath. This year I read for the first time Jonathan Culler “Philosophy and Literature: The Fortunes of the Performative”.
