Responsibility Without Origin: Performativity, Vulnerability and Responsiveness in the Work of Judith Butler

This chapter examines Judith Butler's conceptualization of responsibility, which emerges through relationality and vulnerability, emphasizing how bodies and identities are performatively produced through social norms and political structures. It critiques Butler's reliance on Emmanuel Levinas to theorize ethical responsibility, highlighting tensions between any preontological relationality and the socialized ontology of ethical obligations. The distinction between responsibility as relationally constituted and responsiveness as politically mediated is explored, proposing a performative framework where responsibility emerges iteratively through acts of responsiveness. This reframing avoids grounding ethics in ontological origins, aligning with Butler's notion of precarity as a political condition that shapes ethical encounters