# Quote — Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind

> Nonviolent forms of resistance can and must be aggressively pursued. A practice of aggressive nonviolence is, therefore, not a contradiction in terms. Mahatma Gandhi insisted that , or “soul force,” his name for a practice and politics of nonviolence, is a nonviolent force, one that consists at once of an “insistence on truth … that arms the votary with matchless power.” To understand this force or strength, there can be no simple reduction to physical strength. At the same time, “soul force” takes an embodied form. The practice of “going limp” before political power is, on the one hand, a passive posture, and is thought to belong to the tradition of passive resistance; at the same time, it is a deliberate way of exposing the body to police power, of entering the field of violence, and of exercising an adamant and embodied form of political agency. It requires suffering, yes, but for the purposes of transforming both oneself and social reality.

- Author: [Judith Butler](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler.md)
- Book: [The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind.md)
- Page: 21
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Judith_Butler#Introduction) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/nonviolent-forms-of-resistance

## More from this book

> We are not yet speaking about equality if we have not yet spoken about equal grievability, or the equal attribution of grievability. Grievability is a defining feature of equality. Those whose grievability is not assumed are those who suffer inequality—unequal value.

p. 108 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/we-are-not.md)

> Nonviolence does not necessarily emerge from a pacific or calm part of the soul. Very often it is an expression of rage, indignation, and aggression.

p. 21 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/nonviolence-does-not.md)

> The ethical stand of nonviolence has to be linked to a commitment to radical equality. And more specifically, the practice of nonviolence requires an opposition to biopolitical forms of racism and war logics that regularly distinguish lives worth safeguarding from those that are not—populations conceived as collateral damage, or as obstructions to policy and military aims.

p. 62 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/judith-butler/the-force-of-nonviolence-an-ethico-political-bind/the-ethical-stand.md)