"In Frames of War Judith Butler explores the way that recent U.S.-led wars have enforced a distinction between those lives that are recognized as grievable, and those that are not. Butler shows how this situation, enacted through media forms that have become part of the very waging of war, has led to the first-world destruction and abandonment of populations who do not conform to the prevailing Western norm of the human. Cast as threats to human life as we know it, such peoples are targeted for destruction in order to protect the lives of "the living." This disparity, Butler argues, has profound implications for why and when we feel horror, outrage, guilt, loss and righteous indifference, both in the context of war and, increasingly, everyday life."
