butler service essay

What to Know About Hotel Butler Service, Including What You Can—and Can’t—Ask For

By Ali Wunderman

You may have heard butler service touted as a perk in some of the world's best hotels . After all, part of the joy of travel is indulging in luxuries you don't get at home, like having a daily housekeeping service or quick access to a full-service spa —and when it comes to next-level hotel amenities, few are as decadent as being assigned a personal butler at check-in.

Yet while having someone wait on you is a traditional marker of luxury in the hospitality space, at a time when improving travel equity is a priority it can feel uncomfortable to ask a perfect stranger to take care of tasks on your behalf. Even knowing what to ask for can be a challenge.

Unlike hotel concierges, hotel butlers are dedicated to their specific guests, and go above and beyond to create a personalized experience. Pietro Addis, general manager of the Mandarin Oriental, Canouan in St. Vincent and the Grenadines likens it to the role of a celebrity or CEO’s assistant. “This person is ultimately there to take a weight off their guest’s shoulders and bring a sense of calm,” he says. With a hotel butler, “there’s direct communication in real time, versus a guest having to call down to the front desk for something or dialing restaurant reservations to get that 8p.m. seating.”

Knowing that hotel butlers take great pride in their work, we spoke with those employed by some of the most luxurious hotels around the world to better understand how to make the most of having someone at your service, while ensuring they are treated with respect. Below, we cover everything you need to know about using the butler service at a hotel.

What does butler service include?

This will vary from property to property, but a butler’s role is generally to be the point person overseeing the guest experience. Baseline services can include setting up airport transfers, unpacking luggage, and serving a daily breakfast, as Penthouse guests at the Hotel Arts Barcelona experience.

At the Hotel Arts Barcelona, penthouse guests are provided with full butler service—whether that looks like help unpacking luggage, or setting up airport transfers. 

At the luxury resort Gili Lankanfushi in the Maldives , part of the job includes helping guests adjust to being on a remote island, à la ‘Man Friday’ from the story of Robinson Crusoe. “Our Mr. and Ms. Fridays embrace a similar concept and introduce guests to the Gili way of life,” explains a team member overseeing the butler program at the hotel. “Mr./Ms. Fridays become the main contact and are available 24/7 [to] oversee all elements of the guest experience, including arranging reservations for the spa, on-the-water excursions, and dining.”

In Morocco , every riad at Royal Mansour is assigned a single butler to ensure a highly personalized experience. “The butler is a conductor, they coordinate between different services at the hotel according to their guests’ needs,” explains butler service manager Antoine Berche. “They practice many jobs simultaneously: head waiter, sommelier, cook, housekeeper, receptionist, concierge, security guard, personal assistant.”

Most importantly, highly-trained butlers are ready to meet the needs of their guests, creating what Berche calls the “Royal Mansour Magic.” Butlers can be relied upon to address every aspect of a guest’s stay by anticipating their needs with efficiency and discretion. “Before the arrival of the guest, I prepare myself for all types of requests I might receive,” adds butler Mohamed Fadil. “It could be packing suitcases, arranging a romantic dinner, or even a marriage proposal.”

Many of these properties work with guests prior to arrival to be able to predict their needs with the greatest accuracy, but it’s the ability for butlers to take on requests in the moment that makes their service so valuable.

What can guests ask hotel butlers for?

Common requests hotel butlers receive from their guests include adjusting or creating vacation itineraries, like making restaurant reservations, scheduling golf tee times, or arranging special meal setups. What guests specifically ask for will vary from location to location. For example, a typical request of butlers at Mandarin Oriental, Canouan is preparing beach lounge chairs and setting out sunscreen , while in Barcelona , Hotel Arts butlers will arrange private lounge rooms for big events like Formula 1 or Moto Grand Prix races. Whatever a guest needs, “the butler is prepared to arrange all of that, seamlessly,” Addis of Mandarin Oriental, Canouan notes.

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But, of course, there are limits to the power of a hotel butler.

What should guests avoid asking for?

“With respect to our destination, we have to also be very realistic,” says Addis of the hotel's location in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. “We are located on a very small island without an over-abundance of shops and venues that someone can find in a huge city or another country.” This means guests may need to be flexible about which brands of sunscreen or snacks are available locally, for example, though of course the hotel always tries its best to satisfy every request. 

The Maldives is similarly beholden to mother nature—and it can be a bit shocking to learn what some guests expect of staff, particularly when it comes to wildlife.  The Mr. and Ms. Fridays of Gili Lankanfushi will not, for example, remove a stingray from the water as this interferes with the animal’s natural behavior. Meanwhile, Fadil makes it clear that “anything illegal” is similarly off the table, while at Hotel Arts Barcelona, butlers won’t facilitate arrangements with third party vendors the hotel does not consider trustworthy.

The long and short of it: If something feels out of bounds to ask for, it probably is. In terms of how you make requests, keep in mind that every hotel has their own regulations when it comes to the hours that butlers work, so it’s important to respect at what time of day requests are being made. And, if your butler serves several guests, be considerate of the fact that they may not be available at the drop of the hat every time you need something (but you have time—you're on vacation, after all). 

What makes having a butler so special?

The time and energy saved by delegating tasks to butlers is apparent, but many hotel guests also value the personal connection that’s formed, both with the butler themselves and the destination as a whole. “The butler service offers a highly personalized service and creates an emotional experience for our guests,” Berche says. This is an experience echoed at Gili Lankanfushi—and at both hotels, repeat guests frequently request to have the same butler.

Some guests even ask their Mr. Fridays to join their excursions, the team at Gili Lankanfushi adds. When it comes to finding the balance between friendly and over the line, however, just remember to evaluate whether asking a butler to hang out with you is exploitative in any way, or if they might feel like a paid friend who doesn’t actually want to spend the day snorkeling with your family, unless they can be of clear service.

At Royal Mansour in Morocco, every riad is assigned a personal butler. 

Do I tip my butler?

This is a direct way to show your appreciation and is always encouraged when working with a personal butler. “A tip is a recognition from the guest to any person who works at the hotel,” says Hotel Arts Barcelona Penthouse Manager Frederico Keim. Whether that’s a butler, housekeeper, waiter, supervisor, or manager, guests are encouraged to acknowledge outstanding service with a tip. The staff at the Mandarin Oriental, Canouan shares a similar perspective, encouraging guests to ask themselves a few questions when considering what kind of gratuity to leave for their butler: Did this person help make my vacation experience incredible? Did this person go the extra mile for me, throughout the stay?

When tipping, 5 percent of the nightly room rate, per day where the butler’s services are used, is considered appropriate. So if you call on your butler for seven days at $1000 per night, you would tip $50 per night, or $350 total.

How else can guests show their butler appreciation?

Financial feedback isn’t the only way to show appreciation for a butler’s service. “It's appreciated when the guest shares their [butler] experience with the management team at Royal Mansour,” Fadil says, especially since a guest's departure can be an emotional moment. TripAdvisor reviews can also go a long way in appreciating excellent service. “Hospitality is a two-way street,” Addis says. “While we want all of our guests to have the best possible experience while staying on-property with us, we also want our team members to feel valued and proud to represent their place of work.” He believes manners and kindness impact hotel staff a great deal, and that starts with the basics. “There is something to be said about a guest who really gets to know his or her butler’s name.”

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What is Butler Service?

Butler service is the pinnacle of personalized and refined domestic service, epitomized by the role of a professional known as a Butler. A Butler is responsible for orchestrating the smooth and efficient operation of a household or a specific environment, often found in luxury hotels, private estates, yachts, or private jets. The essence of Butler service lies in its unwavering commitment to anticipating and fulfilling the needs and desires of employers or clients with an unparalleled attention to detail and a dedication to providing exceptional hospitality.

At the heart of Butler service is the art of personalized guest care. Butlers are not just service providers; they are hospitality maestros who understand that each client is unique. They tailor their services to cater to individual preferences, creating an environment of luxury and comfort that transcends the ordinary. This keen focus on personalization enables Butlers to anticipate their clients’ needs, whether it’s preparing a favorite meal, arranging a special event, or ensuring every aspect of a guest’s stay is tailored to perfection.

Another crucial facet of a Butler’s role is household management. In private households, Butlers often serve as the linchpin of domestic organization. They manage household staff, coordinate schedules, oversee household finances, and maintain the property to the highest standards. This encompassing role requires not only meticulous attention to detail but also exceptional leadership and communication skills to ensure the smooth running of the household.

Butler service also embodies an embodiment of etiquette and protocol. Butlers are well-versed in the intricacies of proper conduct and social graces, ensuring that all interactions and events they oversee are conducted with grace and decorum. Their mastery of etiquette enables them to create an atmosphere of sophistication and elegance, whether they are hosting a formal dinner or welcoming distinguished guests.

Additionally, fine dining is a hallmark of Butler service. Butlers possess an extraordinary level of expertise in formal dining service. This includes the art of setting an impeccably laid table, the presentation of food and wine, and the observance of precise serving etiquette. They have a knack for turning every meal into a gastronomic experience, enhancing the overall dining journey for their clients or guests.

In the role of a Butler, providing concierge services is also paramount. Butlers are adept at assisting clients or employers with a wide range of needs, from making travel arrangements and managing itineraries to organizing events and procuring exclusive experiences. Their extensive knowledge and connections allow them to create unforgettable moments and cater to every request.

Furthermore, Butlers uphold the principles of security and confidentiality. Given their access to valuable possessions and sensitive information, they must exhibit the utmost discretion and trustworthiness in their role. Clients and employers rely on Butlers not only for their exceptional service but also for their unwavering commitment to safeguarding their privacy and assets.

In essence, Butler service represents the pinnacle of excellence, professionalism, and a deep understanding of the needs of those being served. It is a role that seamlessly blends the highest standards of hospitality, management, etiquette, and security, making it an indispensable asset in various upscale settings where personalized and impeccable service is paramount.

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Judith Butler: The Early Years

Before Judith Butler’s 1990 book Gender Trouble , the influential gender theorist wrote a series of essays that offer easier access to her ideas.

Judith Butler’s famous 1990 book Gender Trouble features on countless undergraduate reading lists in the humanities. The book’s wide-ranging line of inquiry, unforgiving style, and often abrupt shifts in focus are well known—and widely lamented among readers. Many students have been daunted by the book, and deriding especially challenging snippets has become something of a rite of passage .

Thankfully, a more rarely read set of texts can rescue a reader from despair. Between 1985 and 1989, Judith Butler published six short essays introducing ideas she would return to throughout her career. Each essay addresses a particular concern, in most cases focusing on a single thinker. Between these six pieces, Butler outlines a distinctive view of gender as tangled up with embodiment . This perspective opposes any tidy distinction between sex as both natural and bodily and gender as both cultural and historical. This idea is critical, and bears repeating: Butler is attacking the commonly assumed sex-gender distinction.

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The French social theorists Butler addresses viewed our bodies as being immersed in social norms, in legal definitions, and in everyday routines. As Butler summarized it in “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution”:

The body is not passively scripted with cultural codes, as if it were a lifeless recipient of wholly pre-given cultural relations. But neither do embodied selves pre-exist the cultural conventions which essentially signify bodies.

This is a challenging claim. But Butler’s basic idea is that our experience of society is always through our bodies. Before Gender Trouble , Butler explored this idea repeatedly.

Variations on Beauvoir

The first of Butler’s early essays, “Variations on Sex and Gender in Beauvoir, Wittig and Foucault” was published in 1985 in the Marxist journal Praxis International . Most of the essay focuses on French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, and particularly her great feminist treatise The Second Sex . Beauvoir held that there was no separable self, a self able to stand apart from the process of thinking. For Beauvoir (and Butler) there could be no “I” which predated cultural involvement, no aloof “thinker within,” staring into life from outside. Beauvoir thus saw gender as a project . Womanhood was never a settled matter; it changed across time. As Butler puts it, gender is “an incessant project, a daily act of reconstruction and interpretation.” This existentialist position implies a greatly expanded role for human behavior. As Butler puts it, if this view holds true, “then both gender and sex seem to be thoroughly cultural affairs.” (This phrasing echoes in the title of a great essay Butler would pen a decade later: “ Merely Cultural .”)

But this argument left a dilemma. As Butler asked: “How can gender be both a matter of choice and cultural construction?” Beauvoir’s treatment of embodiment offered one way of answering this. Beauvoir proposed the term situation to describe the body’s status. Through our bodies, we can reinterpret existing mores, customs, and expectations. While never outside a social context, the body was also always active. The body’s social involvement can be experienced as a kind of oppression, but it also grants a license for liberation through “re-articulation,” or self-definition. Bodies are both the site of oppression and the means of escape.

In this early piece, Butler had already settled on a style characterized by a readiness to tackle contradictory aspects of gender:

Becoming a gender is an impulsive yet mindful process of interpreting a cultural reality laden with sanctions, taboos and prescriptions. The choice to assume a certain kind of body, to live or wear one’s body a certain way, implies a world of already established corporeal styles. To choose a gender is to interpret received gender norms in a way that reproduces and organizes them anew. Less a radical act of creation, gender is a tacit project to renew a cultural history in one’s own corporeal terms.

Our bodies can challenge the norms we encounter, but we also recreate those norms through our bodies.

Butler is less approving in her treatment of Monique Wittig, who she describes as “alarming.” Wittig saw gender as a weaponized delusion. While anatomical differences between people appear in manifold ways (for instance, the extension or inset of an earlobe), it was only those differences associated directly with reproduction which were declared “sexual.” Men and women are set apart on the basis of fairly arbitrary traits, onto which a contrived meaning is imposed. Then, for Wittig, a retroactive naturalization of the existing political order takes place: the sex we are now is presented as what we were all along .

This basic categorization of anatomies was threatened by the very existence of lesbians. Lesbian erotic practices were not limited to the genitals, and lesbians refused to define themselves as wives married to a particular man. Wittig’s writing envisioned these women making revolutionary efforts to rework their anatomies—and their societies—in their own terms. Butler grows incomprehending as the essay continues:

It might well seem that Wittig has entered into a Utopian ground that leaves the rest of us situated souls waiting impatiently this side of her liberating imaginary space. After all, The Lesbian Body is a fantasy, and it is not clear whether we readers are supposed to recognize a potential course of action in that text, or simply be dislocated from our usual assumptions about bodies and pleasure.

Despite this distancing, Wittig’s criticism of heterosexuality clearly enjoyed a profound grip on Butler. Both thinkers shared a lesbian reading of Beauvoir. Wittig saw sex as a category that required the political imposition of heterosexuality, which Wittig calls the “heterosexual regime.” Clear fingerprints of this position are found on Butler’s later description of a “heterosexual matrix.”

But Wittig’s strategy was more sweeping than Butler’s. Rather than subversion, Wittig argues for an end to sexual division itself. Butler’s doubts are at once practical and theoretical: “On the one hand, Wittig calls for a transcendence of sex altogether, but her theory might equally well lead to an inverse conclusion, to the dissolution of binary restrictions through the proliferation of genders.”

Whether abolishing gender would mean no or infinite genders is a recurring question in feminist thought (that I’ve examined in another essay ). Butler ultimately says that Wittig’s politics are “profoundly humanistic,” but she certainly intended this remark as a putdown. Butler could never advocate doing away with gender altogether. This cautiousness was most certainly advantageous in the 1980s and 1990s, a time of collapsing fortune for the left internationally amid the rise of the New Right. Today, her timidity reads differently.

This essay also introduces Michel Foucault, who is closely associated with Butler’s thought. Foucault, like Wittig, saw sex as a wholly political assembly of anatomical features and animating drives, drawn together by the demands of power. Butler suggests that this agreement across contexts has “improbable but significant consequences for feminist theory.” From this medley of complex and challenging texts, Butler takes a surprisingly clear message: “The political program for overcoming binary restrictions ought to be concerned… with cultural innovation rather than myths of transcendence.” In other words, a newfound creativity is required for fruitful gender politics, rather than a myth of rising above distinction—or idealizing androgyny.

A second essay, “ Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex ,” published in Yale French Studies is really a second version of “Variations on Sex,” only more laser-focused on the thorny position on embodiment found in Beauvoir. Butler briefly addresses the question of sex, which she claims is more easily settled than womanhood: a sex is defined by what one cannot also be (those who can bear children being bracketed as female, as opposed to those who can inseminate). Butler then doubles back to acknowledge that chromosomal variation could provide yet another layer of complexity.

However, this is not an anatomically sufficient account of intersex variations: in many cases those born intersex have XY chromosomes accompanied by an insensitivity to sex hormones that causes them to be taken for female. Nevertheless, this acknowledgement of intersex experiences was unusual for theory of the time, and to Butler’s lasting credit she would follow up this early inclusivity in her essay “Doing Justice to Someone,” on the case of David Reimer .

Butler’s View of Gender

“ Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory ” was published in Theatre Journal . This article debuts Butler’s most famous argument: that gender is performative. In other words, that gendered practices are generative of gender, rather than reflecting any innate inner truth. Easily her greatest contribution to gender theory, Butler’s “performativity” argument also ranks as one of the most widely misunderstood propositions in the history of thought. In interviews and writings since , Butler has been quick to distinguish the performativity thesis from describing gender as simply performance . “Performative” is a quality of how we live out our genders: becoming by doing.

“Performative Acts and Gender Constitution” offers a clear account of Butler’s performativity thesis by opposing it to the expressive view of gender. Performativity was intended to replace the framework of gender roles (commonplace in gender theory then and since):

Gender cannot be understood as a role which either expresses or disguises an interior “self,” whether that “self” is conceived as sexed or not.

The expressive view Butler sought to replace presents gender as an inner self, which practices allow to emerge. By contrast, Butler saw those practices , and their repetition, as the source of gender.

This essay hints at an intimate familiarity with the restrictions and stigmatization that define gendered experience:

As a corporeal field of cultural play, gender is a basically innovative affair, although it is quite clear that there are strict punishments for contesting the script by performing out of turn or through unwarranted improvisations.

While Butler sees gender as potentially liberatory, she was also well aware that gender norms are often experienced in terms of confinement, stigmatization, and chastisement over deviance. “Performativity” describes the contours of an ongoing field of struggle.

On Embodiment

Butler’s final three publications before Gender Trouble were all released in 1989. Each engages with a particular thinker’s thoughts on gender and the body: Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

“ The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva ,” published in the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia offers a critical view of a critical view. Kristeva, the Bulgarian-French feminist philosopher, attempted to correct the androcentrism of the seminal Parisian psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan. While Lacan stressed the importance of the patriarchy in structuring the symbolic, and therefore language, Kristeva presents a version of psychoanalysis that features a formative trauma of maternal separation. In this view, motherhood occupied a dominating and “pre-discursive” role (in that maternal attachment comes before speech). Kristeva saw maternity as “semiotic” in scope—it unfolds on the level of sign-process, extending beyond mere linguistics.

Butler finds two aspects of Kristeva’s worldview unacceptable: Her view of motherhood accepts that women (or females?) wish to give birth as a matter of “pre-discursive biological necessity.” To be a female means to want to give birth. Secondly, this view has no place for lesbians as full participants in culture, with Kristeva instead declaring them “inherently psychotic.”

For Kristeva, female homosexuality was too radical a break with the paternal law and symbolic order to be culturally intelligible. Since heterosexuality was defined (for either partner) as a means of getting over the trauma of separation from the maternal body, desiring other women was anti-social. While heterosexuality’s psychodrama joined together two matchings sets of traumas, lesbianism could play no such role. Butler gently implies that Kristeva is examining her own phobia, rather than the phenomenon of lesbian desire itself:

Significantly, this description of lesbian experience is effected from the outside, and tells us more about the fantasies that a fearful heterosexual culture produces to defend against its own homosexual possibilities than about lesbian experience itself.

This defense of lesbianism was hardly surprising coming from Butler. Having spent most of her adult life out, Butler even played a minor role in the so called “lesbian sex wars.” During the early 1980s, sadomasochist groups such as New York City’s Lesbian Sex Mafia or California’s Samois were charged by more “radical” lesbian feminists with being subversive agents of patriarchy. In 1982, the Against Sadomasochism collection included an essay criticising Samois entitled, “Lesbian S&M: The Politics of Dis-Illusion,” written under the penname Judy Butler. Butler had moved well clear of this circle—and this commitment—by the later 1980s. In these essays, Butler often cited the queer thinker Gayle Rubin, once a prominent member of Samois.

By 1989, Butler had gained profound doubts that categories such as “female” or “the maternal” could be relied upon for an emancipatory politics: “The female body that [Kristeva] seeks to express is itself a construct produced by the very law it is supposed to undermine.” For Butler, female identity could not be presupposed, set apart from legal regimes as having some primordial force.

Next, Butler addresses Maurice Merleau-Ponty , a major French phenomenologist. Nine years earlier, Iris Marion Young had offered a favorable feminist account of Merleau-Ponty, but Butler was considerably more critical.

Butler charges Merleau-Ponty with assuming heterosexuality as the default state. In Merleau-Ponty’s examination of the famous Schneider case, a brain-damaged patient of influential German psychologists Adhémar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein, Merleau-Ponty assumes that Schneider’s lack of interest in women who he finds unappealing on a personal level is evidence of “repression.” Butler suggests it instead makes Schneider a “feminist of sorts.” Merleau-Ponty expected men to experience desire as an objectifying force, presupposing heterosexuality as a universal norm. This resulted in him failing not only as a feminist, but as a phenomenologist:

Viewed as an expression of sexual ideology, The Phenomenology of Perception reveals the cultural construction of the masculine subject as a strangely disembodied voyeur whose sexuality is strangely non-corporeal… Erotic experience is almost never described as tactile or physical or even passionate.

Later scholars have argued that Butler’s harsh approach overlooks a potential radicalism found in embodied phenomenology. And other subsequent scholarship has noted that Beauvoir’s theorizing was informed by Merleau-Ponty, developing their shared key theme of ambiguity .

“ Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions ” was published in The Journal of Philosophy and examines how Foucault’s work, taken as a whole, “raises the question of whether there is in fact a body which is external to its construction, invariant in some of its structures which… represents a dynamic locus of resistance to culture per se.” The essay seems unable to answer this question. One Foucault text is aimlessly compared to the next, without considering whether the resulting coherence may have an obvious source: developments in Foucault’s thought occurred as he completed one work after another.

Perhaps most remarkable is the essay’s opening line: “The position that the body is constructed is one that is surely, if not immediately, associated with Michel Foucault.” Today, it’s difficult to imagine a more immediate association than this one, in no small part as a result of Gender Trouble .

Between these six essays, Butler outlined a view of gender as extending beyond any straightforward distinction. Gender was a means used by any given individual to situate themselves in their era’s prevailing mores. Or to resist them. Performativity is at once the invariant burden and liberatory promise offered by Butler’s thinking. The “construction” Butler has in mind when she writes of gender is a messy and ongoing process, always featuring both punishment for transgression and the potential for getting free.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to address several broken links.

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“The Butler” by Lee Daniels Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The Butler , by Lee Daniels, focuses on the Gaines’ family and its interaction with the various presidential families that the main character served in his time as the White House butler. However, it also chronicled the burgeoning movements of the civil rights era that were taken across the United States. Gaines has been taught that, as a butler, his job is to remain unnoticed and that when he enters a room, it should ‘feel empty’.

He struggles to balance between his professional pride and his feelings as a black man in the face of what is taking place in the US. In his 34-year tenure, he is a witness of the views of the various ways in which the presidents make decisions involving blacks, and how the movements have affected these decisions and the lives of people.

While in the White House, he witnesses the inner struggle that Eisenhower goes through as he tries to prevent the use of troops to enforce desegregation in the south as well as his resolve to uphold the law when he integrates Little Rock in Arkansas. This increases his respect for the man and gives him a more complex understanding of the workings of the White House. The 1963 march, in which his firstborn was son is involved, agitates for equal rights.

In fact, it is one of the many movements that affect his character and relationship with his family. The proposal of the civil rights group led by JF Kennedy marked a critical point in the struggle for equality. Even after his assassination, his successor, Lloyd B Jonson enacted the law, which proved a particularly transformative piece of legislation for the black populace. His admiration for President Kennedy is evinced by his gratefulness on receiving one of his neckties from his wife after his assassination.

During the civil rights movements of the late 1960’s, Gaines is engaged in protracted conflict with his son, who he views as disobedient and rebellious for becoming a part of the resistance and joining the black panthers. He also loses Charlie, one of his sons, in the Vietnam War, which deeply affects and embitters him.

He proves to be a revolutionist in his own right when he agitates for equal rights and better pay for White House staff. He becomes friends with Reagan, who even invites him to a state dinner, but during these interactions, the huge marked class and racial differences in the White House disturb Gainer. The more he keeps the ‘upper’ company, the less comfortable he feels and he starts to realize that the president does not necessarily feel as he does about equality.

When Reagan refuses to support economic sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid rule, Gaines decides that he can no longer work for him and resigns. He tries to mend his relationship with his estranged wife and son. He discovers that Louis, despite having different opinions from him, respected him a great deal.

He even joins the Free South African Movement as a way to express support for both the people of South Africa and his son’s decision. Finally, the frame of the movie puts into the context the results of the many movements to secure the future for the African American as the main character waits to meet the first black president at the White House from where the story is narrated.

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IvyPanda. (2020, April 1). "The Butler" by Lee Daniels. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-butler-by-lee-daniels/

""The Butler" by Lee Daniels." IvyPanda , 1 Apr. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/the-butler-by-lee-daniels/.

IvyPanda . (2020) '"The Butler" by Lee Daniels'. 1 April.

IvyPanda . 2020. ""The Butler" by Lee Daniels." April 1, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-butler-by-lee-daniels/.

1. IvyPanda . ""The Butler" by Lee Daniels." April 1, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-butler-by-lee-daniels/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . ""The Butler" by Lee Daniels." April 1, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-butler-by-lee-daniels/.

Butler University 2023-24 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Early Action: Nov 1

Regular Decision Deadline: Feb 1

You Have: 

Butler University 2023-24 Application Essay Explanations

The Requirements: 1 short essay of 100 words

Supplemental Essay Type: Why  

Briefly describe your reasons for selecting your chosen academic major(s) and how you believe Butler will help you achieve your related career goals upon graduation. (100 words)

This prompt gives you the opportunity to geek out about your intended major at Butler. Will Butler’s Actuarial Science major help you improve upon your statistical skills? Or are you planning to get a jump on your Hollywood career with a major in Creative Media and Entertainment? Whether your goals are intellectual, professional, or somewhere in between, your reasoning should be grounded in what Butler has to offer. 

Though 100 words isn’t a lot of space, that doesn’t mean you can’t offer a detailed response. Get ambitious and aim to answer these two key questions: What do you absolutely love about your intended major? Why is this school the ideal place for you to study it? Think about what excites you about Butler’s academics: professors, classes, guest speakers, alumni. Dig deep to show admissions that Butler is a key ingredient for your future success.

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These Butlers Are Neither Carson Nor Hudson

The rise of “executive butlers” — a breed whose job combines silver polishing with being a concierge and a maitre d’ — reflects the changing nature of the very rich.

Graeme Currie at Weston Park, where he served as head butler for a decade. These days, he said, being a butler requires “sparkle, darling, sparkle.” Credit... Billy Barraclough for The New York Times

Supported by

By Plum Sykes

Plum Sykes reported this story from her home in Britain’s Cotswolds region. She has written about society for magazines and in several novels.

• May 14, 2024

In Britain’s bucolic Cotswolds region, the arrival of summer is typically marked by a migration. Specifically, the return of a rarefied group to grand country houses in counties like Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire, where preparations begin for a season of hosting guests at picnics, luncheons and events like the Chelsea Flower Show , the Royal Ascot horse races and “the tennis” — shorthand for a center court box at Wimbledon .

Owners of those country estates — let’s call them the one percent of the one percent — of course do not handle such preparations themselves. These are relegated to butlers, whose job, like for others associated with the lifestyles of the ultrawealthy, has evolved.

As personal assistants have been rebranded as executive assistants and child care providers as executive nannies, buttling has become a career that involves not only polishing silver and folding napkins but also lifestyle management.

The modern butler — also known as, wait for it, an executive butler — is still in most cases a man. But he is no longer a grandfatherly type in morning trousers that stays in the background, if not out of sight. More likely, he is fresh-faced, wears a lounge suit with a Charvet tie and is by his employers’ side whether they are at home or not.

“They’re like a private maitre d’ now,” said Nicky Haslam, 84, the English interior designer and social fixture. “In the old days the butler was in the house all the time. Now, if the family is on their yacht, the butler goes with them.”

This was not the case as recently as the 1990s, when butlers for the most part reflected the archetype popularized by characters like Hudson, from the TV show “Upstairs, Downstairs”; Carson , from “Downton Abbey”; or Stevens, from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “The Remains of the Day.”

Among that ilk was Michael Kenneally, a mischievous Irish butler employed for decades by my cousin, Sir Tatton Sykes , at his country estate, Sledmere , in the county of Yorkshire.

His antics were legendary. If children were visiting, he would sometimes accessorize his formal uniform with a curly-haired wig or glasses with plastic eyeballs on springs. His pièce de résistance was riding through the dining room after dinner on a bicycle with a port tray balanced on the handlebars, a trick that was noted in his obituary in The Telegraph. When he died at 65 in 1999, his funeral drew a crowd of about 300 people, and he was buried alongside members of the family that had employed him for 40 years. On the headstone marking his grave, the epitaph simply read “The Butler.”

The profession’s evolution in recent decades is a signifier of a societal shift in Britain: What rich people want has changed because who rich people are has changed.

That group’s makeup has shifted from being primarily aristocratic families, the type long associated with traditional butlers, to include a new breed of self-made, high-net-worth individuals who have built fortunes in industries like technology and media and who see butlers less as part of the furniture and more as a flashy accessory.

Graeme Currie, 53, exemplifies the modern butler, a role that he said requires “sparkle, darling, sparkle.” He has been employed by some of Britain’s highest-profile families and was the head butler for 10 years at Weston Park, an estate in the county of Staffordshire that is the ancestral home of the Earl of Bradford and can now be booked for private events.

This summer Mr. Currie — who has tawny hair and, often, a light tan — is planning to travel to various destinations in Europe to buttle at vacation houses. In his spare time, he breeds toy poodles, some of which have competed at dog shows like Crufts .

Mr. Currie is the sort of person who can whip up an espresso martini blindfolded and comprehend the precise level of froth someone might prefer for a coconut-milk cappuccino. He developed such skills in part from a career in hospitality that has included jobs on the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner and at ritzy London hotels like the Dorchester and Claridge’s and restaurants like the Ivy.

“The difference between me and an old-fashioned butler is that I’ve had the experience of people paying for dinner and of always being critiqued,” Mr. Currie said.

Seasoned butlers like him can make around 100,000 British pounds a year, or about $125,000. The job’s starting salary is closer to 40,000 pounds, or $50,000.

For butlers with full-time positions, various costs — food, lodging, even fancy uniforms — are subsidized by employers. And those who work in Europe are typically afforded the same mandatory benefits granted to other workers, like a minimum of 20 vacation days. Many develop schedules with their employers that include regular time off on the weekend or midweek to account for other days when they are expected to work long hours.

Mr. Currie was drawn to the profession for a reason that many butlers are: He is passionate about taking care of people.

“One thing I always say is that I’m very good at remembering who people are and what they want,” he said. “You’ve got to have a whole repertoire in your brain because people ask for things they have never asked for before.”

That repertoire can vary wildly depending on a butler’s location, said Niels Deijkers, the managing director of the International Butler Academy in Simpelveld, the Netherlands.

Mr. Deijkers recalled a story he had heard from an executive butler who was with a family on a yacht. “The client pointed toward the coastline and said, ‘Tonight I’d like to have dinner on top of that mountain — please arrange it,’” he said, explaining that the butler contacted a restaurant in the area, which “set up a table for six and flew in everything with a helicopter.” (Mr. Deijkers estimated that the dinner cost “around $300,000.”)

Andrew Gruselle, 53, has encountered similar demands in his time working on Lamu Island , off the coast of Kenya, where he has managed grand beachfront properties with staffs that have included cooks, housekeepers and pool attendants.

In his typical uniform of loose cotton shirt and seersucker Bermuda shorts, Mr. Gruselle has performed a range of duties: serving trays of fresh mango or papaya for breakfast; arranging water-skiing excursions; recommending fabric shops; securing reservations at the Peponi Hotel, a Lamu hot spot; and wrangling six donkeys to stage a makeshift Nativity scene at Christmas.

“When someone comes out here,” he said, “you have to be very careful that they are looked after properly, and that it’s a seamless experience for them.”

Carole Bamford, 78, expects nothing less of the head butler at Daylesford House, her country estate in Gloucestershire, one of several homes she resides at with her husband, Anthony Bamford, the billionaire owner of the British construction company JCB.

Events held at Daylesford House by the couple, known formally as Lord and Lady Bamford, are among the most coveted invitations in the Cotswolds. This spring Lady Bamford, who is the founder of Daylesford Organic , a popular British lifestyle brand, hosted various lunches with themes inspired by plants grown on the estate like snowdrops and tulips.

Leading the preparations for those lunches was, yes, Daylesford House’s head butler, whose résumé reflects those of traditional butlers, in that he has been with the Bamfords for more than 20 years.

“He was with the queen for about eight years before me,” Lady Bamford said.

But his job also involves many duties expected of modern butlers, too.

Lady Bamford recalled a recent lunch where the menu included lamb, purple sprouting broccoli, a cheese board, panna cotta and rhubarb bellinis.

“Who makes the bellinis?’” I asked.

“Well, the butler,” she said.

Susan Beachy contributed research.

Plum Sykes is the author of “Bergdorf Blondes,” “The Debutante Divorcée,” “Party Girls Die in Pearls” and the just released “Wives Like Us.”

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to write a great community service essay.

College Admissions , Extracurriculars

Are you applying to a college or a scholarship that requires a community service essay? Do you know how to write an essay that will impress readers and clearly show the impact your work had on yourself and others?

Read on to learn step-by-step instructions for writing a great community service essay that will help you stand out and be memorable.

What Is a Community Service Essay? Why Do You Need One?

A community service essay is an essay that describes the volunteer work you did and the impact it had on you and your community. Community service essays can vary widely depending on specific requirements listed in the application, but, in general, they describe the work you did, why you found the work important, and how it benefited people around you.

Community service essays are typically needed for two reasons:

#1: To Apply to College

• Some colleges require students to write community service essays as part of their application or to be eligible for certain scholarships.
• You may also choose to highlight your community service work in your personal statement.

#2: To Apply for Scholarships

• Some scholarships are specifically awarded to students with exceptional community service experiences, and many use community service essays to help choose scholarship recipients.
• Green Mountain College offers one of the most famous of these scholarships. Their "Make a Difference Scholarship" offers full tuition, room, and board to students who have demonstrated a significant, positive impact through their community service

Getting Started With Your Essay

In the following sections, I'll go over each step of how to plan and write your essay. I'll also include sample excerpts for you to look through so you can get a better idea of what readers are looking for when they review your essay.

Step 1: Know the Essay Requirements

Before your start writing a single word, you should be familiar with the essay prompt. Each college or scholarship will have different requirements for their essay, so make sure you read these carefully and understand them.

Specific things to pay attention to include:

• Length requirement
• Application deadline
• The main purpose or focus of the essay
• If the essay should follow a specific structure

Below are three real community service essay prompts. Read through them and notice how much they vary in terms of length, detail, and what information the writer should include.

From the Equitable Excellence Scholarship:

"Describe your outstanding achievement in depth and provide the specific planning, training, goals, and steps taken to make the accomplishment successful. Include details about your role and highlight leadership you provided. Your essay must be a minimum of 350 words but not more than 600 words."

From the Laura W. Bush Traveling Scholarship:

"Essay (up to 500 words, double spaced) explaining your interest in being considered for the award and how your proposed project reflects or is related to both UNESCO's mandate and U.S. interests in promoting peace by sharing advances in education, science, culture, and communications."

From the LULAC National Scholarship Fund:

"Please type or print an essay of 300 words (maximum) on how your academic studies will contribute to your personal & professional goals. In addition, please discuss any community service or extracurricular activities you have been involved in that relate to your goals."

Step 2: Brainstorm Ideas

Even after you understand what the essay should be about, it can still be difficult to begin writing. Answer the following questions to help brainstorm essay ideas. You may be able to incorporate your answers into your essay.

• What community service activity that you've participated in has meant the most to you?
• What is your favorite memory from performing community service?
• Why did you decide to begin community service?
• What made you decide to volunteer where you did?
• How has your community service changed you?
• How has your community service helped others?
• How has your community service affected your plans for the future?

You don't need to answer all the questions, but if you find you have a lot of ideas for one of two of them, those may be things you want to include in your essay.

Writing Your Essay

How you structure your essay will depend on the requirements of the scholarship or school you are applying to. You may give an overview of all the work you did as a volunteer, or highlight a particularly memorable experience. You may focus on your personal growth or how your community benefited.

Regardless of the specific structure requested, follow the guidelines below to make sure your community service essay is memorable and clearly shows the impact of your work.

Samples of mediocre and excellent essays are included below to give you a better idea of how you should draft your own essay.

Step 1: Hook Your Reader In

You want the person reading your essay to be interested, so your first sentence should hook them in and entice them to read more. A good way to do this is to start in the middle of the action. Your first sentence could describe you helping build a house, releasing a rescued animal back to the wild, watching a student you tutored read a book on their own, or something else that quickly gets the reader interested. This will help set your essay apart and make it more memorable.

Compare these two opening sentences:

"I have volunteered at the Wishbone Pet Shelter for three years."

"The moment I saw the starving, mud-splattered puppy brought into the shelter with its tail between its legs, I knew I'd do whatever I could to save it."

The first sentence is a very general, bland statement. The majority of community service essays probably begin a lot like it, but it gives the reader little information and does nothing to draw them in. On the other hand, the second sentence begins immediately with action and helps persuade the reader to keep reading so they can learn what happened to the dog.

Step 2: Discuss the Work You Did

Once you've hooked your reader in with your first sentence, tell them about your community service experiences. State where you work, when you began working, how much time you've spent there, and what your main duties include. This will help the reader quickly put the rest of the essay in context and understand the basics of your community service work.

Not including basic details about your community service could leave your reader confused.

Step 3: Include Specific Details

It's the details of your community service that make your experience unique and memorable, so go into the specifics of what you did.

For example, don't just say you volunteered at a nursing home; talk about reading Mrs. Johnson her favorite book, watching Mr. Scott win at bingo, and seeing the residents play games with their grandchildren at the family day you organized. Try to include specific activities, moments, and people in your essay. Having details like these let the readers really understand what work you did and how it differs from other volunteer experiences.

Compare these two passages:

"For my volunteer work, I tutored children at a local elementary school. I helped them improve their math skills and become more confident students."

"As a volunteer at York Elementary School, I worked one-on-one with second and third graders who struggled with their math skills, particularly addition, subtraction, and fractions. As part of my work, I would create practice problems and quizzes and try to connect math to the students' interests. One of my favorite memories was when Sara, a student I had been working with for several weeks, told me that she enjoyed the math problems I had created about a girl buying and selling horses so much that she asked to help me create math problems for other students."

The first passage only gives basic information about the work done by the volunteer; there is very little detail included, and no evidence is given to support her claims. How did she help students improve their math skills? How did she know they were becoming more confident?

The second passage is much more detailed. It recounts a specific story and explains more fully what kind of work the volunteer did, as well as a specific instance of a student becoming more confident with her math skills. Providing more detail in your essay helps support your claims as well as make your essay more memorable and unique.

Step 4: Show Your Personality

It would be very hard to get a scholarship or place at a school if none of your readers felt like they knew much about you after finishing your essay, so make sure that your essay shows your personality. The way to do this is to state your personal strengths, then provide examples to support your claims. Take some time to think about which parts of your personality you would like your essay to highlight, then write about specific examples to show this.

• If you want to show that you're a motivated leader, describe a time when you organized an event or supervised other volunteers.
• If you want to show your teamwork skills, write about a time you helped a group of people work together better.
• If you want to show that you're a compassionate animal lover, write about taking care of neglected shelter animals and helping each of them find homes.

Step 5: State What You Accomplished

After you have described your community service and given specific examples of your work, you want to begin to wrap your essay up by stating your accomplishments. What was the impact of your community service? Did you build a house for a family to move into? Help students improve their reading skills? Clean up a local park? Make sure the impact of your work is clear; don't be worried about bragging here.

If you can include specific numbers, that will also strengthen your essay. Saying "I delivered meals to 24 home-bound senior citizens" is a stronger example than just saying "I delivered meals to lots of senior citizens."

Also be sure to explain why your work matters. Why is what you did important? Did it provide more parks for kids to play in? Help students get better grades? Give people medical care who would otherwise not have gotten it? This is an important part of your essay, so make sure to go into enough detail that your readers will know exactly what you accomplished and how it helped your community.

"My biggest accomplishment during my community service was helping to organize a family event at the retirement home. The children and grandchildren of many residents attended, and they all enjoyed playing games and watching movies together."

"The community service accomplishment that I'm most proud of is the work I did to help organize the First Annual Family Fun Day at the retirement home. My job was to design and organize fun activities that senior citizens and their younger relatives could enjoy. The event lasted eight hours and included ten different games, two performances, and a movie screening with popcorn. Almost 200 residents and family members attended throughout the day. This event was important because it provided an opportunity for senior citizens to connect with their family members in a way they aren't often able to. It also made the retirement home seem more fun and enjoyable to children, and we have seen an increase in the number of kids coming to visit their grandparents since the event."

The second passage is stronger for a variety of reasons. First, it goes into much more detail about the work the volunteer did. The first passage only states that she helped "organize a family event." That really doesn't tell readers much about her work or what her responsibilities were. The second passage is much clearer; her job was to "design and organize fun activities."

The second passage also explains the event in more depth. A family day can be many things; remember that your readers are likely not familiar with what you're talking about, so details help them get a clearer picture.

Lastly, the second passage makes the importance of the event clear: it helped residents connect with younger family members, and it helped retirement homes seem less intimidating to children, so now some residents see their grand kids more often.

Step 6: Discuss What You Learned

One of the final things to include in your essay should be the impact that your community service had on you. You can discuss skills you learned, such as carpentry, public speaking, animal care, or another skill.

You can also talk about how you changed personally. Are you more patient now? More understanding of others? Do you have a better idea of the type of career you want? Go into depth about this, but be honest. Don't say your community service changed your life if it didn't because trite statements won't impress readers.

In order to support your statements, provide more examples. If you say you're more patient now, how do you know this? Do you get less frustrated while playing with your younger siblings? Are you more willing to help group partners who are struggling with their part of the work? You've probably noticed by now that including specific examples and details is one of the best ways to create a strong and believable essay .

"As a result of my community service, I learned a lot about building houses and became a more mature person."

"As a result of my community service, I gained hands-on experience in construction. I learned how to read blueprints, use a hammer and nails, and begin constructing the foundation of a two-bedroom house. Working on the house could be challenging at times, but it taught me to appreciate the value of hard work and be more willing to pitch in when I see someone needs help. My dad has just started building a shed in our backyard, and I offered to help him with it because I know from my community service how much work it is. I also appreciate my own house more, and I know how lucky I am to have a roof over my head."

The second passage is more impressive and memorable because it describes the skills the writer learned in more detail and recounts a specific story that supports her claim that her community service changed her and made her more helpful.

Step 7: Finish Strong

Just as you started your essay in a way that would grab readers' attention, you want to finish your essay on a strong note as well. A good way to end your essay is to state again the impact your work had on you, your community, or both. Reiterate how you changed as a result of your community service, why you found the work important, or how it helped others.

Compare these two concluding statements:

"In conclusion, I learned a lot from my community service at my local museum, and I hope to keep volunteering and learning more about history."

"To conclude, volunteering at my city's American History Museum has been a great experience. By leading tours and participating in special events, I became better at public speaking and am now more comfortable starting conversations with people. In return, I was able to get more community members interested in history and our local museum. My interest in history has deepened, and I look forward to studying the subject in college and hopefully continuing my volunteer work at my university's own museum."

The second passage takes each point made in the first passage and expands upon it. In a few sentences, the second passage is able to clearly convey what work the volunteer did, how she changed, and how her volunteer work benefited her community.

The author of the second passage also ends her essay discussing her future and how she'd like to continue her community service, which is a good way to wrap things up because it shows your readers that you are committed to community service for the long-term.

What's Next?

Are you applying to a community service scholarship or thinking about it? We have a complete list of all the community service scholarships available to help get your search started!

Do you need a community service letter as well? We have a step-by-step guide that will tell you how to get a great reference letter from your community service supervisor.

Thinking about doing community service abroad? Before you sign up, read our guide on some of the hazards of international volunteer trips and how to know if it's the right choice for you.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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The ethics of relationality: Judith Butler and social critique

• Published: 15 August 2013
• Volume 46 , pages 449–463, ( 2013 )

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This article takes up the work of Judith Butler in order to present a vision of ethics that avoids two common yet problematic positions: on the one hand, the skeptical position that ethical norms are so constitutive of who we are that they are ultimately impossible to assess and, on the other hand, the notion that we are justified in our commitment to any ethical norm that appears foundational to our identity. With particular attention to the trajectory of Butler’s project from The Psychic Life of Power to Giving an Account of Oneself , the article discusses the shortcomings of these two positions and the virtues of the alternative account that Butler develops during this period.

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Alone with the Law: Ethics and Subjectivity

Responding to Precarity: Ethics and Mediation in Butler and Adorno

An Ethics of Relationality:

See, for example, Magnus ( 2006 ) and Mills ( 2007 ), both of whom identify a significant turn toward the ethical in Butler’s thinking.

Butler ( 2005 , p. 15).

In Unbecoming Subjects (Thiem 2008 ), Annika Thiem offers an account of Butler’s relevance for moral philosophy today. For Thiem, Butler demonstrates how moral philosophy today must be politically mindful and, in turn, how questions of justice and the good life belong to political philosophy.

In a recent interview with The Massachusetts Review , Butler herself says: “I experience my work as returning time and again to Hegel, to problems of recognition and desire, and so I am not sure there is an early and a ‘later’ Butler, but I do think that I have been compelled to take account of that part of my work that gave rise to the voluntarist reading, and to work against some of the relentless activity of Gender Trouble ” (Dumm 2008 , p. 97).

For Sartre, bad faith rests on a vacillation between transcendence and facticity which refuses to recognize either one for what it is or to synthesize them (Sartre 1956 , p. 86–116 and 800).

In Bodies That Matter , Butler writes: “Further, it will be crucial to find a way both to occupy (subject-positions) and to subject them to democratizing contestation in which the exclusionary conditions of their production are perpetually reworked” (Butler 1993 , p. 115).

(Dumm 2008 , p. 102).

Noddings ( 1984 , p. 5).

See Seyla Benhabib’s “Feminism and Postmodernism,” for example, where she charges that the presentation of the female as a historical artifice rather than a natural kind is antithetical to political goals of liberation and that “strong” versions of postmodernism like this, with which she aligns Butler’s work, jeopardize necessary foundations for political action (Benhabib 1995 ).

In the same passage, Butler clarifies: “the point is not to do away with foundations, or even to champion a position that goes under the name antifoundationalism. Both of those positions belong together as different versions of foundationalism and the skeptical problematic it engenders” (Butler 1995, p. 7).

Korsgaard ( 1996 , pp. 9–10).

Kathy Dow Magnus is right to point out that Butler’s earlier work makes no real distinction between the dispossessing force of a moral claim and that of a power differential. (Magnus 2006 , p. 84) Yet, from the beginning, Butler’s concern has been to interrogate those norms that seem most impenetrable to interrogation, that is, that seem to shut down any debate. In this way, the morally problematic claims in Butler’s early work are those she identifies as univocal claims that leave no space for dialogue or mutual interrogation.

“Subjection” means both the way that one is made subject to forms of power and the way one develops into a subject that is a being with reflexivity and agency. The Psychic Life of Power explores this twofold character of subjection.

Butler ( 1997b , pp.1–2).

Riley ( 2005 , p.15).

In Excitable Speech , Butler writes: “I wish to question for the moment the presumption that hate speech always works, not to minimize the pain that is suffered as a consequence of hate speech, but to leave open the possibility that its failure is the condition of a critical response. If the account of the injury of hate speech forecloses the possibility of a critical response to that injury, the account confirms the totalizing effects of such an injury” (Butler 1997a , p. 19).

Butler ( 2005 , p. 48).

Butler’s interpretation of Kafka’s story indeed recalls a passage from the Enchiridion of Epictetus, where Epictetus explains that “everything has two handles, one by which it can be carried and the other not.” if your brother acts unjustly toward you, Epictetus explains, you should not carry it by that handle, that is, think that you have been treated unjustly. Instead, you should consider that “he is your brother and was brought up with you” and take it by this handle, the one by which it can be carried (Epictetus 1983 , p. 26).

This corresponds to what Butler in Giving an Account of Oneself identifies as “the desire to persist in one’s social being.” (Butler 2005 , p. 44).

By contrast, Butler insists in Bodies That Matter that she does not subscribe to the theory that everything is discursively constructed, explaining that “that point, when and where it is made, belongs to a kind of discursive monism or linguisticism that refuses the constitutive force of exclusion, erasure, violent foreclosure, abjection, and its disruptive return within the very terms of discursive legitimacy” (Butler 1993 , p. 8).

(Butler 1997b , p. 11).

Note the difference between stating that we must enter a circle to speak about the subject and the denial of subjectivity. As David Stern puts it: “Agency and subjectivity—the doer and the deed—are neither eliminated nor denied (in Butler’s thought). What is denied is only the metaphysical depth of a subject behind the deed as its pure source” (Stern 2000 , p. 113).

Magnus ( 2006 , pp. 89–90).

Segal ( 2008 , p. 392).

See especially Butler’s discussion in “Subversive Bodily Acts” in Gender Trouble (Butler 1999 ). In Bodies That Matter, Butler clarifies her theory of parody’s subversive potential, by explaining that parody is neither the only form of contestation nor always a fruitful one. In her analysis of drag in the film Paris is Burning , for example, she concludes: “At best, it seems drag is the site of a certain ambivalence, one which reflects the more general situation of being implicated in the regimes of power by which one is constituted and, hence, of being implicated in the very regimes of power that one opposes” (Butler 1993 , p. 125).

Butler ( 1997b , p. 12).

For a compelling account of how such critical rupture characterizes modern subjectivity in general, see Tom Boland’s excellent “Critique as a technique of the self: A Butlerian analysis of Judith Butler’s prefaces” (Boland 2007 , 105–122).

Heidegger ( 1996 , p. 182).

Butler ( 2005 , p. 24). When Butler repeats this idea in the 2008 interview, she presents it as something that is central to her project. There she says that her recent work has tried to avoid “two extremes that would say that recognition only and always confers value or that recognition is nothing other than a slave morality.” Her sense, she explains, is that recognition is vexed, since it only takes place through social norms and thus “can be a way of subjugating or acknowledging, and sometimes it can be both at once” (Dumm 2008 , p. 97).

One could point to Heidegger’s discussion of the authenticity of the German Volk , say, in his lectures on Hölderlin’s “Der Ister” as evidence of a social or cultural Dasein , but if Dasein’s anxiety necessarily concerns its concrete mortality, no clear parallel for the social-cultural Dasein exists.

In her attempt to distinguish her position from one that rejects all foundations, Butler echoes a point that Nancy Fraser makes in her reflections on the debate between Benhabib and Butler in Feminist Contentions . Fraser explains that feminists “need both deconstruction and reconstruction, destabilization of meaning and projection of utopian hope” (Fraser 1995 , p. 71).

Butler ( 2002 , p. 216).

Butler ( 2007 , p. 182).

Butler ( 2005 , p. 22).

Emerson ( 1996 , p. 68).

Butler ( 2005 , p. 27).

Emerson ( 1996 , p. 55).

Dumm ( 2008 , p. 98).

Benhabib, Seyla. 1995. Feminism and Postmodernism. In Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange , 17–34. New York: Routledge Press.

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Culbertson, C. The ethics of relationality: Judith Butler and social critique. Cont Philos Rev 46 , 449–463 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-013-9271-z

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Published : 15 August 2013

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Monroe 7th grader wins national patriotism essay contest

MONROE — Monroe Schools’ 7th grader Jack Nerenberg’s essay just won national first place in the Daughters of the American Revolution contest.

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The butler: a witness to history.

Please call your local branch to reserve this title for your club. Bag Contents: 10 copies Available on Hoopla : audiobook and summaries

While serving tea and supervising buffets, Allen was also a witness to history as decisions about America's most momentous events were being made. Here he is at the White House while Kennedy contemplates the Cuban missile crisis; here he is again when Kennedy's widow returns from that fateful day in Dallas. Here he is when Johnson and his cabinet debate Vietnam, and here he is again when Ronald Reagan is finally forced to get tough on apartheid. Perhaps hitting closest to home was the civil rights legislation that was developed, often with passions flaring, right in front of his eyes even as his own community of neighbors, friends, and family were contending with Jim Crow America. With a foreword by the Academy Award- nominated director Lee Daniels, The Butler also includes an essay, in the vein of James Baldwin's jewel The Devil Finds Work , that explores the history of black images on celluloid and in Hollywood, and fifty-seven pictures of Eugene Allen, his family, the presidents he served, and the remarkable cast of the movie.

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