A Defense of Obscurity: Translating Judith Butler
September 27, 2025
In 2003, Judith Butler, a frequent winner of the "Bad Writing Award," published a long essay titled "The Value of Difficulty." In this clearly structured and elegantly worded piece, she aimed to defend "obscure" and "unclear" language.
Butler begins by citing Adorno (and, indeed, the literary modernists), whose view is that since language (especially reactionary traditional language) has already prescribed for us a hegemonic scheme for understanding and describing the real world, constructing the ideology we live by through "common sense" and making us ventriloquists for language, then critical language must use alternative and novel vocabularies to challenge, disrupt, and isolate itself from everyday usage. From this starting point, Butler explores the inherent paradox in the left's emphasis on "language accessible to the masses": universal language is often the very language used by rulers to achieve hegemony. In fact, she further points out through the dilemmas of translation in cross-cultural political practices (such as AIDS activism) that the pursuit of clear, universal language can itself constitute a new form of hegemony. In a sense, "obscurity" is an ethical posture of respecting the other's unknowability—and thus, their unmasterability.
However, although Adorno correctly identified the importance of alienated language in breaking through the multiple blockades of hegemony in cultural traditions and everyday vocabulary, Butler still notes that in his correspondence with Benjamin, Adorno sanctified the clarity of totalizing interpretive frameworks and theoretical abstractions (used to counter the totalizing culture industry) as toxicly authoritative. He denied the importance of metaphors that are not limpid, that take a detour, but which Benjamin regarded as "theory in the strictest sense." In fact, like Benjamin, Butler laments that what Adorno never understood was that metaphor is the means by which concepts are realized.
For me, Butler's article is an important warning: to be wary of reading and writing that is too easy, and to be wary of the demands and limitations aimed at weakening the provocative nature of language.
After translating this essay for the Chinese-speaking world, I felt a similar linguistic burden. For translators like myself, an important case is evidently the translation of "gender" and "sex." Modern Chinese cannot directly translate these two concepts, leading to many peculiar, even bizarre, translations in different versions. However, it is precisely this alienation or invention of terms that always feels like a fishbone in the throat, something uncomfortable, that truly makes us notice the distinction and constructedness of these two points. This is a Brechtian alienation effect.¹ We must step outside the network formed by existing, conservative vocabularies to reflect upon ourselves. We need stones from other mountains—weapons from unfamiliar and unknown territories.
This article also sparked intense discussion and many dialogues among Chinese readers. I had to further clarify many issues—is this not also the kind of thinking provoked by provocative, fresh language? I wish to supplement these questions and answers below.
First, some people believe that demanding clear writing and correct grammar should not be interpreted as a form of "hegemony." However, in fact, clear language means language that is already familiar. This language weaves the methods by which we describe the world; therefore, it is, in fact, the grammaticalization of ideology. When we use fixed language, it means we can only see and describe predetermined perspectives of the world, and these limited perspectives are precisely what those in power want us to see. For example, before the invention of a new, complex term like "surplus value," we could not describe, and therefore could not understand, exploitation. There are many similar cases that I will not list here. The key questions are: Where does the signifying chain break? And how can it be skillfully broken?²
Second, some argue that there is no reason to believe a single "hegemonic" structure uses language as a tool to rule the world. They claim that all historical acts of resistance and innovation have also used the same set of language. I believe that language is our method of understanding the world; we establish our relationship with the world by acquiring vocabulary and grammar. First comes grammar, then our thought. In other words, we are constructed by language—hailed, as Althusser would say—as subjects.³ Of course, I agree that a single hegemony does not exist, but the word "hegemony," in the sense used by Hall, signifies a certain cultural and linguistic dominance, even if it is temporary and domain-specific.⁴ Accordingly, there is no single, uniform language, but in specific domains, there is certainly a hegemonic language, such as the set of "heteronormative" languages surrounding the discourse on gender. How do we challenge the worldview woven by these words? The answer is to reject these languages and generate strange, new, and therefore revolutionary ones.
Third, if language is a hegemonic tool of domination, why wasn't Butler, who was exposed to "everyday language" from childhood, brainwashed? If the brainwashing power of language is so weak, then we can achieve critical aims using everyday language. To this, I propose that, as mentioned in the previous point, there is more than one language. Besides the hegemonic language, in the corners, there exist languages of resistance: they are the languages of the poor and lowly, of slaves, of the mad, of the resentful. It is not that language is inherently critical, but that rejected languages reveal the fissures in the system. Butler stands on the side of the language of resistance. Therefore, like Butler, we have the opportunity to grasp this critical potential—these resistant, marginalized, and uncomfortable languages disrupt the seamless referential web of hegemonic language. This is what de Certeau called the "guerilla tactics" of everyday discursive practice.⁵ The key is not to indulge in "everyday language" but to discover the non-everyday languages that are subtly excluded yet always loom at the edge of our vision.
Fourth, some question: Butler claims language is a tool of domination and control, but how can she transcend the control of language to see it as such? In other words, this implies her knowledge transcends what she can know. To this, I believe that we are, to some extent, ventriloquists for our language.⁶ It is not that we speak language, but that language pre-stages our actions, our thought patterns, and our analytical postures. Therefore, to some degree, we need a language that truly escapes control: not just the control of hegemony, but even our own control. We certainly understand that this would be a language that makes us uneasy. Because these languages are often difficult, hard to explain, ambiguous, and metaphorical. They make even us feel uncertain, but the immense energy they contain can indeed shake the foundations of familiar and everyday language. This is why Butler, at the end of her essay, follows Benjamin's view, seeing unstable, unclear, and indirect metaphors as the birthplace of theory.
Fifth, some have proposed that if language is so obscure, abandoning clear argumentation and rational structure to the point that no one can understand it, what is the difference between this language and garbled code? Garbled code is certainly not everyday language, but it's hard to imagine it contains any critique. To this, I argue that the system is not seamless, and the language system is no exception. It is through the system's inherent loopholes and fissures that we can possibly escape. Difficult language is precisely the chaotic infinity that leaks from outside the system. Although it seems to come from another world, it steals the legitimate forms from within the system (existing codes and grammar). Thus, it is not completely incomprehensible like garbled code, allowing us to approach understanding through great effort and guiding us to see the boundlessness beyond the system. Furthermore, I believe that even garbled code and glitches are still beneficial for critique, as they indicate where the system fails, thereby undermining its assumed validity and authority.⁷
Sixth, people suspect that if we insist on using obscure and chaotic language for critique, this language itself will become an in-group standard. In her words, this standard is also a form of "hegemony." This is indeed true. Once critical language becomes jargon within a discipline, or even part of everyday language, it will establish a new hegemony. Although this hegemony might seem like a form of progress, it ultimately becomes self-limiting. Therefore, I believe the key is a "permanent revolution" of language, a continuous rebellion and transgression, so that in this constant dynamic, language does not return to rigidity. This is also why, according to Deleuze, the philosopher's job is to constantly create new concepts and new grammars.⁸ We need to grasp this point carefully so as not to become accomplices.
Seventh, someone sharply pointed out: If any clear attempt to describe and represent the other is an offense, then what we should do is not use confusing language to describe the other, but rather resort to complete silence, because no matter how obscure, a definition is still a definition and will "harm" the other. I think this is indeed the case: I believe silence is a better virtue than the obsession with clarity. However, strange language has its own function, chief among them being disruption—it tells us that outside the seamless system of everyday language, other possibilities exist. Therefore, critical language is sometimes not an arrow pointing to its signified; on the contrary, it may be a latent metaphor, a mysterious force, a subtle intervention, oscillating between two ends, heralding what is to come.
Eighth, although some argue that Butler's style of language creates an artificial, almost elitist barrier, I believe the rhetoric of a "barrier" itself implies that everyday language is a flat street on which people walk freely. But this is not the case. The deceptiveness of this very notion is what Butler wants to address—some people are not allowed on the street, and some destinations are unreachable by any street. For this, we must trudge through the mud. Critical reflection is indeed difficult, but this is precisely the purpose of a humanistic education. The current era's rejection of the liberal arts is precisely an attempt to eliminate the opportunity for people to be "trained." We must rise up and resist.
Finally, some suspect that a term like "gender" doesn't violate everyday language; it just creates a more precise everyday vocabulary to define something, much like the term "sexual harassment" was coined in the 1970s to describe behaviors that were not sexual assault but were still uncomfortable. New concepts are invented all the time, but there is no reason to think that sentences using new concepts must be written obscurely. To this, allow me to reiterate: "Gender" is not a neat concept. As de Lauretis has said, it cannot be accurately translated in Indo-European languages (or in Chinese).⁹ It is not a more precise everyday term; on the contrary, it is something that makes us "uncomfortable," a "threat" suspended in translation, a "fishbone in the throat." Take the term "sexual harassment" for another example. Previously, what it metaphorically referred to had its own everyday language: a man's affection, the ploys of love, a romantic mood. In fact, when the term "sexual harassment" was first coined, it was also a strange language that made people feel like they had a fishbone in their throat, unsure of how to react. It is only through decades of resistance that it has revolutionized our everyday language, making us feel it is a better term of reference. To create difficult language, and then to have it replace the old—this is the dynamic of the struggle we need.
Perhaps critical clarity exists, but to continue using familiar language is to remain under a hostile agenda. To choose difficulty is not to celebrate obscurity for its own sake, but to affirm—as Butler argues—the very terrain where thought can remain unfinished and therefore alive. We must find another path.
1. Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, trans. and ed. John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), esp. “A Short Organum for the Theatre,” 179–205.
2. Jacques Lacan, "The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious," Yale French Studies, no. 36/37 (1966): 112–47.
3. Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation),” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 85–126.
4. Stuart Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing ‘the Popular’,” in People's History and Socialist Theory, ed. Raphael Samuel (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 227–240.
5. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
6. Jean-Louis Baudry, and Alan Williams, "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus." Film Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1974): 39–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/1211632.
7. Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (London: Verso Books, 2020).
8. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
9. Teresa de Lauretis, “The Technology of Gender,” in Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 1–30.
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