This book brings together a collection of philosophical essays written over two decades, with Judith Butler's reflections on the role of the passions in the formation of the subject. In dialogue with philosophers as diverse as Hegel, Spinoza, Descartes, Merleau-Ponty, Freud and Fanon, this book examines how the passions such as desire, anger, love and pain are linked to the formation of the subject in the historical frameworks specific power.

Butler shows in different philosophical contexts, how the self that is trying to become itself is affected, against his will, by social and discursive powers. And how, however, the agency and action are not necessarily void in this clash. Primary sensory impressions recorded this dual situation in which it operates and is the subject of an action, contradicting the idea that the action requires overcoming the situation of being affected by others and by social and linguistic world. Taken together, these trials recorded the development of thinking about Butler ethical relationships embodied experiences.