>Butler is a dead end so far as political activism goes.
Some feminist and queer activists might disagree with you, but let's leave that aside for the moment. I think there's no small value in a reactionary/quiescent time in trying to investigate why people are so pliant. That's my major interest in PLOP (and in Zizek too) - investigating the psychic structures and collective fantasies that sustain the status quo, and developing a radical political strategy that knows how to work with those structures/fantasies and transform them.
Whenever I hear people longing for more activism, I think of that old Heinrich Boll story about the guy who's job it was to sit in an office answering the phone and say, "Action is being taken. Action has been taken. Action will be taken." Action! Action! What action, where, by whom, directed towards what?
Doug