Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?

Overview
Judith Butler's Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? examines how public and political life decide which deaths count as meaningful and which are dismissed or ignored. The book argues that perception of whose lives are mournable is shaped by discursive and visual "frames" that operate through language, media practices, legal categories, and state power. Butler traces how these frames produce a hierarchy of lives, making some losses visible and worthy of grief while rendering others invisible or unworthy of moral concern.
Building on themes of vulnerability and interdependence, the text situates questions of mourning within contemporary conflicts, especially post-9/11 militarized contexts and the ongoing violence in Palestine and other zones of occupation. Butler does not treat grieving as merely private feeling; rather, she reads grief as a political matter that reveals and reproduces structures of recognition and nonrecognition.

Key Concepts
The central concept is "grievability": the social and political determination of which lives are recognized as lives that can be mourned. Grievability is not intrinsic to individuals but is produced through frames that shape intelligibility and empathy. When lives are framed as legitimate or human, their loss becomes politically and morally salient; when they are framed as threats, expendable, or somehow less human, their suffering is sidelined.
Closely related is the notion of "frames" themselves, which Butler treats both metaphorically and materially. Frames include journalistic practices, photographic and visual regimes, legal and bureaucratic categories, and prevailing narratives about national security or sovereignty. Together these mechanisms condition what can be seen, said, and politically acted upon.

Mechanisms: Media, Language, and State Practices
Butler analyzes concrete examples of how language and images operate in wartime contexts. She considers how casualty counts, tropes of "our" victims versus "their" victims, and the circulation of certain photographic images structure public compassion. News media and governmental discourse can compress complex human beings into types, combatant, terrorist, collateral damage, that determine worthiness of grief. Bureaucratic practices, such as identification procedures and the legal distinction between civilians and combatants, further institutionalize these hierarchies.
The book probes the interplay between visual culture and juridical norms, showing that seeing is never neutral; what is visible is framed by prior narratives that confer or deny humanity. This framing is deeply entangled with race, gender, and colonial histories, so that certain populations are routinely dehumanized and excluded from the field of ethical regard.

Ethical and Political Implications
Butler argues that recognizing the constructedness of grievability opens pathways for ethical intervention. If frames can render some lives ungrievable, they can be challenged and reframed. Attending to shared vulnerability and the precariousness of life offers a basis for political solidarity that crosses national, racial, and sectarian boundaries. Rather than offering a cosmopolitan abstract universal, Butler insists on a politics attentive to asymmetries and power relations that shape recognition.
The book calls for rethinking practices of mourning and public discourse so that grief becomes a force for political accountability rather than a tokenized display. It challenges activists, scholars, and citizens to contest the frames that permit violence and invisibility and to cultivate forms of exposure and address that make human interdependence politically legible.

Conclusion
Frames of War provides a rigorous critique of how contemporary societies decide whose lives "count" and whose deaths matter. Combining close readings of media and legal practice with theoretical reflection on vulnerability and recognition, Butler offers a framework for understanding and contesting the moral economies of wartime mourning. The book reframes grief itself as a site of political struggle, urging renewed attention to the conditions that enable some lives to be grieved while others are erased.