Judith Butler on Diane Arbus:

If Arbus is subject to the criticism that she casts psychological illness or developmental challenge as utopic, perhaps a rejoinder ought to be that it would be equally wrong to conceive of psychological disorders as producing lives that can only suffer. Arbus insisted that these photos were "beautiful," and she clearly portrayed the pleasure in the body that could be taken in partial obliviousness to the norms by which it is governed. Her photographs "grant" the bodily tricks and performances of these subjects their dignity.