Butler made a subtle but important argument about the relationship between freedom and reflection. She affirmed freedom of expression as fundamental, but insisted it was incomplete without self-knowledge. Simply having the right to speak didn't tell you what was worth saying. She extended the same logic to freedom of assembly, referencing Montreal's dramatic student movement the previous year. 'It remains equally important to know why it is we assemble, and for what purpose.' The argument wasn't for less freedom, but for more thoughtfulness within it — 'even in the space of activism, there has to be time for reflection.' This was Butler at her most characteristic: refusing easy binaries, insisting that action and contemplation, freedom and responsibility, were not opposites but necessary companions.