---
title: "Performativity"
chunk: 3/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:07.568610+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Jacques Derrida ===
Philosopher Jacques Derrida drew on Austin's theory of performative speech act while deconstructing its logocentric and phonocentric premises and reinscribing it within the operations of generalized writing. In contrast to structuralism's focus on linguistic form, Austin had introduced the force of speech acts, which Derrida aligns with Nietzsche's insights on language.

In "Signature, Event, Context," Derrida focused on Austin's privileging of speech and the accompanying presumptions of the presence of a speaker ("signature") and the bounding of a performative's force by an act or a context. In a passage that would become a touchstone of poststructuralist thought, Derrida stresses the citationality or iterability of any and all signs.Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the current sense of this opposition), in a small or large unit, can be cited, put between quotation marks; in doing so it can break with every given context, engendering an infinity of new contexts in a manner which is absolutely illimitable. This does not imply that the mark is valid outside of a context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center or absolute anchorage [ancrage]. This citationality, this duplication or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is neither an accident nor an anomaly, it is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could not even have a function called "normal." What would a mark be that could not be cited? Or one whose origins would not get lost along the way?Derrida's stress on the citational dimension of performativity would be taken up by Judith Butler and other theorists. While he addressed the performativity of individual subject formation, Derrida also raised such questions as whether we can mark when the event of the Russian revolution went awry, thus scaling up the field of performativity to historical dimensions.

=== Judith Butler ===

The philosopher and feminist theorist Judith Butler offered a new, more Continental (specifically, Foucauldian) reading of the notion of performativity, which has its roots in linguistics and philosophy of language. They describe performativity as "that reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains." It is an anti-essentialist theory of subjectivity in which a performance of the self is repeated and dependent upon a social audience. In this way, these unfixed and precarious performances come to have the appearance of substance and continuity.
A key theoretical point that was most radical in regards to theories of subjectivity and performance is that there is no performer behind the performance. Butler derived this idea from Nietzsche's concept of "no doer behind the deed." This is to say that there is no self before the performance of the self, but rather that the performance has constitutive powers. This is how categories of the self for Butler, such as gender, are seen as something that one "does," rather than something one "is." They have largely used this concept in their analysis of gender development.
Influenced by Austin, Butler argued that gender is socially constructed through commonplace speech acts and nonverbal communications that are performative, in that they serve to define and maintain identities. This view of performativity reverses the idea that a person's identity is the source of their secondary actions (speech, gestures). Instead, it views actions, behaviors, and gestures as both the result of an individual's identity as well as a source that contributes to the formation of one's identity which is continuously being redefined through speech acts and symbolic communication. This view was influenced by philosophers such as Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser.
The concept places emphasis on the manners by which identity is passed or brought to life through discourse. Performative acts are types of authoritative speech. This can only happen and be enforced through the law or norms of the society. These statements, just by speaking them, carry out a certain action and exhibit a certain level of power. Examples of these types of statements are declarations of ownership, baptisms, inaugurations, and legal sentences. Something that is key to performativity is repetition. The statements are not singular in nature or use and must be used consistently in order to exert power.

==== Theoretical criticisms ====
Several criticisms have been raised regarding Butler's reading of performativity. The first is that the theory is individual in nature and does not take into consideration such factors as the space within which the performance occurs, the others involved, and how others might see or interpret what they witness. It has also been argued that Butler overlooks the unplanned effects of the performance act and the contingencies surrounding it.
Another criticism is that Butler is not clear about the concept of subject. It has been said that in Butler's writings, the subject sometimes only exists tentatively, sometimes possesses a "real" existence, and other times is socially active. Furthermore, some observe that the theory might be better suited to literary analysis as opposed to social theory.
Others criticize Butler for taking ethnomethodological and symbolic interactionist sociological analyses of gender and merely reinventing them in the concept of performativity. For example, A. I. Green argues that the work of Kessler and McKenna (1978) and West and Zimmerman (1987) builds directly from Garfinkel (1967) and Goffman (1959) to deconstruct gender into moments of attribution and iteration in a continual social process of "doing" masculinity and femininity in the performative interval. These latter works are premised on the notion that gender does not precede but, rather, follows from practice, instantiated in micro-interaction.