About
PERFORMATIVITY
Most theorists of performativity argue that all social realities are constructed. The construction of gender, race, and identity are three key examples. Social life as behaved is performed in the sense that every social activity can be understood as a showing of a doing. Other parts of social life are not behaved, or at least not obviously so, such as laws, architecture, written literature, and the like. However, even these aspects of social life can be best understood “as performance.”
What are the relationships between performativity, the performative, and performance proper – between what goes on at the Metropolitan Opera and what the poststructuralists posit? By far, performativity is the larger category. Many performances are clearly marked and delimited, other performances are less clearly marked. Even non-performance – sitting in a chair, crossing the street, sleeping – can be made into a performance by framing these ordinary actions “as performance.”
Performatives come in two types – the clearly marked and the more diffuse or blurry. A performative may be a specific speech act such as a promise, bet, contract, or law. Or it may be something difficult to pin down – a “concept” (as in conceptual art), the “idea of” performance suffusing an act or activity. In this sense, there is an “as if” of performativity analogous to the “as if” of theatre.
Classroom Activities
PERFORM
- Cross-dress and go out for a “night on the town.” Note how people react to you, how you feel about yourself. Come home and write a brief essay on the subject “Gender is a Social Construction: True or False?”
- Compose a piece of “performative writing” describing a personal experience. Randomly exchange these and then act them out. Were you imitating or simulating? What is the difference?
- Choose an example of performance art to re-perform. Pick something that is feasible to do and one that can be carried out without endangering you or anyone you work with. Research the performance, talk to the artist if possible, find a suitable venue, and use your research to help you rehearse the details as much as possible. After the re-performance, talk to your audience. Did anyone witness the original? Were audience members familiar with the piece? How was it the same? How was it different?
WRITE ABOUT
- Watch Periscope for at least a few hours. Try to find people who are engaging with the camera in different ways. After you have spent enough time watching, write about your experience. Have you witnessed “reality”? A reality different than what? How do livestreams differ from reality television?
- What does Baudrillard mean by the statement “Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and simulation”? (1983, Simulations, 23-25). Write a response to Baudrillard’s claim.
- Research the Frankfurt School and write a response in which you outline the reasons you believe poststructuralist thinkers would have been drawn to the philosophers and critical theorists who make up the Frankfurt School.
- Write an analysis of Adrian Piper’s Cornered piece. How does Piper expose race as a social construction in this piece?
Weblinks
- Visit Adrian Piper’s website
- Read Austin’s How to Do Things with Words
- Read Carol Hanisch’s “The Personal is Political”
- Carolee Schneemann
- Link to a film on Derrida
- Website for Disneyworld’s Epcot Attractions
- Watch U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Farewell Address to the American People”
- Explore the world of Earthcam
- Wikipedia page on the Frankfurt School
- Read an excerpt from Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
- FBI’s Hogan’s Alley
- CNN on Jennicam’s demise
- Short biography of Judith Butler
- Module from Purdue University on Linda Hutcheon
- Explore livestreaming on Periscope
- Watch PBS's An American Family about the Loud Family
- Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present at MOMA
- Official website of MeToo
- Explore the work of Michel Foucault
- National Simulation Center
- Official website of Occupy Wall Street
- Official website of Plimoth Plantation
- Explore the Redstockings archive of the Women’s Liberation Movement
- Survivor Official website
- Read Walter Benjamin’s Essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Sample Discussion Questions
TALK ABOUT
- The “performative” began as a theory about utterances. It has developed into something much broader than that. Do you think that this expansion of the term makes it “unusable” or “useless”? Or do you feel that indeed much of postmodern life is lived “performatively”?
- What are some of the political and social implications of conceiving race, gender, and other identity formations as “performatives”?
- Have a discussion about reality television. Which programs are most “real”? Why? Which are most “fake”? How do you know the difference?
- How does the concept of the “wiki”—that is, a public, self-editing website—relate to the idea of poststructuralism? How does the larger concept of the internet relate to poststructuralism? Is the internet, in the end, ineffectual?