Performativity

From Geography

Background

Developed originally in literary theory, performativity is a rhetorical device for thinking about the way in which identity is produced (Hubbard, Kitchin, Valentine,2004 pp.348, glossary). The meaning of the term performativity can be partly derived from the word itself. The verb ‘to perform’ is the base of the word and is an important concept in performativity itself. It is important not to be confused with the term performance. Performance is something a person does while performativity is the process through which the person emerges. It implies a form of human agency. It is closely connected to a concept such as speech act and has been used by a number of well known social scientists such as Jacques Derrida, Felman and Butler. The basic concept however has been developed by Austin.

Geographers have been identified to use the term 'performativity' in three ways, namely, i) to refer to practices, such as music and dance, ii) studies have been made of scripted performances demanded by/in particular workplaces, iii) performative utterances such as 'I pronounce you...' are seen as acts that perform the action it refers to. (Johnston, Gregory, Pratt & Watts, 2000, pp.578)

Contextual Understanding

Performativity can be placed as one of the strategies within the post-structuralist view of looking at knowledge and society. Given that post-structuralism embraces the constitutive power of discourse as one of its core values, the performativity analysis highlights the very nature of discourse as performative. (Gibson and Graham, 2000)

Butler describes performativity as: “…that reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains.”. In other words: Discourse, the way we think, talk and act at length about a certain theme or subject, is not just representational and descriptive. No, it also repetitively ‘performs’ in a way that creates and shapes human agency and thinking. And recognising this performativity of discourse, as Butler points (Gibson and Graham, 2000, pp.104), is recognising its power to " produce the effects that it names". For example, Butler uses the expression 'It's a girl' to explain this. When a doctor says to a mother after giving birth 'it's a girl' it's not just descriptive, it is performing. Saying this reasserts the effect that the mother will take care of a 'girl' instead of a 'boy'.

Another simple definition of performativity is provided by Gill Valentine (2001, pp.345 glossary) as "The notion that identity is produced through the repetition of particular acts within a regulatory framework".

Judith Butler

Butler is probably the most well known social scientist to have extensively worked with the concept of performativity. She uses the idea in her research about gender. Geographers have been drawn to her concept of performativity as a model for thinking about sexual and gender identities (Johnston, Gregory, Pratt & Watts, 2000, pp.578). Her highly debated argument is that gender should not be seen as something biologically fixed but moreover as something that is constructed and reconstructed in the moment of performance. Butler ‘deconstructs’ the binary system of gender (male vs. female) by claiming that gendering is a cultural process. A process in which the actors (we) continually perform an act to establish and live up to the idea of masculinity and/or femininity in our environment.

Butler's concept of performativity not only provides a model for thinking about language but also social processes more generally (Johnston, Gregory, Pratt & Watts, 2000, pp.578). In acting out our actions we are performing and therefore producing phenomena, reiterating the power of both agency and discourse at the same time.

References

• Gibson and Graham, 2000, post structural interventions
• Cameron, D. & Kulick, D. (2006). The language and sexuality reader. Oxon: Routledge.
• Hubbard, Phil., Kitchin, Rob., Valentine, Gill. (2004) Key Thinkers on Space and Place. Sage. London.
• Johnston, R.J., Gregory, Derek, Pratt, Geraldine, Watts, Michael (eds.), (2000), The Dictionary of Human Geography, 4th edition, Blackwell, USA
• Valentine, Gill (2001), Social Geographies: Space & Society, Pearson Education Limited, England

Contributors

• page created by Henk-Jan van Maanen & Ingram Smit

• page enhanced by Jobke Heij & Kolar Aparna--Kolaraparna 01:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)