Performativity
Performativity originates in linguistic theory, from J.L. Austin’s coinage of ‘performative utterances’. A performative utterance is when saying something equates with doing something like when declaring one’s wedding vow by saying “I do;” it is a speech act that enacts what it says. Performativity shifts the focus from the correspondences (or not) between words and the things they represent, to concerns of practice and context, with material consequences. For Judith Butler, performativity indexes the way we naturalize artificial or constructed norms by enacting discursive reality through our bodies, words and gestures. These artificial constructions take on characteristics of being ‘natural’, or part of determinate reality because they are continually rehearsed and repeated. Performativity also has a more everyday significance to denote a theater-like, live presence. The question is how to merge all meanings – how does the live, bodily quality of an artwork influence the way we see reality? How does new seeing effect our relations to it?
Author: Patricia Reed