Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Performative

When I hear the word performative on the news, I think back to graduate school, where I spent considerable time thinking and writing about speech-act theory. In speech-act theory, the word performative is both noun and adjective. Performatives, or performative utterances, are statements that satisfy these conditions:

A. they do not “describe” or “report” or constate anything at all, are not “true or false”; and

B. the uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action, which again would not normally be described as, or as “just,” saying something.

J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2nd. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975).
“I bet you a nickel,” “I bequeath you one thin dime”: given the appropriate circumstances, to say it (or write it) is to do it. That’s a short explanation of performative utterances.

Performative as an adjective invoked on the news is quite different. Here is Merriam-Webster’s definition:
disapproving : made or done for show (as to bolster one’s own image or make a positive impression on others).
A Merriam-Webster citation, from Alia E. Dastigir:
But when expressing outrage is as easy as posting a hashtag, a meme, or an empty black square, there’s a question of whether that outrage is genuine or performative.
So in speech-act terms, a performative is a statement that does something. In current everyday use, performative describes a statement that pretends to do something, that is merely a performance, that substitutes for doing anything of substance. One can of course bet or bequeath merely to bolster one’s image or make a positive impression. Still, such a bet or bequest is genuine, unless the bettor or bequeather is acting in bad faith. But something “made or done for show” is inherently ungenuine, not a matter of commitment to one’s statement, not a matter of obligation to another person (as a bet or bequest must be). It’s only an attempt to convince another of something about one’s self. Look at me: see how good I am?

Thus performative has become what H.W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage calls a “worsened word,” a formerly neutral or commendatory word that has acquired a pejorative meaning. Alas, that shift makes perfect sense when discourse, of all sorts, is too often a form of cheap performance. (Cue some senator reading Dr. Seuss.) One might imagine a book about the role of such performance in our politics. I bet it would do well.

A related post
Dear Abby and J.L. Austin

[“Worsened words” is an entry in the second edition of Modern English Usage, revised and edited by Sir Ernest Gowers. Among Gowers’s examples of worsened words: academic, epithet. Please notice that my “I bet” is not a performative. It’s a way I stating what I would anticipate. No stakes, no taker of a bet.]

comments: 5

Daughter Number Three said...

So it has become a synonym for "virtue-signaling." We one recent phrase for the concept; did we really need another?

misterbagman said...

One might imagine a book about the role of such performance in our politics. I bet it would do well.

One has imagined, and it has done well. I give you Harry Frankfurter's "On Bullshit."

http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_bullshit.pdf

Fun story: When my daughter graduated from high school, she wangled a job as an au pair in Paris for a family of some intellectual depth: Mother Anne-Lise was chief publications editor for the OECD, father Thierry was a high official in the foreign ministry for public affairs.

I went to visit Julia as her contract was drawing to a close, and brought gifts of books for her employer's family. To the children, Charles and Louis, I gave the next Harry Potter in the series, which they were reading in English under my daughter's tutelage; to Anne-Lise, Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," a book I admire tremendously; and to Thierry the diplomat, the Frankfurter pamphlet.

This was in the summer of 2016 as Trump's star was ascendant, and Thierry expressed great perplexity at the phenomenon. So I was pleased when after dinner I was able to share the wee book with him and assure him that his puzzlement would be abated in some measure by its contents.

Michael Leddy said...

I don’t know which came first. Performative seems to have wider possibilities of use. I just heard a podcast yesterday about “performative hygiene.”

misterbagman said...

I read frequently of "performative wokeness' which simultaneously denigrates "wokeness", or any kind political awareness, as a phenomenenon, and the "performative" aspect of its expression, usually leveled at white liberals who express "woke" sentiments to enhance their own status and/or grift opportunities.

Michael Leddy said...

I missed your first comment in the minute-long crossing.

I have On Bullshit and should have thought of it — I’ve quoted a passage from it in two posts. I’m happy to see, long after the fact, that Frankfurt wrote about Trump** and bullshit for Time.

Yes, there is the cynicism that demeans any political or social awareness. As Alexander Pope said, “all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.”