Introducing Performativity



Introducing Performativity
Performativity is an interdisciplinary term used to refer to the capacity of speech and gesture to act or consummate an action, or to construct and perform an identity. It is an approach to the process by which language produces results beyond the semiotic itself, consequences in extra-semiotic reality, particularly with the result of constructing reality itself.

It is a concept that has today become deeply entangled with contemporary thinking across broad fields of inquiry. Despite its frequent invocations, its precise meaning and consequences can often escape us, many being left confused, alienated from the complex history that has interpellated performativity in a somewhat 'asymptotic' manner, it's double history at times as seemingly unstable as the phenomenon it seeks to describe. This wiki page is an attempt to create an introductory guide to the contributions of key thinkers of 'performativity'; a resource for students to quickly access their key terms in the hopes of creating an educational platform to constructively support a critical community and any who might seek to engage in this approach to culture and society today.

A Note on Navigating the Introducing Performativity Wikia
The Introducing Performativity Wikia has been divided between Key Thinkers and their Key Terms. While these borders are porous -- the terms often unintelligible without contextual discussion of their invocation, as well the theorists behind them often being elusive without first grasping their terms -- these borders have been artificially maintained here for ease of navigation. These lists are by no means exhaustive, and occasionally extend beyond what arbitrary borders one might imagine a discrete concept of the 'performative' or 'performativity' to contain, but have been gathered here for their various inter-relationships and their capacity to further elucidate performativity as both a concept and critical approach to literature and social studies. As an added resource, a list of Key Texts offers further reading to the curious.

Key Thinkers
J.L. Austin and the 'Performative'

Judith Butler and 'Performativity'

Key Terms
Carnival/Carnivalesque (Bakhtin)

Constative (Austin)

The Descriptive Fallacy (Austin)

Dialogism (Bakhtin)

Différance (Derrida)

Double Voiced Discourse (Bakhtin)

Felicity/Infelicities (Austin)

Iterability (Derrida)

Locution/Illocution/Perlocution (Austin)

Misfires and Abuses (Austin)

Performative

Performativity

Parody (Bakhtin, Butler)

Speech Act (Austin)

Structuralism

Signifier/Signified (Saussure)

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