AIDAN BLISS

5/8/2021: "Of or relating to performance"

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The Oxford English Dictionary offers us two definitions for the word 'performative.' Neither are terribly relevant to the ways in which it is being used today. First, performative is an adjective.

 

"Of or relating to performance; designating or relating to an utterance that effects an action by being spoken or by means of which the speaker performs a particular act." (1)

 

Then, a noun.

 

"A performative utterance." (1)

 

It would seem that we might need to gain an understanding of what it means to perform in order to fully grasp what it is to be "of or relating to performance." This is its own can of worms. The OED has fifteen entries for variations upon 'perform.'

 

Personally, I would love to see 'performant' come back into vogue as a noun and reclaim the space that is now mostly reserved for a weird adjective mutation.

 

But I digress. There's something interesting tucked within the entry for 'performance.' Refreshingly, we are now back into strict noun territory. 

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"The accomplishment or carrying out of something commanded or undertaken; the doing of an action or operation." (2)

 

"The doing of an action." Perhaps unsurprising, then, that Judith Butler gives an apparent shout-out to action theory before delving into discussion on gender's relationship to performativity.