AIDAN BLISS

5/20/2021: J. L. Austin & Judith Butler pt. 2

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This is a bit of a long one, sorry. 

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In 1955, before Judith Butler did her part in introducing 'performative' as a fairly pedestrian entry within academic jargon, J. L. Austin introduced a theory of what he called "performative utterances." As most philosophers tend to be, Austin was interested in critical theory regarding the linguistic tendencies of his time. This specific year saw Austin give a lecture at Harvard that would eventually be published in his best-known work, How to Do Things with Words. 

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It would also be tremendously influential in how we think about the word 'performative.' 

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Austin begins by conducting some fairly milquetoast review of the philosophical critique of 'statements.' He reminds his audience that rhetoric is constantly changing; it's hard to see something like 'statements' as fail-proof substitute for language itself. There is far too much in the way of interrogatives, imperatives, hyperboles, exclamations, figures of speech, Twitter euphemisms, and so on. 

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For example, words that are commonly used in descriptive statements that do not contribute towards description (i.e. "that's a god damn big dog, bro") but rather "indicate the circumstances in which the statement is made" (Austin, 3). In this case you're getting chased by a really big dog, and it's stressful, and that's why you swear. 

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"It has come to be commonly held that many utterances which look like statements are either not intended at all, or only intended in part to record or impart straight-forward information about the facts." (Austin, 2)

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I would hate to see poor Austin in the so-called "post-truth" era. That aside, he was particularly concerned with a specific category of 'utterances' that are not only (A) not statements, but they also (B) divorce themselves from notions of true or false. Perhaps most importantly, these weirdos (C) do an action simply by being said, rather than referencing an action in the conventional descriptive sense. 

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Enter the performative utterance. An utterance that, in Austin's words, "indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action – it is not normally thought of just saying something" (6-7). 

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It's a bit confusing; thankfully Austin gives us some examples. The most reasonable one, to me, was 'I promise,' or in other words promising something to another. 'Making a promise' is not a tangible action, and Austin maintains that one is made regardless of whether it ends up fulfilled or broken. The words themselves are the action that is being performed. Another example is the utterance of 'I do' at weddings – words that consummate the act of marriage opposed to actions like living together or spending time together or having a kid. 

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In Judith Butler's 1988 essay ("Performative Acts & Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" in case anyone forgot), we are dealing more with the performativity of gender rather than the performativity of one utterance over another. In the last post I made talking about Butler, I mentioned the big disclaimer that she makes regarding the theatrical or theatre-related definitions of 'performative.' I can't help but wonder if that distinction ever crossed Austin's mind when he was giving the lecture – you'll find no such reference to theatre there. 

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Should we disregard the possibility that – in both cases – 'performative' can (still) mean 'of or relating to doing or acting,' in line with how the OED sees it?

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Maybe, maybe not. I think that it's there, underneath somewhere, even if we choose to ignore it. We can more tangibly focus on the connections between the two authors' usage of the word. Neither thinker really uses the word in the ostensibly negative, deceitful way in which it is often used today. In fact, there is really no moral attachment to the word, which in some ways upholds Austin's ideation that a performative utterance could be categorized by lacking any sort of true/false binary application. 

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For now, 'performative' just is.