AIDAN BLISS

5/24/2021: what does it mean tho

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I did have a bit of an angle coming into this project, but I think that it was mostly confusion and sly amusement and sadness and anxiety about how the word is used. There, I just did it. I was performative – kinda. All of those feelings are truthful, I'm not pretending to be those things. Though I am, at least to some extent, intentionally including them in order to get a reaction from my readers. I arrange my words into a long, run-on sentence with lots of 'ands' in the hope that I can earn a smirk or two from my readers. Elicit some empathy with the process and the figuring-it-all-out. 

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That wasn't really a performative utterance in the way that Austin would've meant. For one, I think performative writing isn't quite the same. Even if it was spoken, I'm not sure of an appeal to empathy is necessarily a performance of empathy-inducing. 

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Though, really: how do we differentiate between the things that we 'perform' versus the things that we just do? Can we make that distinction with confidence?

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J. L. Austin actually runs into this exact problem in How to Do Things With Words. I relied heavily on Reed Way Dasenbrock's analysis of Austin as I did my research on this specific aspect, and the short of it is that Austin came to the conclusion that it's difficult to clearly distinguish between 'performative utterances' and 'constative utterances.' The latter category was intended for the utterances that weren't performative, or the ones that were descriptive and did possess some degree of truth/falseness. 

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"All sentences had performative aspects [...] and virtually all sentences also referred and had propositional content. If one says to a student, 'you are doing failing work in this class,' this can be analyzed as a constative, as sentence or proposition the truth of which can be assessed. But it is also a speech-act that can be analyzed as a performative. One doesn't simply utter this sentence because it is true; one utters it to have an effect on the student. [Utterances] are constative and performative simultaneously. Thus, all language is performative." (Dasenbrock 295)

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Judith Butler also touches on something similar to this in her extended writing on the performative nature of gender. Outward identity is often established by actions that are then characterizing us a certain way. If I want to present more femme, for example, I might put makeup on. But I can also just say that I am presenting femme; I don't owe anyone anything. Butler explores this paradox – that gender presentation/performativity is often rooted in appearances that aren't just appearances in that they are also rhetoric, active choices, and active performance. 

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On the internet, however, 'performative' often sees a quite different sort of use. One of the most striking characteristics is its almost unanimous negative connotation(s), including but not limited to having the quality of being fake, dishonesty, insincerity, and lying.

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I most often encounter it used on social media, typically in leftist circles though it has as of late bled into more centrist or even conservative groups. A lot of the time it's used in places where you could also use virtue-signaling, often associated with bad faith or generally useless activism. That would be performed to give the guise of philanthropy where there might otherwise not be. 

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What's a bit strange is that this aforementioned negative connotation has no basis in academic writing concerning performativity or the word 'performative.' Butler and Austin both present their dealings with the word (even in Butler's more contemporary work from 2015) as neutral at the absolute worst. It's typically a technical signifier for the two of them. Having looked at Google search trends, though, I've found that recent interest in the word 'performative' is in relation to activism specifically. 

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In defense of the word's contemporary usage, there aren't any immediately appropriate substitutes for the phrase 'performative activism' that come to mind. 'Slacktivism' has an ostensibly lazy connotation, which isn't necessarily the case as one can perform involvement to any degree imaginable. 'Virtue-signaling' is better, but it does not specifically concern activism as much even though it is tangentially related. 

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However, I can't help but wonder how valid the accusation of performativity is, especially on the internet. Butler's case for gender as performative is reassuring rather than demonizing, and is often cited in support of people existing outside of the traditional cisgender norms. Though I am often questioning my relationship with the 'male' designation, I am not trans and don't pretend to understand the trans experience and acknowledge that it's varied and can't be simply understood as a singular experience. With that being said, accusing a trans individual of 'performing' gender other than their biological sense seems like an easy route to transphobia, especially if accompanied with the frequent 'fake' or 'dishonest' connotations of 'performative.' 

 

Backing off from gender theory a bit and shifting gears toward the usage of 'performative' at-large, I think that social media is an extremely performative affair. 'Likes' are often seen as metrics of success, and there are doubtless many studies on the correlation between online engagement and notions of desirability (The Social Dilemma, anyone?). 

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Again: how do we discern the relative performativity of someone accusing another of being performative? Can we necessarily know whether they're a real, bleeding-heart "activist" righteously exposing performative activism for being the useless bullshit it is – or if they're a reactionary Twitter cretin looking to stir the pot by calling things 'performative'? In my mind, it's hard to make this distinction and I'd argue that both are being performative to some degree.

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If nothing else, I think that both fulfill the baseline OED definition in that they are "of or relating to performance" at the very least. There's also a bit of that concern over the "doing of an action," because performative is used to signify how things are being talked about. I think that a clause or more specific mention of 'performative activism' would do some good, because it seems to have specific sense and usage in that realm even if the exact determining factor is a bit dubious. For example, I thought my girlfriend had black hair for years (I still kinda do, okay), but she insists it was dark brown. Now, in certain light, I see what she's saying.