Performativity

Evelien Geerts

14 AUGUST 2016

Whenever the notion of performativity pops up in a discussion amongst philosophers and feminist theorists,
queer theorist and philosopher Judith Butlers name is immediately mentioned in the same breath.

Inspired by language philosopher J. L. Austins theory of speech acts, and deconstructionist-provocateur

Jacques Derridas idea of iterability, in Gender Trouble (2006/1990) and Bodies That Matter (1993), Butler
urged us to rethink gender not as an innate essence or natural quality, but as something that proves to be
performative that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be (Butler, 2006/1990, p. 33). In the heydays
of feminist postructuralist theory, the era of the self-constructed feminist sex/gender distinction were thus
claimed to be over, and Butlers radical social constructivist stance has since then taught us that even sex, in
addition to the normative but easily destabilized socio-cultural script-like characteristics of gender, is in the
end discursive, and (to-be-)performed. Or, as Butler has put it herself: This very concept of sex-as-matter, sex-
as-instrument-of-cultural-signi cation [] is a discursive formation [] (ibid., p. 50).

Yet, with the recent arrival of the so-called new (feminist) materialist turn a turn that was, amongst others,
anticipated by feminist science studies scholar Donna Haraways notion of the material-semiotic that thinks
the material, bodily eshiness and the discursive-linguistic together, and thus breaks through the long-
standing nature/culture divide (see e.g. Haraway, 1988 and 1997) critical re-readings and re-engagements
with Butlers notion of (gender) performativity slowly but surely came into being. Criticized for her over-
investment in the linguistic-discursive frame of reference in Gender Trouble (What about the materiality of the
body, Judy? (Butler, 1993, p. viii)), Butler has since paid more attention to the vulnerable eshiness of the
body (see e.g. Butler, 2004). But we had to wait for physicist-philosopher Karen Barads Posthumanist
Performativity piece from 2003 to really see an example of a new feminist materialist reconceptualization of
performativity.

Inspired by the feminist science studies tradition and Haraways binary-deconstructing notion of the material-
semiotic actor a notion that articulates that objects (and bodies) are active, meaning-generating part[s] of
[the] bodily apparatus and a rms that [t]heir boundaries materialize in social interactions (Haraway, 1988,
p. 595) Barad in Posthumanist Performativity, and later on in Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) and
Natures Queer Performativity (2011), radically rethinks performativity. While laying out the foundations of
her quantum physics-inspired feminist philosophy that questions the primacy of the cultural turn (and its
prioritization of the discursive and the representational), Barad critically but a rmatively engages with the
poststructuralist philosophies of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. For Barad, performativity is not only linked
to the coming into being of the human subject and the (gendered) materialization of bodies, and the socio-
political interpellation process that goes along with it (i.e. Butlers more recent understanding of
performativity as articulated in Bodies), but is about the processes of the materialization of all bodies and
the material-discursive practices that engender differences between for example human and non-human
bodies (Barad 2003, 810). And the matter that is central to these processes of materialization for Barad is
much less passive than Foucault and Butler have purported it to be.

Additionally, in a move that reminds us of Haraway, Barad deconstructs a series of categorical oppositions
nature/culture, subject/object, knower/object-to-be-known, human/non-human, and realism/social
constructivism by proposing an agential realist or modi ed realist framework to examine the world, our
scienti c knowledge praxes, and the aforementioned processes of materialization with. This agential realist
framework (which is the focal-point of Meeting) moves away from an individualistic atomistic metaphysics,
the modern Cartesian mind/body split, our strong cultural belief in representationalism, our Western tendency
to thingify or basically objectify, and a mere discursive-linguistic concept of performativity. It instead pushes
us towards a relational understanding of what Barad labels the intra-action between subjects and objects in
the world, or better put, phenomena, as the latter in such a framework are already interconnected before
being agentially separated (Barad, 2003, p. 815). Seen through such an agential realist perspective, gender,
amongst (and in co-construction with) other social identity categories, isnt just discursively fashioned and
performed, but bodies themselves come to matter through the worlds iterative intra-activity its
performativity (ibid., p. 824).

Barads reconceptualization of performativity and her overall innovative framework of agential realism,
which strongly links ontology, epistemology, and ethics to one another thus forces us to radically shift all of
our former traditional Western metaphysical beliefs, and reconsider notions such as performativity, agency,
subjectivity, interaction and causality, together with our previous understanding of ourselves, and the world
and how we relate to the latter: This because of the fact that the world seen through such an agential realist
lens is no longer composed of things-in-themselves or things-behind-phenomena but things-in-phenomena.
Reality, according to Barad, is rather a dynamic process of intra-activity or an ongoing open process of
mattering through which mattering itself acquires meaning and form in the realization of different agential
possibilities (ibid., p. 817).

Barads new feminist materialist, posthumanist rethinking of performativity, and of the world itself, to
conclude, pushes us towards a new understanding of materiality. Materiality is no longer either given or a
mere effect of human agency, but rather an active factor in processes of materialization (ibid., p. 827). And
this has, as described above, profound consequences for our understanding of performativity.

K E Y W O R D S : Gender performativity, posthumanist performativity, materialization, identity, feminist

poststructuralism, new feminist materialism
G E N E A L O G I E S : J. L. Austin, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Karen Barad
S Y N O N Y M S : The materialization of performativity
A N T O N Y M S : Fixed identity, stability
H Y P E R N Y M S : Baradian agential realism
H Y P O N Y M S : (Posthumanist) performativity

REFERENCES
Barad, Karen. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity. Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to
Matter. Signs 28, 3: 801-831.
Barad, Karen. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and
Meaning. Durham London: Duke University Press.
Barad, Karen. (2011). Natures Queer Performativity. Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 19, 2,
pp. 121-158.
Butler, Judith. (2006). Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. With an introduction by the
author. New York London: Routledge. Originally published in 1990.
Butler, Judith. (1993). Bodies That Matter. On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York London: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. (2004). Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London New York: Verso.
Haraway, Donna J. (1988) Situated Knowledges. The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege Partial
Perspective. Feminist Studies 14, 3, pp. 575-599.
Haraway, Donna J. (1997). Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. FemaleMan_Meets_Oncomouse.
Feminism and Technoscience. New York London: Routledge.