Episode 13 - Performativity

Transcript

00:07

Ellie: Hi, I'm Ellie Anderson,

00:09

David: And I'm David Pena-Guzman.

00:10

Welcome to Overthink.

00:12

Ellie: The podcast where two friends

00:14

David: who who are also professors

00:16

Ellie: put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.

00:18

David: Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.

00:31

Ellie: David, one thing I've noticed a lot lately is that everybody

00:34

is talking about performativity.

00:38

I heard this a lot this summer with the term performative allyship, which I take

00:43

it, as basically the idea that a lot of people are trying to act like allies,

00:47

say to the Black community in the wake of the BLM protest last summer, but they're

00:52

not really doing so in an authentic way.

00:55

Have you noticed this?

00:56

David: Well, there was also that moment when the term was also used

01:00

a lot in social media to talk about performative environmentalism, when we

01:05

were having that debate about or not we should be buying and using straws.

01:11

Ellie: Oh my God, do I remember?

01:13

As somebody who lives in LA, this was

01:16

everywhere

01:16

David: Yes.

01:17

Yes And then there were all these startups that started selling these metal straws

01:21

that would be like on your key chain or a hidden in your pen so you could

01:25

like, "Oh don't mind me, I'm just popping my metal straw out of my pocket."

01:31

Ellie: Honestly, I think those are pretty cool.

01:33

David: Well, but the point is that a lot of people notice a level of hypocrisy in

01:38

the discourse of those who were calling for a ban on straws, because as they

01:43

were calling for a reduction in the consumption of straws, they didn't mind

01:47

ordering takeout with like, you know, a thousand plastic boxes, et cetera.

01:50

Ellie: Oh my God.

01:51

David: And so people were saying, "This is a kind of performative

01:55

environmentalism that doesn't actually get at the root of the problem and

02:00

doesn't actually offer solutions."

02:01

So it's a kind of virtue signaling.

02:03

Ellie: I have to put myself on blast there because I order takeout a lot.

02:06

Granted, it's a pandemic now, and so it's, you know, I'm ordering a

02:09

lot more takeout than I ordinarily would, but also with the straw thing,

02:13

I didn't own any straws prior to the straw debacle a couple of years ago.

02:18

And then what did I do?

02:18

I bought metal straws.

02:20

And so I went from having no straws to metal straws, which is

02:23

technically not more environmental because it just consumed something

02:27

that I hadn't consumed before.

02:29

I'm adding to my footprint.

02:31

David: Yeah.

02:31

It's such a millennial thing to buy

02:34

the latest trend,

02:35

even when you didn't buy into the previous trend that it's replacing.

02:38

Ellie: Yes.

02:39

And so I think performative environmentalism, as a term, is

02:42

naming something, just as performative allyship, as a term, is naming something.

02:48

But I have to say, as a philosopher, these terms bug me.

02:53

I think they are actually just wrong because the term performative comes out

02:59

of the discipline of philosophy and it doesn't mean what people think it means.

03:04

It doesn't mean artificial.

03:06

David: I just imagine you like following social media, being

03:08

like, "Oh yeah, for sure."

03:10

But secretly boiling at the fact that you this term is being misused and

03:14

holding it back, trying not to seem like that person who's just going

03:17

to the philosophy-splain the term.

03:21

Ellie: Well, there are ways that language is always in process, and I don't want

03:25

to say that those in power determine the meanings of words, but at the same

03:30

time, words do have given meanings and performative has a particular meaning

03:36

that I think we want to hold onto.

03:37

So for instance, I've heard the term optical allyship being used as an

03:42

alternative to performative allyship.

03:44

And I really like that term, because I think that is getting at the way

03:47

that a lot of supposed allies in the cause of racial justice or feminism

03:52

are just doing so for the optics.

03:54

That's designating the artificiality, but performativity doesn't mean that.

03:58

David: Well, my partner, who is an ophthalmologist, is like sitting in the

04:01

background being like optics does not mean that, optics means something else.

04:07

Ellie: Oh, my God.

04:08

Okay, touche.

04:09

I'll take that up with

04:11

David: But you're pointing to something that I also relate to, which is that when

04:15

certain terms that have very clear and very specific philosophical meaning, or

04:20

philosophical baggage, attached to them used in a way that is not attuned to

04:25

that meaning or to that baggage, we have difficulty jumping on board because we

04:30

only see them as application of the term.

04:32

Ellie: Exactly.

04:33

And I think this is especially a problem with the concept of performativity,

04:36

because that concept is central to philosophy of gender, to philosophy of

04:41

race, and to a number of elements of philosophy that are really trying to get

04:46

at the oppressive oppressive structures in society, and so it's not just a

04:49

debate about philosophical terminology.

04:52

It's a debate about what we mean by terms, which I do think is important,

04:56

but it's also a political debate on top of that, and a debate about the

04:59

efficacy of terms we have in our arsenal for resisting oppression.

05:03

David: Yeah.

05:04

And not to mention the philosophy of language, where the term comes from.

05:07

And so maybe we can agree on a basic difference between

05:12

performance the more philosophically technical term performativity.

05:24

Ellie: Today, we're talking about performativity.

05:26

What does this concept mean?

05:28

David: Where does it come from?

05:30

Ellie: And what can it tell us about things like pornography,

05:33

hate speech, and gender.

05:35

David: Let us discuss this subject imminently.

05:41

Ellie: I am going to stop the recording now.

05:44

David: Oh, no.

05:45

But really, let's find out.

05:50

Ellie: David, what is performativity and where does it come from?

05:54

David: The concept of performativity is often traced to the writings of

05:58

the English philosopher of language J.

06:00

L.

06:00

Austin, who wrote a book entitled How to Do Things with Words,

06:06

which came out in the 1960s.

06:07

And in this book, he rejects the idea, which was quite popular at the time

06:12

amongst professional philosophers of language, like himself, the

06:15

sole function of language truth.

06:19

most philosophers, uh, at the time, really believed that the only thing that

06:24

was interesting about language, the only thing that was worth talking about from

06:27

a philosophical standpoint, is that it allows us to piece together, or to string

06:33

together, words and concepts sentences that are, as philosophers of language like

06:38

to say, truth apt, is to say, sentences that capture states of affairs in the

06:45

world and that are either true or false.

06:48

Ellie: Something like Sacramento is the capital of California.

06:51

David: Yeah, just basic, descriptive statements that essentially

06:55

deliver a little kernel of truth.

06:57

And Austin says, "No, actually that's not the most interesting part of language,

07:02

because words are not just for speaking truth or for conveying truth value.

07:08

There's a lot more that you can do with words."

07:13

Ellie: Enter the performative.

07:15

Austin distinguishes different types of speech acts.

07:19

So basically, things we say, and he says that there's a particular kind of

07:23

speech act called a performative, which actually brings about a state of affairs.

07:29

This is in contrast with most of the things we say, which

07:32

would be called constatives.

07:34

A constative names an existing state of affairs, so the idea

07:39

that Sacramento is the capital of California, but a performative

07:43

actually brings about a new reality.

07:46

David: This bringing forth captures the force of language, according to

07:51

Austin, especially that force that other philosophers of language have not yet,

07:56

or had not yet in the 1960s, understood.

07:59

For example, when somebody says, "I do," at the altar, in the context of a marriage

08:06

ceremony, says, in the act of saying those two words, they're not just describing

08:12

something, they're not referring to an external reality, they're actually doing

08:15

something, something that is going to change their legal status, their political

08:20

status, suddenly they are married.

08:22

so the speech act performative precisely in that it brings about a new reality.

08:29

He also uses the example of betting.

08:32

Ellie, if I tell you, " I bet you $10 that I can jump higher than you," in the

08:38

act of saying those words, I've already enacted the act of betting, right.

08:44

I've already made the bet.

08:46

So it's not as if talked about the bet and then later it became a reality, it

08:51

became a reality through my speech act.

08:54

Ellie: And so the magic of the performative is that, in uttering it,

08:57

you are actually bringing a reality into being, but lest you think that

09:04

this means that you can go around saying all sorts of things that are

09:08

bringing new realities into being, unfortunately, that's not the case.

09:13

Performatives only work in particular contexts.

09:17

And so if I say, "I do," at a marriage ceremony, that's the appropriate

09:21

context for that utterance to work as a performative, but if I'm just

09:25

hanging out here in my closet, recording a podcast, and I say,

09:29

"I do," I'm not suddenly married.

09:31

That was not a successful performative.

09:35

David: She went to Jared!

09:38

Ellie: In addition into the appropriate context, the person

09:42

who says a performative has to have the right authority.

09:47

So for instance, if I say, "I now pronounce you husband and wife," to

09:52

use the old heteronormative terms, I need to have the authority of

09:57

actually being what, like a minister or something, in order for that to work.

10:01

It is a failed performative if I just go to a wedding and, as a

10:05

guest, yell that from the audience.

10:08

David: Yeah.

10:09

In connection to this example about pronouncing people, X, Y, or Z, or

10:13

Christianing someone, uh, one of the most-

10:16

Ellie: Christening!

10:17

Christianing?!.

10:19

David: Same thing.

10:19

It's christening somebody under a Christian ritual.

10:23

Ellie: Oh yeah, I guess?

10:23

is that where the term comes from?

10:25

David: It's a baptism.

10:26

Maybe, I don't know,

10:27

That was just-

10:27

Ellie: We should not say things on the podcast that are just like, I don't know,

10:30

and leave it to our listeners to find out.

10:33

We're authorities here.

10:34

David: But they're adorable when they are the effects- when

10:37

they're the effects of my ESL

10:38

status, they can stay.

10:40

One of the examples that Austin writes about at length, and that gets cited very

10:46

frequently in the philosophy of language, is the example of a captain who goes to a

10:51

new ship then takes a glass of champagne and breaks it the stern and then says, "I

10:59

hearby name this ship Queen Elizabeth."

11:03

that performative to be a successful performative, well, the person

11:07

has to be an actual Admiral or a captain, otherwise it's a failed

11:11

performative, the point being that it gives birth to a new entity.

11:15

In this case, Queen Elizabeth, the ship.

11:18

Ellie: And one last feature of performatives to mention in this

11:21

context is that they have to be in the present, active, and indicative voice.

11:26

So for instance, the ship's captain isn't saying, "I named this ship queen Elizabeth

11:31

yesterday, and now I'm just telling you."

11:33

That's a constative, not a performative, so it's present and it's active, right?

11:38

He's saying, "I name this," or, "I do."

11:40

"I now pronounce you man and wife."

11:42

This concept of performative speech acts has been very important because it

11:46

broadens our understanding of language beyond just the truth-and-falsity

11:51

distinction and shows us how language actually acts on the world rather

11:55

than just describing the world.

11:58

David: so if we wanted to use a metaphor, we can say that lot of philosophers

12:02

of language think of language as a mirror that reflects truth, but Austin

12:07

thinks it's a hammer with which you do things, and so the question is,

12:11

what can we do with this hammer?

12:35

Ellie: Thanks for bearing with us as we talked about performativity

12:38

in the technical sense, in the philosophy of language.

12:41

Now, let's think about how performativity is used in different contexts, which are

12:45

frankly pretty fascinating and juicy.

12:49

So one way that it's been used is in law.

12:51

The notion of the performative has been used to distinguish between what's covered

12:55

and not covered by the First Amendment.

12:57

For instance, if I yell, "Fire!"

13:01

in a crowded room, it's not covered by the First Amendment because yelling

13:05

"Fire" in the particular context of a room full of people has performative effects.

13:12

It's going to cause people to run out of the room, to scream, have

13:16

their adrenaline shoot up, et cetera.

13:18

David: And at stake here is the perennial question among law scholars

13:24

which forms of speech really are simply free speech that can base a

13:29

viewpoint about the world, and which forms of speech actually produce Harm.

13:34

So for example, the feminist theorist Rae Langton has used the Austinian

13:39

framework of performatives talk about what is wrong with pornography,

13:44

especially pornography that depicts uh, patriarchal images of women.

13:49

Ellie: So most of it.

13:50

David: Uh, yeah, so like 99.9% of it.

13:54

Um, and she says the argument that people make to defend this kind of

13:57

porn is that, again, it's free speech.

13:59

It simply expresses a worldview on the part of the director.

14:02

But, according to Langton, one of the things that people miss

14:07

pornography when they talk about it, especially in the context of whether

14:10

or not it's covered under the First Amendment, is that people tend to

14:13

interpret pornography as a constative,

14:17

Ellie: Yeah.

14:18

David: and not as a performative.

14:20

Ellie: Or even as fictional, right?

14:22

David: Pornography achieves certain effects beyond what it represents.

14:28

it might tell a specific story, but the things that it does as an institution,

14:33

as a social practice, go way beyond that because it has performative force.

14:38

She develops this argument by pointing out one of the things that we

14:42

expect of language that our speech acts have their intended effects.

14:46

So for example, Ellie, if you and I are going for a walk then I say

14:51

to you, "Stop, I don't want to keep walking," I expect you to stop, right?

14:57

That's a very reasonable, basic assumption about social normativity

15:02

in connection to language: that words have meaning, and that that meaning

15:06

will be respected by our interlocutors.

15:09

Ellie: Unless I'm just like an asshole.

15:10

I'm like, "David, not stopping for you!"

15:11

David: Yes.

15:12

Unless you're an asshole or, as we will see, unless the frame of reference for

15:17

the meaning of terms has socially shifted, which is one of the performative effects

15:23

of pornography, according to Langton.

15:26

Ellie: Explain that to me a little bit.

15:27

Super interesting, but I'm not sure I get it.

15:30

David: It has to do with the ways in which pornography rewires men's

15:34

desire, or rather, conditions men's desire to reflect the desire that

15:40

pornography itself represents.

15:42

And so, when you think about what you see in pornography, what is it?

15:45

Well, it's typically like bosses and secretaries, teachers and students,

15:49

all these roles that have a very clear dominance dynamic, And in which the

15:54

subordinate's nos never really mean, no.

15:59

In fact,

16:00

are.

16:01

kind of yeses, you know, they are invitations for further activity.

16:07

Ellie: AKA assaults.

16:08

David: Exactly.

16:09

The problem is that pornography the meaning of the word no to mean yes.

16:16

Ellie: Yeah, it's like eroticized.

16:18

David: Yes, and so when you live in a culture that is knee-deep in the most

16:24

misogynistic forms of pornography, men internalize the discursive

16:30

worldview of the pornography they consume, and when they interact with

16:34

women, speech acts of women lose their normal performative force.

16:41

In a pornographic culture, the woman says no, the man hears yes.

16:48

Ellie: And I think this is interesting because it strikes me that there's a

16:51

deviation from Austin's original use of the term performativity because

16:56

something like "yes" or "no," or "stop," wouldn't be considered performative

17:00

under a traditional Austinian framework.

17:03

But I think the broader point here that Langton is getting at, and deriving

17:07

from Austin, is precisely this idea that language doesn't just describe

17:11

reality, but it has these effects.

17:13

It has effects on bodies.

17:15

It has effects on imaginations.

17:16

It has effects on our wills.

17:18

And here we see that the concept of performativity is really felicitous,

17:22

to use one of Austin's favorite words, for describing things that go

17:26

beyond specific speech acts, right.

17:29

David: And so, I think it goes beyond in the sense that it's no longer merely about

17:35

in the traditional sense of utterances.

17:37

Here, we're talking about visual representations and

17:40

Ellie: Yeah.

17:41

David: about sexuality and desire, um, and you know, a pizza man showing up and

17:45

you not having enough change, et cetera.

17:48

Ellie: Yeah.

17:48

That's, that's the, that's the porn narrative that you're choosing to-

17:52

David: Well, I mean, that is like the porn archetype, right, like the pizza man.

17:56

Ellie: The pizza man and not having enough change?!

17:58

David: Uh, yes, and then you have to pay them somehow.

18:00

Ellie: Oh, okay.

18:01

I miss I must've missed that one.

18:02

David: Uh, and they don't have change.

18:05

So, pornography does have all these other effects.

18:08

And so make a mistake when we interpret it merely a viewpoint.

18:14

It's, again, it's hammer that allows people to do things.

18:18

And the feminist philosopher Rebecca Kukla has also used this framework to talk about

18:23

many other ways in which, in general, utterances under conditions of patriarchy

18:29

have less performative force than men's.

18:32

Ellie: Yes, there are so many possible directions when can take

18:34

this in, and one that comes to mind here is discussions of hate speech.

18:38

So we talked about the First Amendment earlier and how some things are

18:41

protected by it and others aren't.

18:44

Critical race theorists have used the conception of performativity to make

18:48

sense of why hate speech shouldn't be protected by the First Amendment.

18:53

Law professor at NYU Jeremy Waldron argues in his book The Harm in Hate Speech that

18:58

hate speech is largely performative in exactly the sense that Austin means.

19:03

So for instance, when somebody expresses animosity towards a group by

19:06

playing on stereotypes, that doesn't just lead to a form of exclusion,

19:13

it is a form of exclusion itself.

19:16

David: Well, and I think for anyone who has been subjected to a racist term

19:22

or a pejorative or an insult, there is that sting that comes with it that

19:28

traditional philosophies of language before Austin's intervention just

19:33

couldn't make sense of, because they would say, "Oh, well, language just

19:37

either expresses a truth or it doesn't."

19:39

And so it misses some of the most important dimensions of our linguistic

19:44

interactions with one another.

19:46

Ellie: And what's so interesting too, about what you're describing, David, and

19:49

the discussions around hate speech is that they also show us that performatives

19:53

don't just have effects on us as subjects.

19:56

Performatives ultimately reveal to us the way that language has effects

20:00

not only on ourselves, but also on the social world, on other people.

20:04

David: And so far we've talked about people who lift this Austinian conceptual

20:08

framework to talk about different forms of speech or representation, whether

20:12

that'd be hate speech or pornography.

20:15

Ellie: Like the pizza guy.

20:17

David: Yes.

20:18

But the queer theorist Judith Butler makes the argument that the Austinian notion of

20:23

performative should be taken all the way to our sense of identity and our behavior.

20:29

Who we are and what we do is performative.

20:33

Ellie: And I love this and I'm so excited to talk about it.

20:44

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20:45

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21:01

So when you hear performativity today, you're most likely to hear it in context

21:06

where people are talking about gender, and this is thanks to Judith Butler who became

21:10

famous for the term following the 1990 publication of her book Gender Trouble.

21:16

Butler uses performativity within the context of gender in order to

21:20

say that gender is not something you are or something you have,

21:25

but rather something you do.

21:27

For Butler, gender performativity means that gender is enacted.

21:33

It's enacted through repeated movements and bodily styles in the world.

21:37

It's not a core attribute of the person from birth.

21:41

So gender is a doing and a becoming.

21:44

And one thing that's really interesting here is that she's taking the

21:47

Austinian notion of the performative, but she's really emphasizing the way

21:51

that performativity, in its strongest sense, happens over time, through

21:57

repetition, through habit formation, and through our very embodiment.

22:03

David: Famously she develops this argument about our becoming over time

22:07

through iteration, largely through her reading of the writings of Simone de

22:11

Beauvoir, the French existentialist.

22:13

Ellie: Who's famous for saying, "One is not born, but becomes a woman."

22:16

David: And also the German philosopher Hegel, who believed that there

22:19

is no inherent or intrinsic human nature; rather, uh, we are constantly

22:25

changing and developing over time.

22:29

drawing from these thinkers, she lands on the position that

22:32

gender is socially constructed.

22:35

Ellie: Yeah, one is not born, but becomes a woman because you have

22:40

to develop certain attributes of femininity over time, and be recognized

22:44

as a woman within a social context, in order to count as a woman.

22:47

And Butler, Beauvoir, and Hegel all share this idea that the human

22:52

is a historical idea and human attributes are also historical ideas.

22:58

So gender and even sex are not intrinsic natural categories, but they

23:03

are socially constructed over time.

23:05

And this doesn't mean that they're fictional.

23:07

It doesn't mean that gender isn't real, but it does mean that it has historical

23:11

origins rather than natural ones.

23:15

David: And the way we talk about this is to say that

23:16

gender is socially constructed.

23:19

And in thinking about the meaning of the thesis of social constructionism, that

23:23

lies at the root of Butler's approach to gender, is the concept of mimesis,

23:28

which means repetition or mimicry.

23:31

And according to this concept, we perform gender largely by observing the behaviors

23:36

of those around us and repeating those behaviors that are coded in particular

23:42

ways when attached to particular bodies.

23:45

And so we start learning social scripts about how to talk, how to

23:49

behave, how to move and hold our bodies, in order to be read as having

23:54

a specific sex and a specific gender.

23:57

Often when she writes about gender, she draws comparisons to the theatrical.

24:01

It captures the fact that when we are beginning to learn the scripts, we

24:06

sometimes are not very good at it.

24:10

And so we either overshoot or undershoot performance.

24:13

So it takes time learn the role.

24:17

Think about a 12 year old boy, right, like hitting puberty Yeah.

24:23

He starts walking in a ridiculously exaggerated, masculine way,

24:29

projecting more masculinity than they can possibly convey.

24:33

Um, you know, you see there the performance, but the performance

24:36

that is not quite right.

24:38

And so these performances of sex and gender are something that we

24:41

have to be broken into over time.

24:45

Ellie: And this hits pretty close to home for me because I was obsessed with

24:48

the movie Legally Blonde when I was 13 years old, and I literally copied

24:54

Elle Woods' is walk from that movie in my developing feminine persona.

25:00

Ell(i)e Woods: I'm able to recall hundreds of important

25:02

details at the drop of the hat.

25:04

Hey Elle, do you know what happened on Days of Our Lives yesterday?

25:08

Why yes, Margo.

25:09

I do.

25:10

Once again, we joined Hope in a search for her identity.

25:12

As you know, she's been brainwashed by the evil Stefano.

25:17

I feel comfortable using legal jargon in everyday life.

25:22

I object!

25:25

Ellie: That movie really appealed to me because it was this apotheosis

25:29

of femininity, but also she was smart and so there was, you

25:32

know, that kind of dimension.

25:33

And I also really want to caution our listeners here in about the theatrical

25:38

as artifice or as performance, because Butler says that even though gender

25:43

performativity is in some ways like a theatrical performance, it's also in other

25:48

ways, very, very different, because a lot of times when people are performing,

25:54

they're still positing a distinction between the actor and the role.

25:58

For Butler, there is no distinction.

26:01

You are your role.

26:02

Performativity means that you are actually bringing about your identity

26:07

in the process of producing it.

26:09

That's what she takes from Austin.

26:10

And so for instance, I'm a former theater kid, as David knows.

26:15

And when I was in high school, I went to an all-girls high school,

26:19

and I'm a cisgender woman, and when I was in high school, I had to play

26:23

a man in one of the school plays.

26:25

And in order to do that, I had to study typically masculine mannerisms.

26:30

And so I learned to sit with my legs spread wide.

26:33

I learned to hunch my shoulders more and kind of bring them up closer to my neck.

26:37

I learned to take up more space, and to hold my face in a different way,

26:41

to smile less, because I was very serious about my acting in high school.

26:47

But when I'm up there on stage, dressed as a man, acting the role of a man, I

26:52

am not doing what Butler calls gender performativity, because I knew the

26:56

whole time I was performing that school play that I was a cisgender woman.

27:00

There was this distinction between me and my character.

27:03

However, when we are talking about performativity in the true sense, we are

27:08

talking about actual repeated actions that are indistinguishable from your identity.

27:14

David: Very important point Ellie, because a number of people misinterpreted

27:18

the publication of Gender Trouble along precisely these lines.

27:21

So a number of people raised the question, "Oh, well, Butler, are

27:24

you saying that that means I can choose my gender and my sex, like

27:28

one day, and change it the next?"

27:29

Ellie: Yep.

27:30

David: As if it's a costume or a prop that you use for an actual theatrical

27:34

performance and Butler says, "No, that's a misunderstanding of what

27:39

mimesis is, of that force of repetition that over time comes to you as second

27:45

nature, and that blurs the line between the actor and the character."

27:50

She published a book later, called Bodies That Matter, where in the introduction

27:55

she begins by clarifying this, where she says, "No, I am not saying that

28:00

you just choose a performance one day willy nilly, and you just discard it the

28:05

next because they are much too rooted in us, in our behavior, in our bodies,

28:10

in our understanding of ourselves to be so easily taken on or taken off."

28:15

Ellie: Precisely.

28:15

And this is part of what bugs me about the terms like performative allyship

28:19

and performative environmentalism that we began with, because there, the term

28:23

performative is used as a synonym for artificial or acted out and that's exactly

28:30

what is not going on in performativity.

28:32

We are are really creating our identities through performative actions, so other

28:38

people recognize me as a woman based on my performative embodiment of femininity.

28:43

David: That's an important point because it puts Butler in direct dialogue with

28:47

Austin, because remember that for Austin, in order for a performative speech act

28:52

like, "I promise," or, "I hearby name this ship Queen Elizabeth," there have

28:57

to be certain conventions in place.

28:59

It has to be the right context, and Butler makes the argument that something

29:03

similar happens in connection to gender, that there are conventions about what

29:08

counts as femininity and masculinity.

29:11

We don't choose them individually; rather, we effectively perform our way into

29:18

preexisting conventions and in the act, bring those about as a lived reality.

29:31

Ellie: One of the domains that Butler thinks is really interesting for

29:34

showing gender performativity and how it goes beyond sheer performance

29:39

or artifice is in drag culture.

29:43

And she talks about the documentary from the 1990s called Paris is

29:47

Burning in particular, which is about black and latinx ball culture

29:50

in New York City in the 1980s.

29:52

She says what you see in these drag performances is the

29:56

performativity of all gender.

29:58

So the drag performers are not just adopting a different gender identity

30:04

for a moment, they are actually saying something really important

30:07

about how all of us, whether you're cis, trans, queer, et cetera,

30:12

are performing gender at all times.

30:14

David: Yeah.

30:14

It's like that saying that some people have as a magnet on their fridge,

30:17

"We're born naked and the rest is drag."

30:18

That's Butler's thesis.

30:23

Ellie: Although for her, we're not even born naked, because I'm already marked MRF

30:26

on my birth certificate before I'm born.

30:29

David: True, but you get the point, that we come into this world, and then

30:33

everything that we do is performative in this stronger and more robust sense.

30:39

And one of the things that Butler finds really interesting also about this

30:43

documentary Paris is Burning, and for our listeners who have not seen it,

30:48

I highly recommend it, I've actually shown it to my students several times.

30:51

Ellie: Yeah.

30:52

I taught it in philosophy of film.

30:53

David: Is that what it highlights, what these drag performances and

30:58

ballroom, uh, displays of theatricality and gender and exuberance, um, show

31:04

us, is also the inherent danger playing with the boundaries of

31:09

accepted scripts about about gender.

31:12

Ellie: Yeah, because she says in this piece, uh, her article about

31:14

Paris of Burning is called "Gender is Burning," that in ball culture, folks

31:20

of different gender identities are performing femininity and Butler talks

31:25

about the way that in doing so, they are citing the dominant norm, right

31:29

through signifiers of femininity, like high heels, makeup, big hair, dresses.

31:35

And for her, there's not something intrinsically subversive in

31:38

citing the dominant norm.

31:40

The simple presence of bodies who are not traditionally designated

31:44

feminine embodying femininity doesn't automatically displace the norm.

31:49

She says that actually, things like ball culture can reinforce the dominant norm

31:54

by reiterating it as the very desire of the subjects who are performing it.

32:00

And so there's a complicated relationship here between embodiment,

32:03

gender identity, and desire.

32:06

David: Yeah.

32:06

And I think the term complicated is exactly right, because another point

32:09

that she makes is that there's an inherent ambiguity, or a danger, in these

32:14

performances, because what you're doing is either reinforcing existing social norms

32:20

about what women look like or what women are, or men, because in the documentary,

32:25

there are also performances of masculinity, but she also makes the claim

32:30

that it can go the other way, and it can be transgressive to the point of putting

32:35

people who engage in those kinds of performances in danger, precisely because

32:40

in signifying accepted modes of femininity and masculinity, they also resignify them.

32:47

So they cite it, but then they tweak it and that tweaking can be

32:51

dangerous from a social standpoint.

32:53

Ellie: And do you mean, you mean it can be dangerous from the

32:55

perspective of the dominant norm?

32:56

It can serve to unsettle the binary between masculinity and femininity

33:00

and it's associated with sex- and its associations with sex and gender?

33:03

David: That's right, but I think, again, the point here is about ambiguity,

33:06

because it can go both ways, right?

33:07

You can end up enforcing the status quo, or you can disrupt it.

33:11

And sometimes there's no way to know until after the fact.

33:14

Ellie: And so we see here that performativity itself is neither

33:16

necessarily conservative nor necessarily disruptive, but has

33:20

this ambivalence attached to it.

33:22

David: Yeah.

33:23

And there are two figures in the film that Butler writes about

33:26

who exemplify this ambivalence.

33:30

One of them is Venus Xtravaganza, who is a 23 year old Puerto Rican trans woman who

33:36

appears in the film, and is interviewed and talks about her life and her desires

33:41

and wanting to get married, and you get the sense that, in many ways, Venus has,

33:46

in fact, internalized this image of being a real woman, being read as such by

33:52

those around her, and living that dream of having a husband who takes care of you,

33:58

and being essentially a stay at home wife.

34:00

Ellie: Yeah.

34:01

Venus Xtravaganza: I would like to be a spoiled with- rich white girl.

34:05

They get what they want, whenever they wanted it.

34:09

They don't have to really struggle with finances, and nice things,

34:14

nice clothes and they don't have to have that as a problem.

34:19

I want to be with the man I love.

34:22

I want a nice home, away from New York.

34:25

I want to get married in church, in white.

34:30

I want to be a complete woman.

34:32

David: And on the other hand, we have a character named Willi Ninja

34:37

who is a black ball performer, and the interesting thing, according

34:40

to Butler, is that both and Willi Ninja are signifying and resignifying

34:47

gender through their performances and their participation in ball culture.

34:51

But the effects of that resignification was not the same for both of them.

34:57

Willi Ninja went on to become a famous dance choreographer and a model.

35:02

He modeled for Jean Paul Gaultier.

35:04

He was, uh, Paris Hilton's dance coach.

35:07

He was a guest- yeah, like he really rose to fame.

35:11

He was a guest on the, on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

35:15

And in general, he became the public facing figure of

35:18

ball culture in the 1990s.

35:22

But on the other hand, Venus Xtravaganza, this 23 year old trans

35:27

woman who, again, is playing with the same boundaries, pushing the same

35:31

buttons about what acceptable social performances of gender are, was found

35:36

murdered in a hotel in New York, um, even before the documentary finished

35:42

recording, before it finished shooting.

35:44

And we don't know what happened, but only theory that we've been left with is that

35:50

she went to a hotel with a man who did not know that she was a trans womanand

35:56

who murdered her upon finding out.

36:00

So Butler's point is that your performance of gender either can uphold

36:07

the status quo or be transgressive.

36:10

And if it's transgressive, you can either be rewarded for it, or you can

36:15

be punished for it, sometimes, you know, the highest form of punishment.

36:20

And you can not know that before the fact.

36:23

And so when you enter into these spaces of transgression, you

36:27

enter into an ambivalent space.

36:29

Ellie: One of the critiques of Butler's theory of performativity, though, is

36:32

that there are different stakes for different people and that different

36:36

people's access to gender performativity that is transgressive is uneven.

36:41

So for instance, I'm going to be read differently as a cisgender

36:45

white woman, and I might have greater access to subversive gender

36:50

performance because of my white privilege than say, a black woman.

36:54

David: Yes, or even a woman performing masculinity is differently read than

37:00

a man performing femininity because of the different values our culture

37:04

attributes to those two ends of the most simplified version of the spectrum.

37:08

Ellie: Absolutely.

37:10

David: We need to pay attention to all these asymmetries.

37:13

Ellie: And I think what we're seeing here is that the concept

37:15

of performativity opens up so many discussions that are complicated,

37:20

and interesting, and politically important about not only gender, but

37:25

also identity and identity production.

37:28

And so there's so much more to say here, which we don't have time for,

37:32

but one thing to just say in closing is that I think it's really important

37:36

to hold on to the complexities of this theory of performativity in

37:40

order to preserve it's richness, whether you agree with it or not.

37:45

And for that reason, I would really caution folks against using

37:49

performativity as a synonym for artificial, optical, or fake.

37:55

David: And one point that I would want to bring up, by way of conclusion, is

37:58

that somebody like Butler in particular, it's not as if there is performance at

38:03

the margins and nature at the center.

38:07

It's not as if these, like, Black and latinx kids in New York in ball

38:11

culture—which was at the time largely underground, now it's much more

38:14

popular, especially when you think about mainstream drag culture—it's not as

38:19

if that's performance, and the rest of us are over here doing the real thing.

38:25

Everybody is performing gender.

38:27

I am, you are, our listeners are.

38:30

And all of those performances are equally performative, in the sense that they

38:36

bring about our identity as gendered subjects, even if the identities that

38:41

they bring into existence not on the same level on the political and social scale.

38:48

Ellie: Yeah.

38:49

All right, now, back to episodes of Pose.

38:51

David: Or the less interesting version of that, RuPaul's Drag Race.

39:01

Ellie: We hope you enjoyed today's episode.

39:04

Please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever

39:08

you listen to your podcasts.

39:09

David: You can email us with questions, feedback, or even requests for life

39:13

advice at dearoverthink@gmail.com.

39:17

Ellie: You can also find us on Instagram and Twitter at @overthink_pod.

39:23

We want to thank Anna Koppelman, our production assistant, Samuel P.K.

39:27

Smith for the original music, and Trevor Ames for our logo.

39:31

David: Thanks so much for joining us today.