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,.I

RACE AS A KIND OF SPEECH ACT

Louis F. Miron and Jonathan Xavier Inda

NATURALIZING DIFFERENCE
In surveying the history of racial representation in western culture, Stuart Hall
(l 997b) finds that one of the more ubiquitous practices used to mark racial difference has been to naturalize the racialized other. It has been typical for racialized
regimes of representation to reduce the cultures of black people to Nature, or to
naturalize difference. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries according to
Hall, popular representations of everyday life under slavery tended to cluster
around two principal themes: "First was the subordinate status and 'innate laziness' ofblacks-'naturally' born to, and fitted only for, servitude but, at the same
time, stubbornly unwilling to labour in ways appropriate to their nature and profitable for their masters. Second was their innate 'primitivism,' simplicity, and
lack of culture, which made them genetically incapable of 'civilized' refinements" (l 997b, p. 244 ). The logic behind these naturalizing practices is rather
simple. "If the differences between black and white people are 'cultural,' then
they are open to modification and change. But if they are 'natural' -as the slaveholders believed-then they are beyond history, permanent and fixed" (p. 245).
Naturalization is thus a representational scheme calculated to fix difference forever, to secure discursive closure. It is a practice designed to render the order of
Cultural Studies: A Research Annual, Volume 5, pages 85-107.
Copyright 2000 by JAi Press Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
ISBN: 0-7623-0640-8

85

86

LOUIS F. MIRON and JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

things natural, so natural that no one questions the hierarchical relationships

between different racialized subjects.
If we look at contemporary modes of racial representation, we find that the
practice of naturalizing difference is still rather common. In 1994, for example,
Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray published a highly popular book, The
Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, which focused on,
among other things, the intellectual inferiority of certain racialized subjects, primarily blacks. Their main claim was that America was suffering from a myriad of
social problems, 1 all of which could be very strongly correlated with low intelligence. Moreover, no level of social engineering could remedy this situation, given
that intelligence, which Herrnstein and Murray believed could be accurately measured using IQ tests, was determined significantly by genetics. The implication is
that blacks and other racialized subjects, all of whom are associated with these
social problems in general, are naturally not intelligent. 2 This means that, no matter how much money one pours into education or welfare or any other social programs, racialized subjects such as African Americans are just not capable of
moving beyond their marginal social existence. They are simply and naturally not
bright enough to do so. The end result of such reasoning is that it naturalizes and
justifies social inequality, foreclosing the possibility that social intervention
might remedy the ills that afflict African Americans or any other racially marginal
subjects. All of this, then, amounts to the familiar practice of naturalizing difference, of differentiating human subjects into a number of natural and distinct races
based on their typical phenomenal characteristics, and the consignment of some
groups as inferior, in this case on the basis of putative intelligence. Indeed, it
amounts to the familiar practice of locating difference in the presocial realm, of
locating difference in nature as part of nature, and hence rendering it immutable.
Given the continued saliency of such naturalizing practices, of practices
designed to fix difference until the end of time, it becomes imperative to once
again put forth arguments which posit that race is not the effect of biological
truths, but a historically contingent, socially constructed category of knowledge.
This is precisely what we intend to do in this essay. We will argue that race simply
does not exist as a biological fact, proposing instead, that we think of race as a
kind of speech act, as a performative of sorts. In speech act theory, the performative refers to those speech acts that brings into being or enact that which they
name. It is that aspect of discourse that, in the act of uttering, also performs that to
which it refers. To think of race in these terms draws our attention to language and
its effects, to how it organizes our encounter with the world. More specifically, it
suggests that although race may have a foundation in biology since it carves out
populations on the basis of phenomenal characteristics, it is really just a name,
albeit a very powerful one, that retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the
groupings to which it refers and that it identifies in its own name. Race does not
refer to a pregiven subject. Rather, it works performatively to constitute the subject itself and only acquires a naturalized effect through repeated or reiterative

Race as a Kind of Speech Act

87

naming of or reference to that subject. This means that since race does not refer to
a preconstituted, natural entity, since the process of naming subjects actually
amounts to the very act of their constitution, then "'race' is not an effect of biological truths, but is one of the ways that hegemonic social fictions are produced
and maintained as 'natural' facts about the world and its inhabitants" (Pellegrini
1997, p. 98). It also means that since race is a social fiction, only a sedimented
effect of reiterative practices, it must be susceptible to being rewritten, and that
systems of racial domination are not systemic totalities destined to keep racialized
subjects in positions of subordination. The meaning of race, and hence the constitution of racial subjects, is fundamentally unstable and open to all sorts of resignifications.
We propose to put forth what might be called a performative notion of race, to
elaborate on how race is constituted performatively. To do so, we will follow a
theoretical itinerary, one might say a detour, that begins with J. L. Austin (1975),
who first brought us the notion of performativity, weaves its way through Jacques
Derrida (1988) and Michel Foucault (1979, 1980), and ends up with Judith Butler
(1993a, 1993b), who, through the work of these others, developed the concept of
gender performativity. Basically, we will advance a notion of racial performativity akin to Butler's theory of the performative constitution of gender. We begin
our excursion with J. L. Austin. 3

AUSTIN: PEFORMATIVE LANGUAGE

One of the first people to use the term "performative" in a substantive manner was
the British philosopher oflanguage J. L. Austin. In How to Do Things with Words
( 1975), Austin argues that for most of the history of philosophy it has been common to assume "that the business of a 'statement' can only be to 'describe' some
state of affairs, or to 'state some fact', which it must do either truly or falsely"
(p. 1). In other words, the business of sentences, their only business in fact has
been to describe, to set forth statements of fact, to report-either truly or falselyon a given state of affairs. All other utterances-those which failed to describe the
state of the world, those which were not subject to the truth/falsity criteria-have
been treated as marginal, unimportant, merely as pseudo- or failed statements.
Austin challenges this marginalization, suggesting that while the attribute of truth
and falsehood is essential to those utterances, labeled constatives, that intend to
record or impart straightforward information about the facts (e.g., "the cat is on
the mat"), it is not the only thing at stake in language. For the so caJled pseudostatements, rather than setting out to describe the world and failing at it, belong to
a different category of utterances altogether-a category named performative, to
which the truth/falsity criterion is not applicable since its business is not to
describe or to inform but to perform the actions to which they refer, to perform an
act through the very process of enunciation. For instance, if one utters "I do" in

88

LOUIS F. MIRON and JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

the course of a wedding ceremony, one is not reporting on a marriage or describing what one is doing, one is actually indulging in it. Similarly, ifI say, "I promise
to pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today," I am not describing what I am doing
but accomplishing the act of promising. Thus, if to speak is to act, if to utter is to
perform, then these performative utterances cannot be subject to the truth/falsity
criterion so dear to constative language. They can only be successful or unsuccessful or, as Austin prefers, felicitous or infelicitous. In other words, the performative can only be judged on the basis of the success or failure of the act to which
it refers. One can only judge the utterance "I do" (said in the course of a marriage
ceremony) on the basis of its success or failure in performing the act of marrying.
The distinction between constative utterances, which describe truly or falsely a
state of affairs, and performative utterances, which perform successfully or
unsuccessfully the acts to which they refer, is significant because it shows that
language performs actions rather than simply describe them. It turns out, however, that this distinction is not really all that stable because, when Austin tries to
determine the criteria for identifying the performative and its various forms, he
realizes that the constative is really just a special case of the performative. One of
the important features of the performative, according to Austin, is the possibility
of deleting the explicit performative verb, so that an utterance such as "the cat is
on the mat," which is the classic example of the constative utterance, can be
viewed as ellipses of performative "I hereby affirm that the cat is on the mat." And
once we admit to the existence of these implicit performatives from which the
explicit performative verb has been deleted, it becomes incredibly difficult to find
a sentence that would not fit into this grouping. So constative statements, too, perform actions-actions of stating, describing, and so on. We are thus faced with an
interesting tum of events. We began from a philosophical situation where constative statements were the norm of language and any other utterances were treated as
failed statements, and ended up with almost the exact opposite, a situation in
which the constative is just a special (and not a failed) case of the performativea performative from which the explicit performative verb has been excised.
Given this broadened concept of the performative, Austin sets out to discover
the conventions that make it possible for any speech act to be performed. He
hopes to reveal these general rules "by looking at and classifying types of cases in
which something goes wrong and the act-marrying, betting, bequeathing, christening, or what not-is therefore at least to some extent a failure" (Austin 1975,
p. 14 ). However, before classifying these infelicities, he states schematically
some of the necessary, if not sufficient, conditions for the smooth or happy functioning of a performative. (A. I) "There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering
of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances, and further, (A.2) the
particular persons and circumstances in a case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked. (B .1) The procedure must be executed by
all participants both correctly and (B.2) completely" (pp. 14-15). If any of these

Race as a Kind of Speech Act

89

rules were broken, a possibility that always exists, then our performative utterance
would be unhappy (infelicitous); our utterance would fail to bring about the event
that it designates. For example, if we trespass against rules A or B-"that is if we,
say, utter the formula incorrectly, or if, say, we are not in a position to do the act
because we are, say, married already, or it is the purser and not the captain who is
conducting the ceremony, then the act in question, e.g. marrying, is not successfully performed at all, does not come off, is not achieved" (pp. 15-16). Austin
goes on to develop a scheme of the various infelicities that affect performative
utterances, which will not concern us here, but before doing so he takes a significant pause-significant for our purposes-to make some general remarks about
these infelicities.
In a fascinating move, one reminiscent of the history of philosophy-recall that
it was customary for philosophers to exclude utterances to which the attribute of
truth and falsehood was not applicable-Austin proposes to exclude from his theory of speech acts nonserious uses of language:
as utterances our performatives are also heir to certain other kinds of ill which infect all utterances. And these likewise, though again they might be brought into a more general account, we
are deliberately at present excluding. I mean, for example, the following: a performative utterance will, for example, be in a peculiar way hollow or void if said by an actor on the stage, or
if introduced in a poem, or spoken in soliloquy. This applies in a similar manner to any and
every utterance-a sea-change in special circumstances. Language in such circumstances is in
special ways-intelligibly-used not seriously, but in ways parasitic upon its normal useways which fall under the doctrine of the etiolations of language. All this we are excluding
from consideration. Our performative utterances, felicitous or not, are to be understood as
issued in ordinary circumstances (pp. 21-22).

So where once philosophy used to exclude utterances that were not true or false,
now it seems that Austin is excluding nonserious uses of language because they
are parasitical, completely dependent on ordinary language. But can Austin so
easily exclude these parasites, especially since he recognizes that the nonserious
use of language is a possibility available to every utterance. " ... As utterances our
performatives are also heir to certain other kinds of ill which infect all utterances"
(p. 21). Indeed, if the parasite infects all utterances, then by excluding the parasite
and basing one's theory of language on ordinary uses of language, may one not be
neglecting what could tum out to be central to the working of language as such?
Moreover, since Austin himself opposed the philosophical exclusion of those
utterances, the pseudo-statements, which allowed him to determine that constatives were only a special case of the performative, should we not be wary of Austin's similar exclusions as well? If we answer yes to this question then our next
job is to inquire into the status of this parasitism. Is nonserious speech logically
dependent on the possibility of serious uses of speech? Or might the parasite be
the condition of possibility of the speech act in general?

90

LOUIS F. MIRON and JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

To reiterate, Austin argues that for a speech act to be a speech act it has to take
place. It can only take place, in ordinary language. For example, in order for me
to perform the act of getting married, it has to take place in "real" life, in front of
a judge empowered to perform weddings, and not as part of something like a play.
Moreover, he suggests that such forms of pretended speech like saying "I do" in a
play are logically dependent on the nonpretended speech act thus making the pretended case parasitical on the nonpretended one. This certainly seems to make
sense. Could an actor pretend to get married in a play if it were not possible to get
married in real life? Indeed, it would appear that the act (not) performed by saying
"I do" in a play is an imitation of the one performed by uttering these words in
front of a judge. The pretended speech act is an empty repetition of the formula
used to perform the act of marriage.
Given such derivativeness, given that nonserious uses of language are merely
empty repetitions, it is no wonder that Austin deliberately excludes them, these
parasites, from his theory of speech acts. No wonder indeed! But, of course, for
the reasons suggested in the previous paragraph-including Austin's own opposition to and overturning of earlier philosophical exclusions-we do have to wonder. We do have to be wary about the status of such an exclusion. It could tum out
that the logic of dependency actually works in reverse. The serious speech act
might be dependent on the nonserious use of language. The excluded parasite
might not be so excludable after all. In fact, Jacques Derrida suggests as much,
and even more, in his careful reading of Austin, when he asks: "isn't it true that
what Austin excludes as anomaly, exception, 'nonserious' citation (on stage, in a
poem, or a soliloquy) is the determined modification of a general citationalityor rather, a general iterability-without which there would not even be a 'successful' performative?" (Derrida l 988, p. 17). In other words, Derrida suggests that
what Austin excludes-the nonserious, the parasite-is the condition of possibility of the speech act as such. It would appear that he has indeed reversed the relation of dependency between serious and nonserious uses of language, proposing
that the former is actually dependent on the latter. But there is much more going
on here because Derrida, rather than simply reversing the opposition between
serious/nonserious, actually displaces the entire system. 4 It is grounded not in the
valorization of the nonserious, but in a general citationality or iterability which,
no longer only the property of the nonserious, makes possible both the serious and
nonserious uses of language. Derrida has, in other words, through a double gesture, a double writing, "put into practice a reversal of the classical opposition and
a general displacement of the system" (p. 2 I).

DERRIDA: ITERABILITY AND CITATIONALITY

Perhaps we moved a bit too fast. Permit us to slow down, take a step back, and
proceed by elucidating what Derrida might mean by such clearly central terms as

Race as a Kind of Speech Act

91

citation, citationality, and iterability. Only then will we be able to get a clearer
picture of Derrida's double gesture, his double science, and move on to our task
of formulating a performative notion of race. First of all, we have to remember
that Austin calls pretended speech acts parasitic because they are logically dependent on nonpretended utterances because they are empty repetitions, imitations or
copies of these nonpretended forms. Derrida suggests, implicitly, that since these
pretended utterances are copies ofnonpretended speech acts, they can also be seen
as citations, as quotations, of these serious uses of language. For instance, the formula "I do" (uttered during a wedding ceremony in a play) is a citation of the
same utterance originally said in a real life situation involving a real judge, and a
real bride and groom. Thus, if pretended uses of languages are parasitic because
they are copies, then as citations they are also parasitic, derivative. And secondly,
we also have to remember that Austin tells us that the possibility of the performative depends on conventional procedures, on repeatable formulas. "There must
exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect,
that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances" (Austin 1975, p. 14). In other words, in order for someone to
say "I do" at a wedding ceremony and count as a speech act, the utterance must be
recognizable as the repetition of a conventional formula; that is, it must conform
to a model and be recognized as a repetition. Derrida reminds us of this condition
of possibility of the performative when he asks: "Could a performative utterance
succeed if its formulation did not repeat a 'coded' or iterable utterance, or in other
words, if the formula I pronounce in order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a
marriage were not identifiable as conforming with an iterable model, if it were not
then identifiable in some way as a 'citation'?" (Derrida 1988, p. 18). But of course
this is no simple reminder, no simple repetition of Austin. What Derrida is actually suggesting is that if the speech act, in order to be possible, must repeat a
coded utterance, then it must be recognizable as a citation, a repetition in quotation marks as it were. And we know from our first "we have to remember" that for
Austin the derivativeness of pretended speech acts has to do with their status as
citations. This is not to say that a citation on the stage is of the same sort as ones
used in order to open a meeting or launch a ship. However, it is to say that citationality seems to be the condition of possibility of both serious and nonserious
uses of language.
Now we can return to our first quotation of Derrida, which captures in a nutshell
his reading of Austin, his reversal of serious/nonserious opposition and the general displacement of the system. "Isn't it true that what Austin excludes as anomaly, exception, 'nonserious,' citation (on stage, in a poem, or a soliloquy) is the
determined modification of a general citationality-or rather, a general iterability-without which there would not even be a 'successful' performative?" (Derrida 1988, p. 17). We know now that the nonserious use of language is a citation
because it repeats a nonpretended speech act and that because it is a citation it is
considered parasitical by Austin. We also know that the speech act is a citation

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LOUIS F. MIRON and JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

because it repeats a conventional formula. Thus, since both serious and nonserious uses of language are citations, it seems that a general citationality is the condition of possibility of both. In other words, what Derrida has done is, first,
reversed the opposition between serious and non-serious use of language, demonstrating that the former is dependent on the latter because the qualities attributed
to pretended speech, in this case citationality, are actually a condition of the performative, of the speech act as such; and secondly, displaced the system because
rather than belonging to separate orders, as Austin would suggest, the serious and
nonserious speech are both made possible by a general citationality or iterability.
And, of course, this citationality is not of the "same sort as in a theatrical play, a
philosophical reference, or the recitation of a poem" (Derrida 1988, p. 18). It is a
citationality without which no utterance, whether performative or otherwise,
could take place. That is to say, an utterance can only take place if it is iterable, if
it can be repeated, quoted or cited in a variety of serious and nonserious contexts.
Thus while there is still a difference between a performative and a pretended
speech act, they are no longer in opposition to each other. Rather, they are different kinds of iteration within a general iterability.
There you have it, then, the double gesture, the double writing that puts into
practice a reversal of the serious-non-serious opposition and a general displacement of the system. And with this we move closer to a performative theory of the
racial subject, but we still have to make one more move, one that takes us through
Foucault and the subject of discourse.

FOUCAULT: THE SUBJECT OF DISCOURSE

We mentioned earlier that the notion of performative language draws our attention to how language organizes our encounter with the world. Ultimately, this
generates questions about the nature of the subject. 5 In its traditional conception,
the "subject" refers to an individual who is somehow a point of origin for larger
historical, social, and even personal events, and who, possessed of valid selfknowledge, is in full charge and control of him/herself. This kind of thinking thus
sees the subject as an autonomous and stable entity, as the authentic source of
action and meaning, of all that we think and speak (Hall l 997a). It is our common
sense way of thinking We assume "that the nature of human 'being' is given in
some way-that it exists prior to language simply to label the world of its own
experience" (Easthope and McGowan 1992, p. 67). This subject-this rational,
conscious, prelinguistic subject at the center of knowledge-is often called the
Cartesian subject, named after Rene Descartes, the French philosopher who gave
it its primary formulation back in the seventeenth century; or, alternatively, it is
referred to as the humanist subject, since it places the human at the center and in
control of the world. Such a conception of the subject, although still central to
Western philosophy and political and social organization, has been seriously cri-

Race as a Kind of Speech Act

93

tiqued by an alternative formulation that decenters the human subject by problematizing the simplistic relationship between language and the subject presumed by
common sense. "It replaces human nature with concepts of history, society and
culture as determining factors in the construction of individual identity, and destabilizes the coherence of that identity by making it an effect rather than simply an
origin of linguistic practice" (Easthope and McGowan 1992, p. 7). In other words,
the subject is seen as made, that is, constituted and regulated by language and its
material supports in social institutions and practices. In short, language does not
name a subject that preexists it, but actually produces it through naming it.
The French philosopher/historian Michel Foucault (1979, 1980) proposed one
specific formulation of this decentered subject. His basic claim is that discourse,
taken as a heterogeneous network of texts (languages), disciplines and institutions, functions to constitute and regulate objects of knowledge. In other words,
the claim is that discourse produces knowledge, not the subjects who speak it. To
be sure, subjects may be the bearers of certain kinds of knowledges. However,
these are knowledges produced by discourse. The subject is constituted within
discourse; or, to put it another way, discourse itself produces subjects, figures
who incarnate the particular forms of knowledge which the discourse produces
(Hall 1997a). Thus, in effect, Foucault displaces the subject from its privileged
position in relation to knowledge and meaning. It is not the author of meaning but
its effect, and as we will show below, always an effect of power.
Foucault does more than this, more than simply displace the subject from its
privileged position as the source of action and meaning. Central to his formulation is the belief that knowledge is inextricably linked with the workings of
power. Indeed, he was quite preoccupied with the way knowledge worked
through discourse to regulate the habits and actions of particular subjects. Foucault "saw knowledge as always inextricably enmeshed in relations of power
because it was always being applied to the regulation of social conduct in practice" (Hall 1997a, p. 47). So not only is the subject produced within discourse, it
is also an effect of unequal power relations-relations that operate through specific discourses, prescribing and shaping conduct according to certain norms
which set limits on the subject. The subject is positioned within particular discourses as an effect of power. This is not to suggest, however, that the subject is
completely determined, that because it is constituted as an effect of power it is
therefore stripped of agency. As Judith Butler has noted, "if the subject is constituted by power, that power does not cease at the moment the subject is constituted, for that subject is never fully constituted, but is subjected and produced
time and again" (Butler 1995, p. 223). In other words, the discursive constitution
of the subject is a never ending process, beginning at birth and repeated continuously throughout the subject's life. And because it is a never ending process,
because of the necessity of iterability, the subject can only ever be precariously
constituted, making it is possible for the subject to undermine the forces of nor-

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LOUIS F. MIRON and JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

malization, to tum power against itself. 6 This necessity of repetition takes us

back to the terrain of the performative.

BUTLER: PERFORMATIVITY
From our discussion of Derrida, one will recall that without citationality, without
iterability, no performative could take place. It succeeds "only because that action
echoes prior actions, and accumulates the force of authority through the repetition
or citation of a prior, authoritative set of practices" (Butler l 993a, pp. 226-227).
What this suggests, following Judith Butler's (1993a) work on gender performativity, is that the act of subject constitution must not be understood as a singular
act, but rather as reiterative practice through which discourse produces the effect
that it names. This act, though, does not so much bring into being what it names,
as produces, through the reiterative power of discourse, the thing that it regulates.
In other words, a discourse gains "authority to bring about what it names through
citing the conventions of authority," so that a norm "takes hold to the extent that
it is 'cited' as such a norm, but it also derives its power through the citations that
it compels" (l 993a, p. 13). What takes place is that through the force of such reiterations the subject that these nonsingular acts name acquires a naturalized
effect-it becomes sedimented, as it were. In order to maintain this naturalized
effect, the subject must be continuously interpellated (the process through which
one is hailed as a subject) in various times and places. As such, there is no reference to a pure subject which does not itself contribute to the further formation of
that subject. From this point of view, the utterance "It's a girl!," which traditionally welcomes a baby into the world, is not so much a constative utterance, a statement of fact, as one in a long series of performatives that constitutes the subject
whose arrival they announce and through which the girl is continuously gendered
throughout her lifetime. Indeed, the "girling of the girl" does not end with the
founding act of interpellation, but must be reiterated by various authorities and in
various times and places to reinforce the naturalized gender effect. In short, what
Butler calls performativity is a "matter of reiterating or repeating the norms by
which one is constituted: it is not the radical fabrication of a gendered self. It is a
compulsory repetition of prior and subjectivating norms, ones which cannot be
thrown off at will, but 'Nhich work, animate, and constrain the gendered subject"
(1993b, p. 22).
To suggest that the subject is constituted is not to imply, however, that the subject is left without agency, that it is completely determined. It is of course true that
a performative subject acquires a naturalized effect through the reiterative practices through which discourse produces the effects that it names, acquiring this
effect to such an extent that it could be said to be hegemonic. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, the fact that this reiteration is necessary is a sign that the constitution
of a subject is never complete. It is the very same necessity of reiteration, of citing

Race as a Kind of Speech Act

95

previous norms in the constitution of the subject, which makes it possible for this
process of normalization to be subverted. Indeed, the necessity of reiteration
offers the possibility of reiterating the identity of the subject otherwise, with a difference. In other words, the iterability, the capacity of being cited, which makes it
possible for any subject to acquire a naturalized effect, also makes it impossible
to ever truly succeed in doing so.
How does this happen exactly? By virtue of this reiteration, "gaps and fissures
are opened up as the constitutive instabilities in such constructions, as that which
escapes or exceeds the norm, as that which cannot be wholly defined or fixed by
the repetitive labor of that norm" (Butler 1993a, p. 10). This instability could be
called the deconstituting potentiality in the process of reiteration, making the subject the site for the perpetual possibility of a certain resignifying process, the site
for the proliferation of certain effects that undermine the power of normalization.
In other words, while the necessity of reiteration does succeed in producing normative subjects, it also produces the site where the norm is called into question
and where it can potentially be rearticulated:
In this sense, disciplinary discourse does not unilaterally constitute a subject ... or rather, if it
does, it simultaneously constitutes the condition for the subject's de-constitution. What is
brought into being through the performative effect of the interpellating demand is much more
that a "subject," for the "subject" created is not for that reason fixed in place: it becomes the
occasion for a further making. Indeed, I would add, a subject only remains a subject through a
reiteration or rearticulation of itself as a subject, and this dependency of the subject on repetition for coherence may constitute that subject's incoherence, its incomplete character. This
repetition or, better, iterability thus becomes the nonplace of subversion, the possibility of a
reembodying of the subjectivating norm that can redirect its normativity (Butler 1997, p. 99)

The upshot is that the reiterative process, the process of infinite repeatability
through which a subject is produced, opens up that subject to redeployment, to
being constituted otherwise. Thus, to think of the subject through performativity,
calls our attention to those constitutive instabilities that contest the naturalizing
effects of discourse.

RACE AS A KIND OF SPEECH ACT

What does all this have to do with the construction of racial subjects?7
Before answering this question, we would just like to note that we believe that
any subject is positioned is such a way that it is never simply constituted as singular entity, as simply a racial subject for example. This means that the subject is
always multiply constituted, that, as Chantal Mouffe puts it, "within every society, each social agent is inscribed in a multiplicity of social relations-not only
relations of production but also social relations, among others, of sex, race,
nationality, and vicinity. All these social relations determine positionalities or
subject positions and cannot be reduced to only one" (Mouffe 1988, pp. 89-90).

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Thus, someone is who positioned as a worker is simultaneously a man or a

woman, heterosexual or homosexual, white or black, Catholic or Protestant,
American or Mexican, and so on. In short, the subject is sutured, stitched in place
as it were, at the intersection of various discourses. A raced subject is thus always
a hybrid gendered, sexualized, and class-oriented construct. For the purposes of
this paper however, we will act as if it were possible to talk about the subject as a
singular entity. The reason for doing this is that since this is our first stab, as it
were, at thinking through a notion of racial performativity, we felt it would be easier if, for now, we bracketed other socially significant identities. In the future,
with a preliminary theory of racial performativity in hand, we will complicate our
analysis by taking up more directly the hybridity of the subject and its relation to
performativity. 8 So frankly, one of the limits of this paper is that it excludes the
significant ways in which race relates to other positions, prominent among these
being sex, gender, and class.
Now back to our question: What does all this have to do with the construction
of racial subjects? If you will recall, we noted that the practice of naturalizing
racial difference has a conspicuous history in Western culture. It is a practice that
developed in the wake of European exploration and colonization during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries-when Europeans elaborated a worldview that distinguished them, as children of God or human beings, from the "others" they
encountered in the New World-and then eventually led to the "scientific" systems of classification advanced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
which created seemingly immutable hierarchies based on the phenomenal and
biological differences of humankind (Omi and Winant 1994). During this latter
period (1850s), one notable scheme of human classification was put forth by Robert Knox, a Scottish anatomist, who argued as Michael Banton notes:
First, that variations in the constitution and behaviour of individuals were to be explained as
the expression of different underlying biological types of a relatively permanent kind; second,
differences between these types explained variations in the cultures of human populations;
third, the distinctive nature of the types explained the superiority of Europeans in general and
Aryans in particular; fourth, friction between nations and individuals of different type arose
from innate characters (Banton 1977, p. 47).

The upshot here is that Knox insists on the essential superiority of white Europeans, distinguishing them from the other groups and effectively establishing a
social hierarchy in such a way that physical markers come to designate the place
that a group occupies in social relationships. In other words, Knox grounds his
hierarchy on the belief that certain physical traits, such as skin color, body type,
etc., are tied to attributes of behavior, intellect, and morality. As such, race is constructed as an essence, a natural phenomenon, whose meaning is prior to and
beyond the reach of human intervention.
What this really amounts to is what is commonly referred to as racism, an
exclusionary and marginalizing practice that quite often works through the con-

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97

struction of binary oppositions such as us/them, self/other, and white/black (or

white/other). These binary constructions are hardly ever neutral. There is always
a dimension of power between the end points of such oppositions. Thus, when we
talk about binary opposition like us/them, as Jacques Derrida has emphasized,
"we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-a-vis, but rather with a
violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other ... or has the upper
hand" (Derrida 198 l, p. 41 ). Indeed, these constructions embody a logic that valorizes the first term while subordinating the second. And this is not simply a matter of semantics because such classificatory practices carry material consequence.
For example, Stuart Hall, focusing on the period of plantation slavery and its
aftermath in the United States, points out how the discourses that sought to justify
slavery, and thus the exploitation of a particular group of human beings, were
structured by a series of binary oppositions:
There is the powerful opposition between civilization (white) and savagery (black). There is
the opposition between the biological or bodily characteristics of the black and white races,
polarized into their extreme opposites-each the signifiers of an absolute difference between
human types or species. There are the rich distinctions which cluster around the supposed link,
on the one hand, between the white races and intellectual development-refinement, learning
and knowledge, a belief in reason, the presence of developed institutions, formal government
and law, and a "civilized restraint" in their emotional, sexual and civil life, all of which are
associated with culture; and on the other hand, the link between the black races and whatever
is instinctual-the open expression of emotion and feeling rather than intellect, a lack of "civilized refinement" in sexual and social life, a reliance on custom and ritual, and the lack of
developed civil institutions, all of which are linked to nature (Hall l 997b, p. 243).

In effect, through such binary constructions people are classified according to a

norm, setting up a symbolic boundary between the acceptable and the unacceptable, the normal and the deviant. In this particular case, the opposition is constructed in such a way that physical features, namely skin color, are linked to
attributes of intellect and behavior, establishing a hierarchy of quality between
white and black. The essential character of these groups is fixed eternally in
nature since physical appearance is linked causally to behaviors by biological
inheritance.
This example of naturalizing difference, along with those of The Bell Curve and
of Knox, is often labeled classical or traditional racism since it "rationalizes
claims of national superiority or sociopolitical disqualification and economic
exploitation of groups of individuals within a polity by attributing to them certain
moral, intellectual, or social defects supposedly grounded in their 'racial' endowment which, by virtue of being innate, are inevitable" (Stokke 1995, p. 7).
Although such forms of racism that resort to crude biologisms still abound in the
late twentieth century both in Europe and in the United States, it is generally
acknowledged that racism, which can be defined in general terms as the belief in
and/or practice of excluding people on the basis of their membership in a racially
defined group, has taken a new turn toward what is often called cultural racism

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(Gilroy 1990; Giroux 1993), neo-racism (Bali bar 1991 ), or cultural fundamentalism (Stokke 1995).
This new cultural racism, rather than asserting different natural endowments of
human races, notions that have lost some appeal and credibility, emphasizes differences of cultural heritage and their incommensurability. In other words, as Etienne Balibar has noted: "It is a racism whose dominant theme is not biological
heredity but the insurmountability of cultural differences, a racism which, at first
sight, does not postulate the superiority of certain groups or peoples in relation to
others but 'only' the harmfulness of abolishing frontiers, the incompatibility of
life-styles and traditions" (1991, p. 21 ). The logic here is that humanity is divided
into a number of groups who are the bearers of distinct and incommensurable cultures, and whose members are prone to enter into conflict with one another since
it is human nature to be xenophobic. In an ideal world, each culture would be spatially segregated from one another, each in its own little piece of earth; only with
such separation could any of them flourish. In theory, this view does not imply the
ordering of different cultures hierarchically. In fact, it appears to be quite the
opposite, seemingly bent toward the recognition of the variety and equality of cultures. But what happens when a particular territory, let us say a national territory,
is inhabited by a multiplicity of cultures? The theory goes as follows: in such a situation-which is not unlike the one one finds today in the United States and
throughout Europe, where primarily as a result of immigration after World War II,
different cultural groups interact with one another on a daily basis-the only
result can be cultural conflict as each culture struggles to maintain its integrity.
Here cultural racism assumes a set of symmetrically opposed counterconcepts
(binary oppositions one might say), that of the national and the citizen on one side,
and the alien, the foreigner, the stranger, and the immigrant on the other. This latter grouping, the "other" of the nation, is most often construed "as a political
threat to national identity and integrity on account of immigrants' cultural diversity because the nation-state is conceived as founded on a bounded and distinct
community which mobilizes a shared sense of belonging and loyalty predicated
on a common language, cultural traditions, and beliefs" (Stokke 1995, p. 8). This
"other," since it poses a threat to the nation, is relegated to the margins of society,
often blamed for all the social and economic ills that befall the nati.on. Thus,
although the new cultural racism appears to be egalitarian, it actually constructs a
hierarchy such that the national is valued over the nonnational. The curious thing
is that those cultures considered incommensurable to the national culture almost
always belong to people whose visible characteristics distinguish them from the
majority "white" population. In other words, although the new cultural racism
does not appear to exclude and marginalize populations on the basis of their biological heritage, one cannot really discount the element of biology since those
who belong to the incommensurable cultures are most often nonwhite. In either
case whether we are speaking of classical racism or the new cultural kind, the

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99

results are the same: those who are nonwhite are often excluded from society. In
short, the hierarchy does not really change. "White" remains on top.
In opposition to these naturalizing practices, we would like to argue that race as
such does not exist. There is simply no biological basis for dividing the human
species into groups based on the idea that certain physical traits, such as skin
color, are tied to attributes of behavior, intellect, and morality. Race is not a fact
of nature. But it does exist to the extent that it is an integral part of the classificatory systems through which social order is produced and maintained. The argument here is that society gives meaning to things by allotting them different places
within a classificatory system; or rather, that social groups impose meaning on
their world by ordering and organizing matter, often through the construction of
binary oppositions such as us/them, self/other, and white/black (Hall l 997b ).
"Race's" power as David Goldberg has pointed out,
has consisted in its adaptive capacity to define population groups, and by extension social
agents, as self and other at various historical moments. It has thus facilitated the fixing of characterizations of inclusion and exclusion, giving an apparent specificity otherwise lacking to
social relations. To be capable of this, race itself must be almost but not quite empty in its own
connotative capacity, able to signify not so much in itself as by adopting and giving naturalized
form to prevailing conceptions of social group formation at different times (1992, p. 558).

Thus, while "race" may not be a natural category, it nevertheless plays a central
role in the construction and rationalization of orders of difference, making group
relations appear as if they were natural and unchangeable. The fundamental
importance that "race" bears in itself "is not of biological but of naturalized group
relations" (Goldberg 1992, p. 559); it gives social relations the facade of long
duration, hence reducing, essentializing, and fixing difference. If race has the
countenance of being a steadfast interior depth, it is only to the extent that it is a
reiterated enactment of norms that retroactively constructs the appearance of race
as a static essence.
This means that race, rather than being a biological truth, is a kind of speech act,
a performative that in the act of uttering brings into being that which it names. It
resolutely does not refer to a preconstituted subject. It is simply a name that retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the groupings to which it refers. Race, in other
words, works performatively to constitute the racial subject itself, a subject that
only procures a naturalized effect through repeated reference to that subject. This
suggests that, what might be called racial performativity, is not a singular act of
racial subject constitution, but a reiterative practice through which discourse
brings about the effect that it names. It is only through the force of reiteration that
the racial subject acquires a naturalized effect. And it is only through the continued interpellation of the racial subject that this naturalized effect is maintained.
As such, there is no reference to a pure racial subject which does not itself add to
the further constitution of that subject. From this perspective, much like the declaration "It's a girl!," the utterance "Look, a Negro," which for Franz Fanon

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( 1967) calls the racial subject into a system of racialized meanings, is not so much
a statement of fact, a constative utterance, as one in a long string of perfonnatives
through which the racial subject is continuously raced throughout his/her lifetime.
The racing of a subject is a never-ending process, one that must be reiterated by
various authorities in order to sustain the naturalized effect of race. In short, perfonnativity is a matter of reiterating the nonns through which a racial subject is
constituted. It is the power of discourse to bring about what it names through the
citing or repetition of nonns.
This should not be taken to mean that the construction of race is simply a matter
of language. That is, when we speak of race as a kind of speech act or as a discursive construct, we do not mean to reduce it to a linguistic category. To be sure,
discourse is normally used as a linguistic concept. But we utilize discourse in an
entirely different manner. For us, following Stuart Hall,
A discourse is a group of statements which provide a language for talking about-i.e. a way of
representing-a particular kind of knowledge about a topic. When statements about a topic are
made within a particular discourse, the discourse makes it possible to construct the topic in a
certain way. It also limits the other ways in which the topic can be constructed. A discourse
does not consist of one statement, but of several statements working together to form ... a "discursive formation." The statements fit together because any one statement implies a relation to
all others .... One important point about this notion of discourse is that it is not based on the
conventional distinction between thought and action, language and practice. Discourse is about
the production of knowledge through language. But it is itself produced by a practice: "discursive practice"-the practice of producing meaning. Since all social practices entail meaning,
all practices have a discursive aspect. So discourse enters into and influences all social practices (1996, pp. 201-202).

The important thing to note here is that this concept of discourse is not purely a
linguistic notion. This is so in two senses. First, discourse aims to sunnount the
conventional distinction between what one says (language) and what one does
(practice). Discourse, then, is about language and practice. 9 It is about language
and practice to the extent that language becomes meaningful in the context of
practice. The idea here is that meaning is learned from, and shaped in, instances
of use; so both its learning and its configuration depends on practice. Thus every
discursive object is constituted in the context of action. As such, the distinction
between linguistic and behavioral aspects of a social practice is inappropriate and
"ought to find its place as a differentiation within the social production of meaning, which is structured under the form of discursive totalities" (Laclau and
Mouffe 1985, p. 107). Second, discourse is not a purely linguistic phenomenon
inasmuch as it is not a simple system of ideas but is embodied in institutions, rituals and so forth (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, p. 109). In other words, discourse
operates to constitute subjects through its material embodiment in institutions; it
is in institutional settings that discourse is put to work to regulate the constitution
of subjects. As a whole, then, the idea of discourse we employ here includes written documents, speech, ideas, concrete practices, rituals, institutions, and empiri-

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101

cal objects-insofar, of course, as they are meaningful for us in a given context.

Thus our analysis refuses the distinction between discursive and nondiscursive
practices. 10 This means that to speak of race as a discursive construct is to see it
as embedded across a range of texts and at a number of different institutional sites
within society. It is through its material embodiment in texts, rituals, and institutions that discourse produces that effect that it names and continuously races the
subject.
The significant thing here is that the racing of the subject, through discourse and
its material embodiments, is a never-ending process, one that must be reiterated in
various time and places in order to sustain the naturalized effect of race. If this is
the case, that is, if the process of naming racial subjects actually amounts to their
constitution, then race cannot be an effect of biological truths. We have to think
about it instead as one of the ways through which dominant social fictions are
fashioned as natural facts. This means that since race is a social fiction, only a sedimented effect of repetition, no scheme of racial domination can be a systemic
totality predestined to hold racialized subjects in subordinate positions. Put differently, since the racing of a subject is a never-ending act, since reiteration is necessary in order to sustain the naturalized effect of race, this signifies that the
constitution of a racial subject is never complete. There are gaps and fissures that
open up in the process of reiteration which make it possible for the performance
of normalization to be subverted. The necessity of reiteration offers the possibility
of reiterating the identity of the racial subject otherwise, against the norm, making
the racial subject open to the ever-present possibility of a resignification. In short,
although the process of reiteration is designed to fashion normative racial subjects, it also makes it possible for the norm to be called into question and be potentially rearticulated.
We can offer a brief of example of this rearticulatory process by looking at the
historicity of the term "black." The term black, to the extent that it has historically
been associated with pathology and insult, has operated as a discursive practice 11
whose effect has been to shame the subject it names. The performative acts
through which such shaming interpellations have taken place and authorized
varying sets of racial relations have been of necessity repetitions. The idea here is
that a performative act of racial shaming and constitution succeeds only insofar as
"that action echoes prior actions, and accumulates the force of authority through
the repetition or citation of a prior, authoritative set of practices" (Butler l 993a,
p. 227). This means that the term black has historically derived its force to constitute racial subjects through the repeated invocation by which it has become linked
to degradation, pathologization, and scorn. As such, the term functions performatively only to the extent that it invokes convention, that is, to the extent that it
draws on its historicity. It also only functions performatively to shame subjects
insofar as this invocation is a continuously repeated invocation. So for a performative term such as black to have binding power, it is not enough for it to draw
on its historicity; it must also draw on it repeatedly and continuously. Simply put,

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then, the success of a performative act of racial shaming and constitution depends
on the force of reiteration.
This basically means that the term black cannot be taken as referring to a preconstituted entity. It must be seen, instead, as a name that retroactively produces
and naturalizes the entities to which it refers. As such, the term black, as a slur or
derogatory remark, is not so much a constative utterance, a statement of fact, as a
performative through which a racial subject is produced and shamed. This shaming interpellation, however, is not a one-time proposition. In order for it be effective and acquire a naturalized effect, it must cite previous acts of shaming as well
as compel future citations. So the term black, as a shaming interpellation, takes
hold to the extent that it cites the conventions of authority and obliges ongoing
citation. In short, the shaming of a subject only acquires a naturalized effect
through the force of repetition. Moreover, in order to maintain this naturalized
effect, the shamed subject must be continuously interpellated in various times and
places. One could argue, then, that the fact that this reiteration is necessary is a
sign that the shaming of a subject is never complete-that the shaming of the
racial subject is a never-ending process. One could argue, too, that since this
shaming is never complete, that since the term "black" must continually be
repeated in order to effectively shame racial subjects, it means that the racial subject is open to the possibility of resignification, that the term "black" is open to the
prospect of being rearticulated otherwise. The subversion of the processes
through which the racial subject is shamed thus becomes a matter of inhabiting
the practices of rearticulation.
This is precisely what has happened in reference to the term black. Since the
1960s, as a result of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, a term that signaled degradation and shame has been represented to signify a new and affirmative assemblage of meanings. So rather than being a mark of shame or a
paralyzing slur, black becomes a sign of pride. 12 The resignification of the racial
subject thus takes place through the appropriation of the power to name oneself
and set the conditions under which the name is employed. This strategy is meant
to consign the term black to past degradation and present or future affirmation. As
such, the shaming interpellation black is not simply taken as an order to be obeyed
but as the imperative to be cited and refigured. Thus the subject who is raced
through the shaming interpellation black takes up the very term as the discursive
basis for an opposition. However, as Butler points out in reference to the term
"queer,"
the expectation of self-determination that self-naming arouses is paradoxically contested by
the historicity of the name itself: by the history of the usages that one never controlled, but that
constrain the very usage that now emblematizes autonomy; by the future efforts to deploy the
term against the grain of the current ones, and that will exceed the control of those who seek to
set the course of the terms in the present (Butler l 993a, p. 228).

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103

In other words, although the term black can and has been used as a site of collective contestation, it is a term that can never be fully controlled. Not only is it
constrained by its past articulations, but it must also be open to future and unforeseeable enunciations. It is simply impossible to sustain any kind of mastery over
the trajectory of any discursive categories. In this sense, although it is possible to
lay claim to the term black in its affirmative sense, it will always remain in tension
with its deployment as a racist term in everyday life. In the end, then, "performativity describes this relation of being implicated in that which one opposes, this
turning of power against itself to produce alternative modalities of power, to
establish a kind of political contestation that is not a 'pure' opposition, a 'transcendence' of contemporary relations of power, but a difficult labor of forging a
future from resources inevitably impure" (Butler 1993a, p. 241).
The upshot of all this is that since race as such does not exist, then in order for
a group or collective subject to become a race, to be called a race, it really has to
be made or categorized into one. In other words, since race does not refer to an
already constituted object, a group cannot be a race outside of the active forces
that construct it. Thus a racial subject, in order to be itself, has to undergo some
kind of process that would turn it into itself. We call this process racial performativity, which basically refers to the power of discourse to procure what it
names. It refers to how race is constituted performatively as a kind of speech act
that, in the very act of uttering, retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the subjects to which it refers. The racial subject only acquires a naturalized effect
through repeated reference to that subject, through the force of reiteration. It is
also through this reiterative process, the process of infinite repeatability through
which a subject is produced, that the racial subject is opened to redeployment, to
being constituted otherwise. Racial performativity thus brings to our attention
those constitutive instabilities that challenge the naturalizing effects of discourse. There is no guarantee, of course, that subversion will ensue from the
reiteration of constitutive norms, but at least there is hope. What racial performativity does is steer us to thinking about race in terms of processes rather than
as a natural category. It calls attention to the ways in which race is always
actively constructed, to how its referents are inherently unstable, thus making it
open to multiple rearticulations.

NOTES
I. These problems included crime, homelessness, illiteracy, poverty, teenage pregnancy, unemployment, and the breakdown of the family.
2. Herrnstein and Murray end up constructing a hierarchy in which "whites" are on the top end
of the intelligence scale while "blacks" are on the bottom.
3. We would just like to clarify that the theoretical itinerary we follow here is one that leads us
directly to Butler. In other words, the reason we focus on Austin, Derrida, and Foucault, to the exclusion of others, is because these are the theorists that Butler herself draws from and engages with in

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developing her notion of performativity. A more thorough approach to, for example, speech acts
would take us not only through Austin and Derrida, but also through theorists such as Shoshana Felman, Barbara Johnson, J. Hillis Miller, Paul de Man, John Searle, Emile Benveniste, and Erving Goffman (for a discussion of the relation between Goffman and Derrida see Clough [ 1992[). But this is
beyond the scope of this essay. What we are doing here is developing what could be called a Butlerian
perspective on race.
4. "System" refers to the way in which Austin organizes his thought around the binary opposition serious/non-serious, relegating each side to separate orders. Derrida displaces this system because
he dissolves this opposition, making both serious and nonserious speech dependent on a general citationality. This should become clearer in the next section.
5. To suggest that we are going to talk about the nature of the subject is to enter dangerous
waters because the subject, or rather the notion of the subject, is polysemic. Paul Smith suggests that
over the last two decades the discourses of the human sciences "have adopted this term, the 'subject,'
to do multifarious theoretical jobs. In some instances the 'subject' will appear to be synonymous with
the 'individual,' the 'person.' In others-for example, in psychoanalytical discourse-it will take on a
more specialized meaning and refer to the unconsciously structured illusion of plenitude which we
usually call 'the self.' Or elsewhere, the 'subject' might be understood as the specifically subjected
object of social and historical forces and determinations" (Smith 1988, p. xxvii). Our formulation will
be closer to the latter.
6. This is not to suggest, however, that the subject is therefore outside of power. The undermining of the forces of normalization can be attributed power turning against itself in the process of reiteration.
7. Some of the ideas discussed in this section are also taken up in Torres, Miron, and Inda
(1999).
8. A particularly important intersection seems to be that between race and sex. For instance,
Ann Stoler (1995), following Foucault, notes that in the late nineteenth century technologies of sex
were most fully mobilized around issues of race. The pseudo-scientific theory of degeneration was at
the core of this mobilization: "The series composed of perversion-heredity-degenerescence formed
the solid nucleus of the new technologies of sex .... Its application was widespread and its implantation went deep. Psychiatry, to be sure, but also jurisprudence, legal medicine, agencies of social control, the surveillance of dangerous or endangered children, all functioned for a long time on the basis
of 'degenerescence' and the heredity-perversion system. An entire social practice, which took the
exasperated but coherent form of state-directed racism, furnished this technology of sex with a formidable power and far-reaching consequences" (Foucault quoted in Stoler 1995, p. 31 ). Stoler thus
argues that this theory of degeneracy, with its vast theoretical and legislative edifice, secured the
relationship between racism and sexuality: "It conferred abnormality on individual bodies, casting
certain deviations as both internal dangers to the body politic and as inheritable legacies that threatened the well-being of a race" (Stoler 1995, p. 31 ). Eventually, nineteenth-century degeneracy theory
crystallized in eugenics, developing as a national project that came together with more comprehensive purity campaigns for improved natality and selective sterilization. In other words, theories of
degeneracy lent credence to efforts to control undesirable racial groups through the regulation of
their sexual practices. It is just such intersectionalities that we hope to discuss in the future through
the notion of performativity.
9. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe clarify the interconnection of language and practice in the
following terms: "Let us suppose that I am building a wall with another bricklayer. At a certain
moment I ask my workmate to pass me a brick and then I add it to the wall. The first act-asking for
the brick-is linguistic; the second-adding the brick to the wall-is extralinguistic. Do I exhaust the
reality of both acts by drawing the distinction between them in terms of the linguistic/extralinguistic
opposition? Evidently not, because, despite their differentiation in those terms, the two actions share
something that allows them to be compared, namely the fact that they are both part of a total operation
which is the building of the wall. So, then, how could we characterize this totality of which asking for

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105

a brick and positioning it are, both, partial moments? Obviously, if this totality includes both linguistic
and non-linguistic elements, it cannot itself be either linguistic or extralinguistic; it has to be prior to
this distinction. This totality which includes within itself the linguistic and the non-linguistic, is what
we call discourse" ( 1997, p. 70).
10. In suggesting that race is a kind speech act or a discursive construct, we also do not mean
to deny the existence of racial bodies or the materiality of race. Indeed, if race is anything, it is
material. That is to say, racial difference is an issue of material differences to the extent that race is
a difference inscribed on the body. However, racial difference is never simply a function of material
differences that are not in some way both marked and formed by discursive practices. In other
words, the argument here is that there can be no access to a pure materiality of the body outside or
before signification and, by extension, no access to a pure materiality of bodily life that is separate
from discourse. The signifying act could thus be said to be performative to the extent that it delimits
and contours the racial body. We should point out, however, that the discursive character of the
racial body does not imply putting its existence or reality into question. As Laclau and Mouffe point
out: "The fact that every object is constituted as an object of discourse has nothing to do with
whether there is a world external to thought, or with the realism/idealism opposition. An earthquake
or the falling of a brick is an event that certainly exists, in the sense that it occurs here and now,
independently of my will. But whether their specificity as objects is constructed in terms of 'natural
phenomena' or 'expressions of the wrath of God,' depends on the structuring of a discursive field.
What is denied is not that such objects exist externally to thought, but the rather different assertion
that they could constitute themselves as objects outside any discursive condition of emergence"
(1985, p. 108). In other words, the existence of the body is independent of its discursive articulation,
but it only becomes meaningful within discourse. In short, a racial body can only become a racial
body within a specific discursive configuration.
This suggestion that racial bodies, to the extent that they are meaningful, are effects of discourse
does not only apply to bodies. The same could also be said of any other object that people think of as
natural-facts of physics, biology or astronomy. In other words, all natural facts are also discursive
facts: "And they are so for the simple reason that the idea of nature is not something that is already
there, to be read from the appearance of things, but is itself the result of a slow and complex historical and social construction. To call something a natural object is a way of conceiving it that depends
upon a classificatory system. Again, this does not put into question that fact that this entity which we
call a stone exists, in the sense of being present here and now, independently of my will; nevertheless the fact of its being a stone depends on a way of classifying objects that is historical and contingent. If there were no human beings on earth, those objects that we call stones would be there
nonetheless; but they would not be 'stones', because there would be neither mineralogy nor a language capable of classifying them and distinguishing them from other objects" (Laclau and Mouffe
1997, p. 71 ). In short, since our conception of "nature" is itself discursively constructed, we can only
come to know and grasp natural phenomena, whether bodies or otherwise, through historically specific theoretical discourses. This is not to deny their materiality. It is to suggest, though, that this
materiality only becomes meaningful within discourse.
There is a lot more to be said about the materiality of the racial body. The above remarks are
meant only to serve as an indication of the kind of perspective that we are developing on this topic.
We feel that the materiality of the racial body is so important and controversial an issue that it needs
to be treated in a separate work. This separate work, which we are in the process of writing, is tentatively titled "The Materiality of the Racial Body." In this piece, we will deal not only with Judith
Butler, but also with other theorists of the body and materiality such as Pierre Bourdieu, Susan
Bordo, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Colette Guillaumin, Susan Hekman, Vicki Ktrby, Elizabeth
Wilson, and Elizabeth Grosz, to name only a few.
11. This means that it has operated through language and its material embodiments.
12. For a longer discussion of the resignification of the term "black" see Hall ( l 997b ).

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