Key Points About Performativity

- Performance vs performative
o Performance
 gender is a “role” that we perform, like a stage actor performs a role with
costumes on stage, we use external props and body modifications to
“express” our inner essence or true identity (where we understand how we fit
on the gender spectrum – something that exists objectively out there in the
world – we just need to figure out how our inner world matches this outer
world criteria)

 there is a distinction here between “self” and “gender” where the “self” is
consciously aware of what actions need to be done to have others recognize
how one’s inner “self” relates to this objective thing we call gender
(masculinity/femininity). (In soccer terms, there is a distinction between
you and the role you play on the soccer field. You do goalie by showing
others that you are a goalie.)

 If we look at gender as a performance, there is a an “I” that constantly

assesses how “I” feel about myself in relation to this external thing called
“gender” to figure out what my true “internal” nature is.

 Butler says this idea of gender is wrong, gender is not a performance, gender
is performative.

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 - Performativity means:
1. Saying that something is performative means saying that we bring into being the
very thing that we name, producing a series of effects (gender produces gender
and our identity). We produce gender by ‘naming’ something as gender and this
creates the belief that gender exists and has always existed.

 J.L. Austen speech acts theory

o Constative (statement of fact: it’s cold outside, my dog is eating)
o Performative (brings about new state of affairs with their very utterance:
“I promise”, “I do”)
 Performatives only work because of the social power we give them
 Wedding “I do” because officiant is there, or “I promise” same
language and social power to the promise.
 Soccer game – score a goal! Two orange cones represent a goal, by
saying this is the goal – each team tries to get ball in the goal. We
know that the team with the most balls in the “goal” wins. We give
power to the norm of the “goal” even if it looks different, by all
agreeing this is a “goal” it becomes a goal.

 Butler applies J.L. Austen’s theory to gender.

o Gender, like a promise or a goal, or a soccer game is performative.
o By saying “that is gender” we are bringing into being gender itself. And
this only works because of the social power we give to things like our
ways of talking, ways of dressing. When we say “see that player running
around with their hands out to the side and giggling” that is femininity,
that is gender, we are in fact bringing gender into being. We are making it
a thing.

 Soccer example – what it means for performative to produce a series of

effects.

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 o How did you feel the second time around in your role? Did it feel
more natural? Did you feel like you were “playing” goalie, or did it
feel like you were a goalie for example?
o You weren’t given a script, but you seemed to all know what you were
doing, more or less.
o Field (social world) you showed up, you wanted to play, if you were the
goalie, you went to the goal box, if you were the forward you went to the
front of the field.
o Every time you caught the ball with your hands – everyone around you
*and you included* said, ahh, they are a goalie, a goalie catches the ball
with their hands, a goalie stands in the goalie box, a goalie has the right to
catch the ball with their hands.
 By saying ahh – look so and so is doing all these things (standing at the back of
the field, touching the ball with their hands, keeping the ball out of the “goal”. We
are saying both “so and so is a goalie because they do these things” but we are
also producing the identity of goalie by all saying – that is a goalie.
 It only works because we give social power to all these things – people gathering
on a field with a soccer ball, becomes a soccer game, the other positions, offsides,
the goal. Being a goalie only works because of the power of social norms around
the game of soccer.

******* So one way that gender is performative because we bring gender into the world in
our naming of gender. ********

2. Gender is a constant doing. but there is no “doer behind the deed” (there is no
“self”, no “I” that is doing gender, we produce our “gendered self” as we do gender.)
The self does not exist prior to our experience in the gendered world. And gender
doesn’t exist outside of our doing it.

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 a. How did you feel the first round, vs the second round of our soccer match?
Were you more aware of your “self” and what you were supposed to be
“doing” in order to be a goalie, a kitman a forward? Were you conscious that
there was an “I” guiding you to act like a goalie, act feminine or act
masculine?

b. In the second round, what did this feel like being in your role? If you were the
goalie for example, how did you know what to do as a goalie? How did you
know what you were supposed to catch the ball with your hands, keep the ball
out of the goal? Did it feel more natural? And yet were you born with an inner
“goalie” essence? Or did you become a goalie by stepping onto the field and
doing what goalies do, until you (and others) recognized you as a goalie?

c. Do you see how you were in a constant state of becoming a goalie by doing
things we label as what goalies do? Or what soccer players do? But there was
no I, you weren’t trying to match your “I” with “goalie” or “soccer player”
(like in going gender accountability) you were just doing it, it felt natural I’m
betting, especially the more you did it, but in reality it wasn’t “natural” you
were becoming a “goalie”, just as you were also producing the identity of
“goalie” by becoming a “goalie”.

**Gender is performative because it produces who we are inside.**

3. No one has a gender identity from the start. AND, this identity is not fixed. Our
identity is produced through the stylized repetition of norms that make it seem like
there is a “real” original version of gender out there somewhere that we are imitating,
but we are actually producing the very idea that there is an original by repeating these
norms. We each do gender a bit differently and each time we do it a bit differently we

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 are adding criteria to ahh, yes, that is gender, that is what gender does. “Gender is a
kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that
produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation
itself”.
a. Before stepping onto the soccer field today (or for the first time)? Had you
ever been a coach? A team mom? A goalie? A forward? Were you acting on
some inner instinct that made you more of a goalie than someone else? Did
you identify as “goalie”? Did you feel like you actually were a goalie the more
you played the game?

 What about when I subbed in players in the same positions? Did

everyone do their position in the same way? Stylized repetition of
norms – we are imitating norms but nobody does it in the same
way, these are stylized. No one plays “team mom” or “coach” or
“forward” the same way, and yet we recognize each other (and
ourselves) as “team mom”, “coach” or “forward” because we are
enacting the norms associated with these identities.
 Every time someone catches the ball with their hands we say that
they are being a goalie – But where does this idea that is what
being a goalie is come from? Is there some sort of perfect original
version of goalie out there that we are imitating (like Adam and
Eve of goalies?) No, there is only the stylized repetition of norms
that become (congealed, or solidified) as people act as goalies on
the soccer field. And each time we incorporate a bit more of
stylization into the idea of goalie, or forward or team mom
(snowball effect) and our idea of the perfect “goalie” becomes
stronger and stronger.
 What about if you switch positions on the field, are you stuck
being a goalie? NO you can

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 b. So Gender identity is like a goalie identity. We aren’t born with it and it isn’t
fixed, we produce it by stepping on the field “social world” and doing the
gender norms in our own way.

4. This doesn’t mean we can as an individual just wake up one morning and decide
that we are going to stop doing gender and so we don’t have a gender identity.
Gender is not a voluntary performance. Gender is an institution – it is the stylized
repetition of acts throughout time. Butler argues that “the act that one does, the act
that one performs is, in a sense, an act that's been going on before one arrived on
the scene” (Gender Trouble). (we create gender but this not at an individual or
interactional level, this is at a structural level – gender congeals (solidifies and takes
shape as an institution – (“a persistent pattern of social interaction that organizes our
lives” through the stylized repetition of acts, that have that snowball effect.)
a. Is this the first ever soccer game ever played? Were you the first to play
goalie? Team mom? Kit man? Coach? Forward?
b. In a sense, this is a stylized extension of a game that has been going on since
before you were born, before your parents were born, before their parents
were born. It doesn’t look the same as say, the women’s world cup game
between the US and the Netherlands, but it is in a sense, the same game.
c. If we decide that we are going to stand on this field today and we are going to
declare that we are no longer playing soccer, or let’s start simple, we are just
changing the rules, now center forwards can also play with their hands – we
aren’t going to change the game that is being played on the streets right now
in Senegal or the next World Cup. And that’s because this isn’t an individual
or interactional game–it is on an institutional level. The actions that we do that
make us “feel” like a goalie or a soccer player aren’t in many senses our own,
they were there before us.

5. Performativity is NOT the same thing as doing gender.

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 o Remember that Butler is saying that there is no “I” there is no doer
behind the deed. There is only, behaving, existing, experiencing social
institutions until the I (the self) emerges from this experience and then
it seems natural, like there was an always an “I”.

o For West and Zimmerman there is an “I” doing gender, there is a “doer
behind the deed” so to speak. Gender is what happens at the
interactional level between two “I”s who engage in routine social
interaction at the risk of gender assessment. We do gender in response
to sex category accountability. Gender doesn’t produce the
“individual” -individuals create gender through their interactions.

o So with West and Zimmerman Individuals purposefully act on

their gender identities based on what is seen as appropriate
femininity or masculinity. With Judith Butler there is not identity
before gender, gender and “I” are formed at the same time.

o Two very different traditions – West and Zimmerman interactional and

Judith Butler discursive (structural level).

o It would seem like you have more agency with West and Zimmerman
since they deal with how individuals voluntarily decide to engage with
the world based on the gender identity they want to display. But
actually as we know West and Zimmerman don’t give us much – only
ways to do gender differently. Butler on the other hand is very
interested in how we can “undo gender” and this is the foundation of
their radical politics based on performativity which we will look at on
Friday together  (2004 book Undoing Gender)