Performative — In the philosophy of language, a performative utterance does not describe a state of affairs or express a propositional content that is true or false — it performs an action when uttered in appropriate circumstances. The concept was introduced and systematised by John Langshaw Austin in How to Do Things with Words (posthumous work, edited by J.O. Urmson, 1962, based on lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955).
Austin: Performatives and Constatives
Austin began with an initial distinction between two types of utterance. Constative utterances describe facts and can be evaluated as true or false: “Snow is white.” Performatives perform actions: “I promise that I will come.” “I name this ship Mary.” “I declare the session open.” In saying “I promise”, one is not describing a promise — one is making a promise. The presence of a performative verb in the first person singular of the present indicative in the active voice is a typical grammatical indicator.
Performatives can be successful (happy) or unsuccessful (unhappy). Austin enumerates felicity conditions: there must be an accepted conventional procedure (christening, marriage, promise); the persons and circumstances must be the appropriate ones; the procedure must be executed completely and correctly; and the participants must have the required intentions and attitudes. A judge who sentences someone without jurisdiction, for instance, performs a void act, not a successful performative.
Austin subsequently abandons the constative/performative distinction and develops a more general theory: the theory of speech acts. Every utterance involves three dimensions: (a) the locutionary act — the act of saying something with sense and reference; (b) the illocutionary act — what one does in saying it (promising, ordering, asking, declaring, christening); and (c) the perlocutionary act — the effect produced by saying it on the hearer (convincing, frightening, etc.). Illocutionary force is the core of Austin’s theory.
Searle and the Systematisation of Speech Acts
John Searle, in Speech Acts (1969) and Expression and Meaning (1979), systematised and reformulated Austin’s theory. Searle proposes a taxonomy of illocutionary acts in five categories: assertives (asserting, describing), directives (ordering, requesting), commissives (promising, contracting), expressives (thanking, apologising), and declarations (dismissing, appointing, declaring war). For Searle, speech acts are governed by constitutive rules — rules that do not merely regulate pre-existing behaviour but that constitute the very act itself (as the rules of chess constitute the game, rather than merely regulating an activity that would exist without them).
Butler: Gender Performativity
Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter (1993), extends and radically transforms the concept of performativity beyond language. For Butler, gender is not a stable identity that exists prior to its expressions — it is performed: constituted through a stylised repetition of bodily acts, gestures, movements, and discourses that, over time, produce the appearance of a substance, a natural “gender identity”. Gender is not what one is (an essence) but what one does (a repeated performance).
Butler is explicit in distinguishing her conception from Austin’s: it is not a single, intentional speech act, but a citationality — a repetition of pre-existing norms. Gender performativity is not free choice but the forced reiteration of norms whose effect is to produce the subject it seems to express. This conception has had an enormous impact on gender studies, queer theory, and feminist philosophy.
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