Performative Acts and Gender Constitution

Yesterday we again discussed the concept of performance /performativity and how this term is used in the context of different frameworks such as visual arts, theatre, sociology and anthropology, linguistics, gender studies, science studies and new media. [Some of these realms put the body as central point (i.e. theatre, gender studies) while other mostly concentrate on technology (i.e. science studies, new media).]

In the visual arts for example, “theatricality is creeping in” and replaces the self-sufficient art object as postulated by critics as Clement Greenberg and Micheal Fried by a flow of experiences, breaking down the limits between the art object and the observer, between art and life etc. This happend i.a. with the advent of Minimal Art wich focused on perception and conceded an important role to the observer in what concerns the construction of the work.
In her book “Performance Art”, Roselee Goldberg traces the roots of what is called “performance” (such as body art, earth art etc.) through the different (i.e. european, american, japanese) avantgardes.

(Sociology/anthropology and the Social Sciences …)

“Performance theory” emerges – performance is used as a methodology to look at certain phenomena. What is similar about the term “performance” through all these different disciplines is the idea that performance is not about representing but about doing, and that it describes something which is not fixed but constituted in time.

We were then focusing on the essay “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution” written by American philosopher Judith Butler in 1988. Butler refers to phenomenological theory (i.e. Merleau-Ponty), the linguistic tradition (i.e. Searle, Austin and the theory of “speech acts”)…

To read:
Roselee Goldberg, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present
Michael Fried: Art and Objecthood
Clement Greenberg
Richard Schechner: Performance Theory