Performativitiy and mimicry - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Performativitiy and mimicrySlide2

At the beginning of this century, a Pole and a Jew were sitting in

a

train

, facing each other. The Pole was shifting nervously,

watching

the

Jew all the time, something was irritating him; finally, unable

to

restrain

himself any longer, he exploded: ‘Tell me, how do you

Jews

succeed

in extracting from people the last small coin and in this

way

accumulate

all your wealth?’ The Jew replied: ‘Ok, I will tell you,

but

not

for nothing; first, you give me five zloty.’

After

receiving

the required amount, the Jew began: ‘First, you take a

dead

fish

; you cut off her head and put her entrails in a glass of water.

Then

around

midnight, when the moon is full, you must bury this glass

in

a

churchyard ….’ ‘And’, the Pole interrupted him greedily, ‘if I do

all

this

, will I also become rich?’ ‘Not too quickly,’ replied the Jew; ‘This

is

not

all you must do; but if you want to hear the rest, you must pay

me

another

five zloty!’ After receiving the money again, the Jew

continued

his

story; soon afterwards, he again demanded more money, and so on

,

until

finally the Pole exploded in fury: ‘You dirty rascal, do you

really

think

I did not notice what you were aiming at? There is no secret

at

all

, you simply want to extract the last small coin from me!’ The

Jew

answered

him calmly and with resignation: ‘Well, now you see how we

,

the

Jews ...’

(

Zizek,

Sublime

Object

68) Slide3

Performativity in language

Constative – performative (J. L. Austin)

speech acts

locution, illocution,

perlocution

“It is raining”

Slide4

Performative utterances (explicit performatives)

no

ʻcontent

’ apart from performing a verbal

act

-

bringing about some change in the state of things

i

naugurations

:

‘

I

declare this meeting

/ factory

open

’

court

s

entences

b

aptism

i

nsult

Slide5

Successful use of performative

Constative: true/false

Performative:

successful/unsuccessful

, felicitous/infelicitous Slide6

Failure of the performative

(1) misfire

- false priest; actor on stage

J. L. Austin:

‘

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. ... Language in such circumstances is used not seriously, but in ways

parasitic

upon its normal use –...

etiolations

of language.’ (

How To Do Things with Words

)Slide7

(2) abuse

- false intentions

the act itself remains valid and binding

Making promises

Don Juan/Don Giovanni: verbal game of seductionSlide8

abuse: Don Juan’s promises

DJ. azonnal házasságra lépek veled

Aminta: Csak ne csapj be!

DJ: Vétkeznék, ha becsapnálak.

Aminta: Esküdj meg, hogy teljesíted

ígéreted, s hogy nem álttsz.

DJ: Asszonyom, fehér kezedre,

Poklok frissen hullt havára

Esküszöm: szavam megtartom!

Aminta: Istenre esküdj, hogy átka

Sújtson rád, ha megcsalsz engem.

DJ: Jó, ha meg nem tartanám a

Szót, mit adtam, Istent kérem,

Ne méltasson irgalmára,

S öljön meg egy (félre) ... halott (fennh.) ...ember.

(Félre)

S óvjon ég, ha élő támad.

Aminta: Esküdnek hiszek, tekints hű

Nődnek hát. (Tirso de Molina:

Don Juan

) Slide9

Don Juan’s abuses

DJ: I shall marry you immediately.

Aminta: But don’t deceive me, please!

DJ: Deceiving you would be a crime.

Aminta: Swear to me that you will be as good as your promise, amd that you are not having me on!

DJ: Señorita, I swear on your white hands, on the freshly fallen snows of hell, that I shall keep my word.

Aminta: Swear on God, so that His curse may strike you if you deceive me.

DJ: All right. If I fail to be as good as my given word, I ask God to exclude me from His grace, and to have me killed by (aside) …a dead (aloud) …man.

(Aside)

And may Heaven protect me if I am assaulted by anybody that is alive.

Aminta

: I believe your oath,

consoder

me your faithful wife.

(

Tirso

de Molina:

Don Juan

) Slide10

p

aradox of the performative

grammatical(?) markers of the performative:

first person singular (or plural), present tense

changing

any of these

parameters:

performative

→ constative

‘I promise’

= I describe my act of making a promiseSlide11

“

A lover’s vow, they say, is no vow at all” (Plato)

“

Csak

nyelvem

esküdött

,

eszem

nem

volt

vele

” (

Euripid

es

:

Hyppolitos

)

‘The vow was made by my tongue only, my mind was not in/with it’Slide12

non-performative speech acts may have strong performative effects: warning, threat, flattery, p

rovocation

(

agent provocateur

) Slide13

seduction

felicity

= happiness

‘It

is extremely sweet to seduce a young beauty’s heart to submission, through a hundred flatteries ... But once you are master, there is no more to say, nor anything left to wish for; the best part of the passion is

spent.’

(Molière:

Don Juan

) Slide14

ʻShall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ he inquired politely.

ʻNo thanks!’ I said.

(

Robert Nye:

Mrs Shakespeare: The Complete Works

) Slide15

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

(

Sonnet 18) Slide16

The distinction between performative and constative is weakened

also

culturally:

Reading

The Waning of the Crescent Moon

Slide17

STRONG PERFORMATIVES

Word magic

,

incantation, spell: real effect

“Let there be light;” “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters”; “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Gen. 1: 3, 6, 26).

The magic spell lodged in Rincewind’s mind in Terry Pratchett’s

The Light Fantastic

Slide18

Strong performative

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God” (John 1: 1).

“man lives from every

word

that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3).

Adam: the result of performative

Jesus: performative itself Slide19

“All other things may be expressed in some way; He alone is ineffable, Who spoke and all things were made. He spoke and we were made; but we are unable to speak of him. His Word, by Whom we were spoken, is His Son. He was made weak, so that He might be spoken by us, despite our weakness.” (St. Augustine:

De

Magistro

)

Slide20

Strong performative

Old Testament: felicity (vows, pledges)

New Testament:

(historical) truth

(accuracy of the gospels)

Bible: shift from performative to constativeSlide21

Performativity in culture

Hermia: “My good Lysander,

I swear to thee by Cupid’s strongest bow,

By his best arrow with the golden head,

By the simplicity of Venus’s doves,

By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,

And by the fire which burned the Carthage queen

When the false Trojan on the sail was seen,

By all the vows that ever men have broke –

In number more than ever women spoke, -

In that same place thou hast appointed me

Tomorrow truly I will meet with thee.

(

Midsummer

I.1.168-78) Slide22

Performativity in culture

Authority: not with the speaker

DECLARATIONS

John Searle: „Declarations bring about some alteration in the status or condition of the... object or objects solely by virtue of the fact the declaration has been successfully performed”. Slide23

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. (Thomas Jefferson,

The

Declaration of Independence

)Slide24

Sandy Petrey

: “It was through speaking in the name of the American people that the delegates produced a people to name; it was by invoking an authority that they established an authority to invoke.”

Derrida

: the signers “do

not

exist as an entity, the entity does

not

exist

before

this declaration, not as

such

. If it gives birth to itself, as free and independent subject, as possible signer, this can hold only in the act of signature. The signature invents the signer.” Slide25

Performativity and power

Whose is the authority?

the judge cites the law

The subject repeats, reiterates, cites, mimes gestures and phrases of power

discourse precedes and enables the ʻI’

the ʻI’ only comes into being through being called, named

Slide26

Performativity in culture

US Army Pentagon Policy instituted in 1993 (the “Don’t ask, don’t tell policy”)

“Sexual orientation will not be a bar to service unless manifested by homosexual conduct. The military will discharge members who engage in homosexual conduct, defined as a homosexual act, a statement that the member is homosexual or bisexual, or a marriage or attempted marriage to someone of the same gender.”

Until 1993: “Homosexuality is incompatible with military service” Slide27

Judith Butler and the performativity of gender

Judith Butler:

Gender Trouble, Bodies That Matter

“one is not born, but rather becomes a woman” (Simone de Beauvoir)

ʻwoman’ is something we ʻdo’ rather than something we ʻare’ Slide28

performance vs performativity

Performance: theatrical aspect (script and actor);

there is already a subject who

then performs

Performativity

: the performer does not pre-exist the performance Slide29

‘It’s

a girl

!’ ‘It’s

a boy

!’

‘the

term or, rather, its symbolic power, governs the formation of a corporeally enacted femininity that never fully approximates the norm. This is a “girl,” however, who is compelled to “cite” the norm in order to qualify and remain a viable subject. Femininity is thus not the product of a choice, but the forcible citation of a norm, one whose complex historicity is indissociable from relations of discipline, regulation,

punishment

.’

(Judith Butler:

Bodies That Matter

232)Slide30

“It is a girl”: not a

constative utterance,

but an interpellation that initiates the process of ʻgirling’, a process based on perceived and imposed differences between men and woman, differences that are cultural Slide31

a subject is a subject-in-process that is constructed in discourse(s) by the acts it performs

a series of acts, little performances

Butler: gender “is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.” (

Gender Trouble

) Slide32

“There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constructed by the very ʻexpressions’ that are said to be its results.” (

Gender Trouble

25) Slide33

Performance as subversion

‘putting on gender’

Performance as ‘accomplishment’, completion of a task

Performance as show,

spectacle: showing

that the second

sense of performance is

always there in the

firstSlide34

Performance as subversion

Joan Rivière: womanliness as masquerade

performativity, parody, drag as ways of subverting gender:

overdoing things

in order to show forth their constructedness

if all gender is a form of enactment, miming of a kind of unreachable ideal, then all gender is parody Slide35

drag

“In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative nature of gender itself – as well as its contingency” (GT 137) Slide36

Cindy Sherman: Untitled Film StillsSlide37