Philosophy for Plebs, Session 14 - Performativity
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All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women are merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts
So begins Jacques’ monologue in Act II Scene VII in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Performance and especially performativity are terms with which we find ourselves increasingly confronted in our everyday life and discourse. Performative reading. Performative masculinity (for an excellent treatment of both of these, see Frida Hammershøy’s piece in the Ark Review). Performative intellectualism. Performative activism. Many of these deployments seem to suggest something incongruent with, say, just engaging in activism. Yet, if we follow some of the theory that has produced these theatrical metaphors, we will find that one cannot reach around performance to a non-performative “act” but rather that performance is imbricated throughout everyday life. What then would be the difference between performative masculinity and masculinity? What does this do to our present usages of this term? And what of theatrical metaphors more generally? Do they map on to concrete practices or do they retain some linguistic flavour that keeps us from diving deeper? Join us as we perform a friendly dialogue on this episode of Philosophy for Plebs.
Reading Judith Butler’s Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory
Bruce Wilshire’s Role Play and Identity: The Limits of Theatre as Metaphor Ch. 19 The Limits of Theatrical Metaphors
Recommended background reading: Moya Lloyd Performativity and Performance
Link to the texts: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dYFRMexww4pvHFMJ9Tb7i-yYfbVsWWl6
And all the men and women are merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts
So begins Jacques’ monologue in Act II Scene VII in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Performance and especially performativity are terms with which we find ourselves increasingly confronted in our everyday life and discourse. Performative reading. Performative masculinity (for an excellent treatment of both of these, see Frida Hammershøy’s piece in the Ark Review). Performative intellectualism. Performative activism. Many of these deployments seem to suggest something incongruent with, say, just engaging in activism. Yet, if we follow some of the theory that has produced these theatrical metaphors, we will find that one cannot reach around performance to a non-performative “act” but rather that performance is imbricated throughout everyday life. What then would be the difference between performative masculinity and masculinity? What does this do to our present usages of this term? And what of theatrical metaphors more generally? Do they map on to concrete practices or do they retain some linguistic flavour that keeps us from diving deeper? Join us as we perform a friendly dialogue on this episode of Philosophy for Plebs.
Reading Judith Butler’s Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory
Bruce Wilshire’s Role Play and Identity: The Limits of Theatre as Metaphor Ch. 19 The Limits of Theatrical Metaphors
Recommended background reading: Moya Lloyd Performativity and Performance
Link to the texts: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dYFRMexww4pvHFMJ9Tb7i-yYfbVsWWl6
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Møllegade 10, 2200 Copenhagen, Denmark, Møllegade 10, 2200 København N, Danmark, Copenhagen , Denmark
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