Performance and Performativity

Last week I gave a lecture on Performance & Performativity for the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities’ Theories of Knowledge series. Beginning with J.L. Autin’s speech act theory but focusing on arguments drawn from three major texts by Judith Butler – Gender Trouble, Bodies That Matter and Undoing Gender – I tried to unpack the idea that subjectivity and what we understand to be the material body are ‘produced’ through discourse.

The presentation draft of my talk is here if you’d like to read it.1

In the following Q&A, I gave a few answers that I’m sure were missing both nouns and verbs, so here’s a little clarity and some further detail:

  1. I’m making the draft available in support of making the lecture series as accessible as possible; however, it’s currently missing various necessary references – not least to James Loxley’s excellent book on the wider subject – so please don’t cite it []