مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

I begin by specifying the way I understand the performativity concept, which I am using in my text. It relates to ideas of the “ordinary language” philosophers of the Oxford school, who criticized analytical philosophers for their hermetic language and their lack of attention to the meaning of words used in everyday conversations. Most relevant is the speech act theory, first presented by John Austin during his William James Lectures at Harvard University in 1955, and then published in 1962. He introduced the notion of “performative utterances” e that is, utterances in which what is being said equals what is done (“The meeting is closed”). As Austin put it, and many others repeated after him, human utterances can serve to say things, and they can serve to do things (Austin, 1962; Czarniawska-Joerges & Joerges, 1988; Silverman & Torode, 1980). I am repeating these well-known things to differentiate the way I am using the notion of performativity from other ways it has been used. The first way is typical to management and organization studies, in which the term denotes capacity of assorted agents to perform, that is, to accomplish various tasks successfully, or even effectively (see e.g. March & Sutton, 1997; for a review of literature see; Corvellec, 1997). Agents can be human or non-human e like machines and organizations. Performativity means thus a high potential for performance, though in this form the noun is rarely used in management literature (but see Czarniawska, 2011).

As Fabian Muniesa (2014) pointed out, Lyotard (1979) tried to combine this meaning with the Austinian one. In my opinion, the speech act theory is both a narrowing and an extension of the management definition. A narrowing, because it concerns only one type of performance: performance via utterances. An extension, because the belief that “words are not deeds” is still common (Czarniawska, 2013).

I also suspect that my understanding differs from that of Judith Butler’s (1990) e suspect, because it can be simply a result of my insufficient understanding of English grammar. I perfectly understand, and agree with, the statement “gender is performed”; but I do not understand the statement “gender is performative”, unless it is the same as “gender is performable”. On the other hand, it could be, as Paul du Gay (2010) pointed out, that Butler’s use is close to the Cambridge and not to the Oxford school of philosophy, and it reflects their differences in formulation of the speech act theory. I need also to add that “performation” exceeds my English competence, although I understand that it is a perfectly usable word in French (Muniesa & Callon, 2009).