Performativity is a term that was by Butler in her introduction to Bodies that Matter which I was completely unfamiliar. So for this response I tried to dig into what performativity was originally, and then try to build from that to see how Butler is changing this terminology for her argument about gender identity. I started by doing some quick internet searches (using the incredible Wikis and dictionaries as a starting point to better understand) which linked performativity to the philosopher J. L. Austin. He stated that performativity is the capacity of speech and language (also expressive non verbal communication) to intervene in the course of human events, or the simple idea that “saying something is doing something”. Butler defines performativity “as that reiterative power to produce the phenomena that regulates and constrains” (Bulter 2). Even after reading these two differing definitions of what performativity I was left with trying to illuminate how Butler was trying to change the use of the term to better understand it.
Butler believes that sex and gender are regulatory practices. The practices are reified by the normality of learned behavior. So, it is the fact that gender is defined the way it is derives from the fact that gender is what has been rehearsed and practiced. Through the performance of these rehearsed and practiced actions makes gender what it is. Butler states that “performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate “act,” but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effect that it names” (2). So, gender and sex are identified the way that they are because we have been conditioned by the normative and procreative practice of heterosexuality, in that we have followed what was rehearsed and practiced time and time before us. What I believe butler is trying to show is that if there were no prescribed notions of gender and sexuality it would become more of a practice of what one does rather than what one is.
Butler is trying to deconstruct the notions of gender and sexuality by starting from the originary complexity of where these rehearsed notions started from. Lacan stated that “one is said to assume a “sex”… but if this “assumption” is compelled by a regulatory apparatus of heterosexuality, one in which reiterates itself through the forcible production of “sex,” the “assumption” of sex is constrained from the start” (Butler 12). Through the performativity of the “reiteration of the norm or set of norms” as sex and gender being “an act-like status in the present” it creates a set of societal rules in which the norm becomes what those have done before. Butler wants to challenge this performative constraint that gender is what it is because that is the way it was done before through her deconstruction of gender.
This does bring into mind Foucault’s history, which shows that although this performative norm applies to gender and sexuality there have been times in which societies have deviated from this. Think of the Roman orgies and the way in which these societies raised their children which seemed outside of the “prescribed norm.” Was it the fall of the Roman Empire that caused the shock back to what it always had been? Was performativity changed slightly after these times by those who pointed their fingers blaming Roman sexual debauchery for the empire’s downfall? The traditional Texan Southern Baptist mentality/superstition that the acceptance of homosexuality is the cause of great society’s downfalls (Rome, Greece, etc.) comes to mind. I’m still trying to work out these ideas, but I am starting to better understand performativity as Butler uses it.
To better understand this I must jump to her conversation dealing with Aristotle’s idea of schema which “means form, shape, figure, appearance, dress, gesture, figure of a syllogism, and grammatical form” (Butler 33). This definition does not include a distinction between materiality and intelligibility, so Butler adds in Foucault’s ideas of the “materialization of the body... [in which] the soul is taken as an instrument of power through which the body is cultivated and formed” (Butler 33). Foucault claims that the soul “becomes a normative and normalizing ideal according to which the body is trained, shaped, cultivated, and invested” (Butler 33). So, the soul here acts much the same way as performativity does to gender and sexuality in that it is following the norms. The normalizing idea of the soul takes the next step in discussing what makes us innate and therefore what would make our gender and sexuality innate. If we are to take the idea that a soul forms our being as Foucault suggested, this is just another originary complexity of how heterosexuality is the norm in society. Foucault is talking of the formation of the prison and soul, but I think the similarities in the argumentation links itself to the ideas of performativity shaping gender and sexuality. If we have a soul that creates and trains our entire body, it is the same as if we unconsciously follow the prescriptive norms practiced time and time again before us. By practicing the norms and following the footsteps of those that came before, it creates a healthy soul which creates a healthy and “normal” member of society with conforming ideas on gender and sexuality.
All of these ideas that Butler is trying to combine to show how she is reforming the ideas of gender and sexuality come back to performativity and productivity. For example, since sexuality was what was always rehearsed then it becomes a norm, what is a norm becomes what is healthy, and the formation of a healthy person with a health soul is one that develops among the norms. So, a healthy sexuality is one that falls within the classical normality in which previous generations have condoned and practiced.
