Performativity

The theory of performativity is centrally important to curriculum theorists who examine relationships among power, identity, and culture from a poststructural perspective. Performativity is based on an understanding of human reality as discursive, as produced not through a natural truth but through the constant repetition of discourses that perform our understandings of what is true or real. From this perspective, identities are not natural attributes; rather, they are the result of mundane practices of social norms and represent compulsory social practices.

Performativity theory is most closely related to the work of feminist theorist Judith Butler. Butler draws from J. L. Austen's and John Searles's work on speech acts and from Michel Foucault's understanding of truth as a discursive production of power and knowledge. Butler explores the constitution of naturalized gender, sex, sexuality, and race through reiterative performances of normative behaviors, speech, and gestures. This repetition creates the appearance of stable and taken-for-granted ways of being in relation to recognized identity markers for the social audience and for the performer. Performances of identity inscribe the body with physical stylizations and desires that are mistaken as the individual truth of each person; while they are experienced as real by individuals, they reference not natural reality but the citational nature of reality.

Identity is performed with both pleasure and fear. Identity functions to provide a sense of meaning and belonging through the structuring of desire and gratification in relation to identity norms. Identity defines the behaviors, beliefs, and interests that are privileged as normal within a given identity group. In sharing these with others, individuals can create and solidify social bonds that provide feelings of warmth, belonging, meaning, and satisfaction. At the same time, along with the pleasures of identity, there is always a threat. Those whose identity performances are outside the acceptable range can face sanction and punishment. The force of social sanction enacted by peers, family, friends, strangers, and professionals (e.g., teachers, specialists, counselors, lawyers, doctors) threatens discipline. Identifying and punishing those outside the norm bestows the social privilege that comes with being perceived as normal to those who toe the line and communicates what happens to those who step over the line.

Although this description of performativity suggests a highly determined perspective, theorists working from this perspective point out that there is no single set of norms for any identity. Rather, there is a range of practices that are understood to mark a given identity. Further, individuals express multiple identities and the norms of these identities can come into conflict. For example, the contested meanings of “woman” became clear when White U.S. feminists of the 1970s and 1980s were criticized for putting forth definitions of gender that failed to recognize the raced and classed interests within their universalized claims. Individuals can likewise experience conflicts within the demands and expectations of their self-identifications. Because norms gain authority through the establishment of the nonnormative, norms inevitably generate their own resistances. Because identities are not natural but produced, they require constant performative reiteration to maintain their authoritative position. Therefore, the insistent performance of identifications, behaviors, and desires that violate the norm demonstrates that they are not natural and opens up the possibility of a more inclusive space.

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