Judith Butler

JUDITH BUTLER — PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALISATION & BODILY NORMS

Performativity ≠ performance. Butler does not mean that a person freely acts a gender role as an actor chooses a costume. Performativity describes repeated citation, iteration and enforcement through which identities become socially intelligible.

Power does not simply operate on a pre-existing neutral body. Norms participate in determining what counts as a viable body; materiality and discourse cannot be cleanly separated.

Ask not only “this body expresses identity” but which norms made this body legible in the first place? Performance can repeat, exaggerate, misquote and interrupt norms of gender, sex, race, ability and desirability.

Bodies in public assembly make political claims before or without fully articulated speech; presence demonstrates precarity, dependency and collective demand.