However, Butler’s writing encourages us to think about the ways that the “doing” of gender is not merely a performance that one has control over, as in taking on a role, but also one that is unfolding in accordance with already socially inscribed performatives. Performative acts can be broken down into two parts: a thing doing and a thing done. Butler adopts the idea by the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir that “one is not born, but, rather, becomes a woman,” highlighting that gender is constructed through repetition it is formed entirely of acts, both past and present, which constitute its reality. 519., doi:10.2307/3207893.To begin our analysis, it is necessary that we define performativity and discern what it means for gender to be performative. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol. Butler goes on to argue that gender reality is “only real to the extent that it is performed” or in other words, the ‘real-ness’ of gender is dependent on these collective, temporal reiterations – without performance, gender is not (and never was) a fact.īutler, Judith. Gender is affirmed through repeated enactments over time, which are further reaffirmed through a collective acceptance and collective re-enactment of these same behaviours. To add to her argument, Butler highlights that “‘acts’ are a shared experience” (emphasis added). This reiterates Butler’s earlier points regarding the significance of repetition over time, and adds to it the dimension of collectivity. This repetition creates a “mundane and ritualized” legitimization of a set of socially accepted (and constructed) meanings. She uses the work of anthropologist Victor Turner to explain that “social action requires a performance which is repeated”. The final key point in Butler’s definition of performativity is the relationship between gender, performativity, and social acts. Butler characterizes the term “performative” itself as carrying a dual meaning – it is both “dramatic” and “non-referential”. Butler weaves together the body as historic and the body as a site of performative – she argues that the body exists as “a materiality that bears meaning”, and also is the mode through which that meaning (which is tied to a historical situation) is created, done, performed, and reproduced. She also affirms that, as de Beauvoir has argued, that the “body is a historical situation”. Butler uses the work of Merleau-Ponty to highlight to the reader the ways in which these acts of gender performance are constrained by historical possibilities and conventions.
Butler reaffirms the role of repetition in performativity, and discusses how “acts” can be defined both as “that which constitutes meaning” and the mode “through which meaning is performed or enacted”, and through this linking gender ‘acts’ to theatrical acts. In this section, she furthers her argument regarding performativity in relation to historically situated acts. The next major move in Butler’s argument is her critique of gender as a “historical situation”, an argument she makes through engaging with the work of de Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty. In other words, considering gender as performative presents an opportunity to critique gender, which is otherwise seen as “reified” and in some ways untouchable. And second, Butler defends her decision to approach gender as performative, arguing that “in its very character as performative resides the possibility of contesting its reified status”. First, she argues that gender identity can be considered as “a compelling illusion, an object of belief”, rather than a set entity that preexists its enactment. In the paragraph immediately following, Butler makes two more crucial points in her argument. Butler pushes that, therefore, there is a possibility for subverting gender by taking advantage of these gaps and finding “the possibility of a different sort of repeating”. Butler’s further argument is that the acts that are repeated are often “internally discontinuous”, meaning that if analysed, the acts in relation to one another are not necessarily coherent and can often be arbitrary. These repetitions result in what Butler calls a “performative accomplishment” – the illusion that gender is itself a substantial identity and not a construct. Butler’s core argument is that gender is not, as is assumed, a stable identity, but that it is created through the “stylized repetition” of certain acts (gestures, movements, enactments) over time. In the second paragraph of her introduction, Judith Butler summarizes her argument of performativity and gender.
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