5 ms·

Performative language (2020)

30 points by rzk 4y ago

blueflow 4y ago
This article was really helpful for me to give it a name. According to this article i'm a very systemizing person - I always felt very annoyed about people around me "performing", but i couldn't quite name it until now.
- xhevahir 4y ago
  You might be interested in the broader subject of pragmatics, too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics
ReactiveJelly 4y ago
Yeah I've seen it happen that people on my side of an issue will choose to dunk to look cool, instead of doing something that might convince other people of our beliefs. I've also seen some subreddits will try to out-radical themselves. The /r/vegan subreddit, last I checked, was leaning leftist / communist. I'm not a communist, so I quit going there. I already know how to be vegan. The big chain grocery stores around me already carry vegan products I like. People don't really go on the Internet looking to be convinced, and search engines won't necessarily bring you to convincing pages. A lot of people have been convinced by the big creators like Contrapoints or Philosophy Tube. (Or, sadly, Jordan Peterson.) For me the healthy option is probably to give up talking to people on Reddit or Hacker News about anything important at all. How about a nice game of chess?
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  I love contrapoints, but Philtube is worse in my eyes than JP. JP’s been a little wonky since he came back from russia, but 12 Rules For Life is one of my favorite books.
andsoitis 4y ago
> This is not to say that words with clear meanings or categories with sharp boundaries don’t exist at all (e.g. triangles, grandmothers and odd numbers) and that trying to clarify vague terms is an utter waste of time. But acknowledging that in many cases absolute precision is unattainable should make the process of clarification much less frustrating, more informed and therefore more fruitful. Such an important principle to keep in mind!
xhevahir 4y ago
Surprising that the article doesn't mention Judith Butler, since it was her later, idiosyncratic use of the term "performative" that gained currency among bloggers and Tumblr user and so on, and from there entered common discourse. Now it seems to have taken on a pejorative sense kind of resembling "virtue-signaling." (Feel free to correct me, anyone, if I'm mistaken in my history.)
- blueflow 4y ago
  I noticed that Judith Butler has like, very similar views on performing gender than i do, except we draw different conclusions from it. For her its like some part of how life should be, while i wish people would stop it and focus on more important things. This might be a matter of personal opinion.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    What would "stop it" look like though? The abolition of gender expression? That's far more radical than anything you'll find in... anything but definitely butler's work. She's more establishing a technical framework of understanding how gender comes to mean what it does and reproduce that meaning over time.
    - blueflow 4y ago
      I could ask the reverse, why are some people so insisting on doing things just because they are typical for their gender? Non-performing is sort of the default situation as a kid when you don't know yet how girls or boys are "supposed to be". You did it, too! People who don't perform any gender role are actually quite common, they are just inconspicuous.
      - giraffe_lady 4y ago
        Oh I know. I'm far more radical than the baseline on this, and think we are correctly moving towards a significant decoupling of gender expression from many of the things it used to signify, and that overall this is good. But I also know that some element of gender expression is present in nearly all human cultures across time, and it is a powerful meaning maker both for individuals and societies, and that being more aware of that and doing it intentionally seems to make it a more powerful act, not less. And just on a practical level it's still not clear to anyone really what elements of human experience are strictly mediated through gender performance and which are inescapable parts of our biology. I welcome exploration and play in this area, but I can't confidently assert that a genderless future is even possible, or desirable if it is. It really does seem to be as much a part of us as storytelling, or music. I may be wrong on this and that's fine and time will tell. But again both people and cultures find deep meaning and even selfhood in expressing gender, and I don't feel like, from here in 2022, we have the understanding to say they are wrong to do so.
pohl 4y ago
"No means no" is political? Is there an anti-consent constituency?
- samatman 4y ago
  With respect, you've missed the point, as spelled out in the title. "No means no" is a tautology. It's performative language. Not all performative language is outgroup behavior we should vilify. Performing a larger statement about consent with a terse slogan is a good thing.
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  If there was the perception that no one disagreed with “no means no”, I’m not sure why people would go around saying it. (Although I would rather a slogan about enthusiastic consent.) Unfortunately, if the rates of sexual assault or rape are any indication, there does seem to be an anti-consent constituency.
- cm42 4y ago
  "Everything Is Political" aside, the politicization is in the meaninglessness of the phrase, and how you've automatically tied it to consent - presumably regarding sexual consent specifically. Moreover, it seems "political" here is used as "up for debate" rather than notions of "disingenuous persuasion" - your question almost reads "How could anyone possibly disagree with the idea that rape is bad?" Meta-politicization? Even the word "consent" itself is politicized because most wokes, for whatever reason, can only seem to discuss it by echoing bullet points from a Planned Parenthood lobby handout. (If you don't believe me, toss 'em the standard-issue "Check Your Comprehension" question from the end of the first lecture on medical consent: "a 14-year old falls and breaks her leg, but her parents aren't around. Can she consent to treatment? How does this change if she's pregnant?" More often than not, they'll double down on their lack of understanding by losing their shit and calling you a pedophile or somesuch, because they only understand this concept in relation to sex.) To anyone even passingly familiar with 21st-century US politics, the meaning is almost certainly clear ("Rape Bad"), but it ultimately provides nothing of value - no substance, no meat - and therefore, no murder of the concept it's ostensibly employed to kill - unless you've already been initiated into 21st-century US politics, and thus already aware that "no" is the English word for "no", that "yes" (English: "yes") is a different thing altogether, and that doing Yes when No (and sometimes even No when Yes) is a Bad Thing that one should not do. If Ben Shapiro published an episode titled "Sometimes No means Yes", I think we could all guess what the subject is, approximately how the episode might unfold, even without knowing the guest or specifics of the interview. There's virtually no other reason for him to choose a title like that except to be political. He might even surprise us, launching into a completely-innocent and factual deep dive on etymology, words and concepts lost to time, expressions in Hebrew and Latin and Greek that changed meaning over the centuries, anecdotes of kings and generals giving their blessing without giving their blessing, and so on. But the subtext would still be clear - or at least presumed - precisely because it's political. Prior to it becoming a hashtag, I most frequently heard this expression in relation to Authority, alongisde "the rules are the rules" - another essentially-useless expression whose primary use is to quash any further discussion of the subject at hand. More insidiously, it provides no practical guidance for the "grey areas" in which most cases of sexual assault/rape occur. Damn near everybody knows it's wrong, bad, illegal, stupid, gross, etc. to force themselves on someone in an alley at knifepoint, and virtually nobody who's not insane and/or on drugs does this. If "no means no" (and surely it does), and she doesn't say "no", what can we conclude? Anything useful? Remember, this is not up for discussion unless you are pro-rape, and only a pro-rapist would attempt to introduce nuance here - so which rhyming slogan should the drunk college kids remember in this case? What of the TA or adjunct who graduated last year, staying late to help a current senior - perhaps one who very enthusiastically consents? NO [clap emoji] MEANS [clap emoji] NO. Thank you, Beckeigh, very cool. In short, it's useless for explaining consent to people who might genuinely not understand consent (and thus useless for solving the problem), but it is an ideal way to get murmurs of agreement at brunch and/or trigger The Left and/or The Right. After all, who could possibly disagree? ("It says so in the name!") Who could add to the perfection of this phrase? Shh! The answer does not come through intellect, but through meditating on the sound "no" until the Buddha himself appears, wearing a yellowed campaign button bearing a mysterious and dire message about a BUSH of some kind. Most of all, it's political because it prevents discussion (and understanding) - unless, it is said, you're a card-carrying member of some pro-rape political party or something.
willi59549879 4y ago
Post-truth sounds very bad. But it is concerning that newspapers and government statements can't be trusted anymore. Just ignore all the liars.
drewcoo 4y ago
All language is performative. We all use it for the effect it creates. It's true, so how's that for post-truth? Next lesson: deconstruction.

30 points by rzk 4y ago

This article was really helpful for me to give it a name. According to this article i'm a very systemizing person - I always felt very annoyed about people around me "performing", but i couldn't quite name it until now.

xhevahir 4y ago
You might be interested in the broader subject of pragmatics, too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics

ReactiveJelly 4y ago

Yeah I've seen it happen that people on my side of an issue will choose to dunk to look cool, instead of doing something that might convince other people of our beliefs. I've also seen some subreddits will try to out-radical themselves. The /r/vegan subreddit, last I checked, was leaning leftist / communist. I'm not a communist, so I quit going there. I already know how to be vegan. The big chain grocery stores around me already carry vegan products I like. People don't really go on the Internet looking to be convinced, and search engines won't necessarily bring you to convincing pages. A lot of people have been convinced by the big creators like Contrapoints or Philosophy Tube. (Or, sadly, Jordan Peterson.) For me the healthy option is probably to give up talking to people on Reddit or Hacker News about anything important at all. How about a nice game of chess?

ChadNauseam 4y ago
I love contrapoints, but Philtube is worse in my eyes than JP. JP’s been a little wonky since he came back from russia, but 12 Rules For Life is one of my favorite books.

andsoitis 4y ago

> This is not to say that words with clear meanings or categories with sharp boundaries don’t exist at all (e.g. triangles, grandmothers and odd numbers) and that trying to clarify vague terms is an utter waste of time. But acknowledging that in many cases absolute precision is unattainable should make the process of clarification much less frustrating, more informed and therefore more fruitful. Such an important principle to keep in mind!

xhevahir 4y ago

Surprising that the article doesn't mention Judith Butler, since it was her later, idiosyncratic use of the term "performative" that gained currency among bloggers and Tumblr user and so on, and from there entered common discourse. Now it seems to have taken on a pejorative sense kind of resembling "virtue-signaling." (Feel free to correct me, anyone, if I'm mistaken in my history.)

blueflow 4y ago
I noticed that Judith Butler has like, very similar views on performing gender than i do, except we draw different conclusions from it. For her its like some part of how life should be, while i wish people would stop it and focus on more important things. This might be a matter of personal opinion.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  What would "stop it" look like though? The abolition of gender expression? That's far more radical than anything you'll find in... anything but definitely butler's work. She's more establishing a technical framework of understanding how gender comes to mean what it does and reproduce that meaning over time.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    I could ask the reverse, why are some people so insisting on doing things just because they are typical for their gender? Non-performing is sort of the default situation as a kid when you don't know yet how girls or boys are "supposed to be". You did it, too! People who don't perform any gender role are actually quite common, they are just inconspicuous.
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      Oh I know. I'm far more radical than the baseline on this, and think we are correctly moving towards a significant decoupling of gender expression from many of the things it used to signify, and that overall this is good. But I also know that some element of gender expression is present in nearly all human cultures across time, and it is a powerful meaning maker both for individuals and societies, and that being more aware of that and doing it intentionally seems to make it a more powerful act, not less. And just on a practical level it's still not clear to anyone really what elements of human experience are strictly mediated through gender performance and which are inescapable parts of our biology. I welcome exploration and play in this area, but I can't confidently assert that a genderless future is even possible, or desirable if it is. It really does seem to be as much a part of us as storytelling, or music. I may be wrong on this and that's fine and time will tell. But again both people and cultures find deep meaning and even selfhood in expressing gender, and I don't feel like, from here in 2022, we have the understanding to say they are wrong to do so.

pohl 4y ago

"No means no" is political? Is there an anti-consent constituency?

samatman 4y ago
With respect, you've missed the point, as spelled out in the title. "No means no" is a tautology. It's performative language. Not all performative language is outgroup behavior we should vilify. Performing a larger statement about consent with a terse slogan is a good thing.
ChadNauseam 4y ago
If there was the perception that no one disagreed with “no means no”, I’m not sure why people would go around saying it. (Although I would rather a slogan about enthusiastic consent.) Unfortunately, if the rates of sexual assault or rape are any indication, there does seem to be an anti-consent constituency.
cm42 4y ago
"Everything Is Political" aside, the politicization is in the meaninglessness of the phrase, and how you've automatically tied it to consent - presumably regarding sexual consent specifically. Moreover, it seems "political" here is used as "up for debate" rather than notions of "disingenuous persuasion" - your question almost reads "How could anyone possibly disagree with the idea that rape is bad?" Meta-politicization? Even the word "consent" itself is politicized because most wokes, for whatever reason, can only seem to discuss it by echoing bullet points from a Planned Parenthood lobby handout. (If you don't believe me, toss 'em the standard-issue "Check Your Comprehension" question from the end of the first lecture on medical consent: "a 14-year old falls and breaks her leg, but her parents aren't around. Can she consent to treatment? How does this change if she's pregnant?" More often than not, they'll double down on their lack of understanding by losing their shit and calling you a pedophile or somesuch, because they only understand this concept in relation to sex.) To anyone even passingly familiar with 21st-century US politics, the meaning is almost certainly clear ("Rape Bad"), but it ultimately provides nothing of value - no substance, no meat - and therefore, no murder of the concept it's ostensibly employed to kill - unless you've already been initiated into 21st-century US politics, and thus already aware that "no" is the English word for "no", that "yes" (English: "yes") is a different thing altogether, and that doing Yes when No (and sometimes even No when Yes) is a Bad Thing that one should not do. If Ben Shapiro published an episode titled "Sometimes No means Yes", I think we could all guess what the subject is, approximately how the episode might unfold, even without knowing the guest or specifics of the interview. There's virtually no other reason for him to choose a title like that except to be political. He might even surprise us, launching into a completely-innocent and factual deep dive on etymology, words and concepts lost to time, expressions in Hebrew and Latin and Greek that changed meaning over the centuries, anecdotes of kings and generals giving their blessing without giving their blessing, and so on. But the subtext would still be clear - or at least presumed - precisely because it's political. Prior to it becoming a hashtag, I most frequently heard this expression in relation to Authority, alongisde "the rules are the rules" - another essentially-useless expression whose primary use is to quash any further discussion of the subject at hand. More insidiously, it provides no practical guidance for the "grey areas" in which most cases of sexual assault/rape occur. Damn near everybody knows it's wrong, bad, illegal, stupid, gross, etc. to force themselves on someone in an alley at knifepoint, and virtually nobody who's not insane and/or on drugs does this. If "no means no" (and surely it does), and she doesn't say "no", what can we conclude? Anything useful? Remember, this is not up for discussion unless you are pro-rape, and only a pro-rapist would attempt to introduce nuance here - so which rhyming slogan should the drunk college kids remember in this case? What of the TA or adjunct who graduated last year, staying late to help a current senior - perhaps one who very enthusiastically consents? NO [clap emoji] MEANS [clap emoji] NO. Thank you, Beckeigh, very cool. In short, it's useless for explaining consent to people who might genuinely not understand consent (and thus useless for solving the problem), but it is an ideal way to get murmurs of agreement at brunch and/or trigger The Left and/or The Right. After all, who could possibly disagree? ("It says so in the name!") Who could add to the perfection of this phrase? Shh! The answer does not come through intellect, but through meditating on the sound "no" until the Buddha himself appears, wearing a yellowed campaign button bearing a mysterious and dire message about a BUSH of some kind. Most of all, it's political because it prevents discussion (and understanding) - unless, it is said, you're a card-carrying member of some pro-rape political party or something.

willi59549879 4y ago

Post-truth sounds very bad. But it is concerning that newspapers and government statements can't be trusted anymore. Just ignore all the liars.

drewcoo 4y ago

All language is performative. We all use it for the effect it creates. It's true, so how's that for post-truth? Next lesson: deconstruction.