performative

English

Etymology

From perform +‎ -ative.

Adjective

performative (comparative more performative, superlative most performative)

1. (philosophy, linguistics) Being enacted as it is said.

   Saying "I do" as part of a wedding ceremony is performative, enacting a marriage.

   • 1975 April 15, J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words: Second Edition, Harvard University Press, →ISBN:

     Thus in the example: 'By saying “I do” I was marrying her', the performative 'I do' is a means to the end of marriage. Here 'saying' is used in the sense in which it takes inverted commas and is using words or language, a phatic and not […]

2. Being done as a performance in order to create an impression.

   We were beginning to suspect that her ethical qualms were sometimes performative, as the urgent need for fairness and justice seemed to apply to some people but not to others.

   • 2002, Anthony Kubiak, Agitated States: Performance in the American Theater of Cruelty, →ISBN, page 4:

     Although the seeming copycat nature of the plots in Port Huran and Conyers was terrifying because of their repetitive, performative, even texted nature—their seeming theatricality—more harrowing was the threat that, like theater, the performance would settle quickly into repetition compulsions in schools across the nation.

   • 2013, Martha McCaughey, Michael D. Ayers, Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice, page 200:

     With the danger of science becoming purely “performative” (Lyotard 1984), not seeking any pretense of “truth” but simply performing a service for those in charge while still occupying its decision-making role in a technocratically dominated political sphere […]

   • 2017, Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies, Zero Books, →ISBN, Introduction:

     The Harambe meme soon became the perfect parody of the sentimentality and absurd priorities of Western liberal performative politics and the online mass hysteria that often characterized it.

   • 2022 January 8, “The rise of performative work”, in The Economist‎, →ISSN:

     The reality of remote working has turned out to be different. Days have become longer and employees are demonstratively visible. Work has become more performative.

   • 2024 February 9, Chloe Mac Donnell, “‘Reading is so sexy’: gen Z turns to physical books and libraries”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     After the photos of Jenner and Elordi were published there was a stream of online discourse stating we had entered an era of performative reading.

Synonyms

• performatory
• workly

Derived terms

• nonperformative
• performative authoritarianism
• performatively
• performativeness
• performative utterance
• performativism
• performativity

Related terms

• preformative (common misspelling of performative)
• preformance (common misspelling of performance)
• preform (common misspelling of perform)

Noun

Examples (linguistics)
“I name this boat ‘Alfred’”

performative (plural performatives)

1. A performative utterance.
   • 2011, Phyllis Kaburise, Speech Act Theory and Communication: A Univen Study, page 77:

     The distinction between constatives and performatives is one of the distinctions that he starts questioning.

Further reading

• performative utterance on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• performativity on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• preformative

French

Adjective

performative

1. feminine singular of performatif

German

Pronunciation

• Audio (Germany (Berlin)):

  (file)

Adjective

performative

1. inflection of performativ:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

Italian

Adjective

performative

1. feminine plural of performativo