Performance, Not Performativity: An Embodied Critique of Post-Structural IR Theory
Year: 2014
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Much of what takes place in world politics is best described not as events but as performances. Things are not just happening by themselves, but they are staged and made to happen, and to appear, in a certain fashion. Staged events have a logic, and a social ontology, which is different from that of mere events. Above all, they are communicative; ways in which the members of an audience are informed, instructed, entertained, and thereby made to see, learn and to feel certain things rather than others. Studying such staged events, scholars in anthropology and sociology have recently undergone what rather unimaginatively has been referred to as a “performative turn.” Social performances, they have maintained, are a main way in which collective meaning is made, established and disseminated. Scholars of international relations have hitherto paid scant attention to these intellectual trends. And yet, the metaphorical infrastructure is already present ― world politics, after all, has long been regarded as a “stage” on which states “act” and “interact” before the eyes of the world. The only proper exceptions to this state of neglect concerns post-structural scholars who have taken an interest in what is known as “performativity.” Drawing on Judith Butler's ideas regarding the constitution of identities ― which in turn are indebted to John Austin and Jacques Derrida ― scholars such as Cynthia Weber and David Campbell have investigated the way states constitute themselves as subjects
Author: Erik Ringmar
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1827359583