Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay on Phenomenology and Feminist Theory

Abstract

This essay by Judith Butler has become a feminist classic. It combines a fertile mix of speech–act theory, which views language as performative, creating events in the world; and phenomenology which sees the body as a historical idea, not a natural fact, and as a set of possibilities to be continually realized. For Michel Foucault, the body is the surface upon which the discourses of control are inscribed. Feminism sees gender as a social construct, interprets the dominant forms of gender and the conventions behind them, and deconstructs them to reveal that they are constructed and hence capable of taking on a different form, creating other kinds of gender than the two dominant ones. Logically this implies the doing away with the feminine subject and perhaps women’s group solidarity. Butler however tries to recreate this subject and solidarity on a notably political basis worthy of discussion.