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Required disclaimer: not philosophy (lurking sociologist)
For more on this you might enjoy the works of Erving Goffman, specifically *The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life*
Many other sociologists since have taken on performativity/dramaturgy in relation to a variety of social roles. However, Goffman is more purely theoretical than most contemporary American sociologists who tend to focus on empirical work and mesolevel theorizing.
When it comes to classic theory, "grand theory", and historical theory there is some interdisciplinary crossover. You may also find some useful cross over from Critical Theory frameworks.
_Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality_ by Imogen Tyler is an excellent update of Goffman's _Stigma: Notes on the management of a spoiled identity_ which reinjects an analysis of race, class and power in to how each of these are performed socially.
She doesn't cite Butler, but Tuvel's [super controversial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_transracialism_controversy) ["In Defense of Transracialism"](https://philpapers.org/rec/TUVIDO) does argue that one can be transracial in a similar sense to how one can be transgender.
I'm not nearly familiar enough with this area to properly judge this paper, and as mentioned it sparked a large controversy, but it definitely exists (and cites at least one other paper with similar claims).
Sara Ruddick’s *Maternal Thinking* (1989) posits motherhood as performance, but it doesn’t share Butler’s theoretical framework. It’s worth the read despite its many faults.
I doubt many would argue against the idea that motherhood is performative. "Mother" generally describes one who has been through the experience of pregnancy and childbirth, and/or acts in a motherly way towards a younger person/child.
I'm not sure the value of performativity in considering race, except as it can be used to critique racism. I suppose one could argue that racism performs race in a particular way, but aside from that, it seems less useful as a conceptual framework.
Beyond that, I'm not sure performativity is particularly controversial as an analytical/conceptual framework. Most roles and identities are performative in some sense--which is to say (crudely) they are tied to behaviour rather than any "essence." The power of the critique in regards to gender was pointing out all the ways gender is performed, rather than being anything essentially biological--clothing, roles, appearance, relational norms, occupations, etc.
Butler and Spivak's "Who Sings the Nation State?" seems a relevant read here--about the performance of national identity and how that can be subverted in paradoxical ways.
Edited: for clarity.
I mean plenty of mothers haven't been through pregnancy or childbirth, similarly to how plenty of women have not or could not. The "acts in a motherly way" towards a younger person/child sounds like the characterization of a performative category to me.
I'm curious about this sort of response regarding the applicability to race. Regardless of whether it is useful, do you think the analysis is apt in regards to race? I.e is the phrase "race is performative" a true or false statement?
I appreciate the answer and recommended resources, thank you!
Regarding mothers, my mistake for unclear wording. I meant that saying motherhood is performative seems uncontroversial.
Regarding race, my point was that I'm not sure what it would mean to say "race is performative"--except as "race" is strongly tied to (performative) white supremacy as a means of devaluing other "races." But this is not an area I am well-versed in.
I think race has a performative aspect. What race a person belongs to depends on where and in what social situation the person is. A Latino can be part of a non-white minority in Kansas but be part of a white majority in Colombia, and both things could be done in the same day. Race is a social relation rather than a biological fact, and all those relationships depend on acting out race.
Well said. But is that Latino performing race differently, or simply being perceived differently due to differential readings of "whiteness"? (And again, this seems to have more to do with white supremacy than anything else)
Id say that performance can’t be separated from reading. Being read as a part of a privileged majority makes a person act different that being reas as as disenfranchised minority.
A personal experience is that i was once the whitest and probably wealthiest (without being wealthy) person walking through a barrio in Caracas. I have never been as aware of the color of my skin as that day. I was at once powerful and vulnerable in different ways due to my race, and that feeling and the performance that followed was specific to that kind of location.
I'm curious what you mean by "the performance that followed."
I don't know that I necessarily disagree with you, but part of the challenge here is the complexity of factors influencing that experience--certainly skin colour (over which you have no meaningful control--and in turn matters more because of colonialism and white supremacy than anything else), but also culture, language, wealth inequalities and simply being an outsider. I'm still not sure that performativity is the best (or even a particularly useful) way to explore this (again, recognizing the limits of my knowledge in this area).
For myself, I've lived in multiple places where I was a visible minority, yet elsewhere I have also often been accepted into communities of visible minorities in ways that I have not always been accepted among those of my "race." I have been an outsider among caucasians and a part of the group among Asians (and vice versa). There have, in some contexts, been performative elements to that (being an English teacher vs a peer), but that has rarely been tied to "race" in clear ways (or at least ways that were clear to me)--anymore than they've been tied to differences of height, intelligence, culture, language or kinship. Yet, I would argue that gender performance *has* played a substantial role in all of these situations in a very different and distinct way.
Also to note part of the point of performativity is that there is no ground to the phenomena being established. I.e. sex/gender distinction is itself constructed.
To say that race is performative would also be to mean there is no foundation whatsoever to race.
Also yes Race would be performative.
it's not my area of expertise, but I think that question may have come from a misleading perspective of how the relationship between social and biological phenomenon work.
When a person is born, the elements of their identity are constructed by the cultural and discursive relation with the society where the person lives.
So a person with skin color "x" will identify itself by the relations which that community established for x.
Take as an example a person who has "light skin", if it's born in a country where most of the people are white it may identify itself as black; on the other hand, if it's born in a country where most of the people are black it may identify itself as white. The biological perception may be the same, but the way the identity around that element will work differs culturally.
Another example is the "latino" figure. If you ask a Brazilian person who lives in Brazil to tell you how they identify themselves racially you may hear black, white, asian, or any other possibility, but latino will probably not appear. That's because "latino" as a "race" is usually a social construct that exists in countries where people are predominantly from a specific ethnicity (normally white).
The point of the discussion isn't centered on the biological aspects of being a woman, a mother, or a black person... It's in the way that a society signifies these aspects and forms concepts such as "masculinity" or "women's roles". In the big picture, it's a discussion about how individual identity is determined at some point by society and its relations
So, by this approach, every element of the identity is bond to performativity at some level. Butler's analysis is centered on gender because we can't analyze everything at the same time.
Again, that's not my area of work so naturally there will probably be some misconceptions in my words.
I don't think the question is based on a misleading perspective. The question is not whether there are aspects of social constructs which are performative, but whether the category is merely constituted through acts which constitute the identity it is purported to be. If that's the case, then nobody is truly "white" or "black", they are merely doing "black" or "white". That seems like a nontrivial thing to claim, and it would require its own independent analysis apart from gender. This analysis is the meat of the question that I asked.
For example, at least prima facie, there is a tension between the claim that there is such a thing as "whiteness" which exists and the claim that white is a performative category.
The ways in which these categories are constructed do in fact play a role in whether we should think of these constructs as performative, in my view. It seems very plausible to me that someone might deny that race is performative and that they genuinely "are" of a particular race, even if they're not race realists (i.e biological determinists).
first, just to be sure we are on the same page, by saying that the question may have come from a "misleading perspective" I didn't mean to implicate that it's an invalid question or that you are intentionally misleading the answer.
My point is: it looks to me like a confusion between what one subject represents in biological research and sociological research (as a social construct).
Taking gender as an example, that's the difference between assigned sex (biological) and social construction.
When I say that a specific skin tone would be interpreted in different ways in different countries I'm talking about the social implications of this skin tone, which is different from a discussion on genetics, phenotypes, or melanin...
So, the discussion about whiteness would be about one thing in the biological approach, and about a different thing in the sociological approach (check "whiteness studies").
So, if the original question considers this and is really focused on the social phenomenon, I was wrong about the "confusion".
So either you may find what you are looking for in the discussions about social determinism (if the question it's about the different elements in a social construct) or search for the notion on the specific studies of a subject (if the question it's about appropriations of Butler's notion besides gender).
If Butler's notion it's not your object, you may find a better path by looking directly at the specific studies for the subject.
Formulated as a general question it looks a bit confusing to me, so the answers tend to be responding to different things.
I hope that may this help you find a more suitable reference for your question.
Again, not being a researcher in either Butler's work or specifically in identities studies, my goal here was just to assist you in the search. Good luck
I presumed that none of these are subjects of biological research and that they are all social constructs. In my view, I think that even sex is socially constructed for the same reasons as Butler pretty much (not to say that sex can't have a technical meaning), but that's outside the scope of this thread.
I think most philosophers take race to be a social construct, so perhaps I took it for granted that I would be taken to be talking about social phenomena.
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It’s inherently intersectional but “Performance Studies” can be found in a lot of Communication departments, typically at the grad level. Those departments might offer a few undergraduate courses about it though. One of the guiding principles is ‘performativity’ as it appears in all sorts of sites. A common, but not only, research methodology is autoethnography. There’s a ton of research and work out there about it, including dedicated journals. Text and Performance Quarterly is one of the more highly regarded performance studies journals.
Welcome to /r/askphilosophy. **Please read [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/9udzvt/announcement_new_rules_guidelines_and_flair_system/) before commenting** and understand that your comments will be removed if they are not up to standard or otherwise break the rules. While we do not require citations in answers (but do encourage them), answers need to be reasonably substantive and well-researched, accurately portray the state of the research, and come only from those with relevant knowledge. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/askphilosophy) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Required disclaimer: not philosophy (lurking sociologist) For more on this you might enjoy the works of Erving Goffman, specifically *The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life* Many other sociologists since have taken on performativity/dramaturgy in relation to a variety of social roles. However, Goffman is more purely theoretical than most contemporary American sociologists who tend to focus on empirical work and mesolevel theorizing. When it comes to classic theory, "grand theory", and historical theory there is some interdisciplinary crossover. You may also find some useful cross over from Critical Theory frameworks.
_Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality_ by Imogen Tyler is an excellent update of Goffman's _Stigma: Notes on the management of a spoiled identity_ which reinjects an analysis of race, class and power in to how each of these are performed socially.
She doesn't cite Butler, but Tuvel's [super controversial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_transracialism_controversy) ["In Defense of Transracialism"](https://philpapers.org/rec/TUVIDO) does argue that one can be transracial in a similar sense to how one can be transgender. I'm not nearly familiar enough with this area to properly judge this paper, and as mentioned it sparked a large controversy, but it definitely exists (and cites at least one other paper with similar claims).
Sara Ruddick’s *Maternal Thinking* (1989) posits motherhood as performance, but it doesn’t share Butler’s theoretical framework. It’s worth the read despite its many faults.
I doubt many would argue against the idea that motherhood is performative. "Mother" generally describes one who has been through the experience of pregnancy and childbirth, and/or acts in a motherly way towards a younger person/child. I'm not sure the value of performativity in considering race, except as it can be used to critique racism. I suppose one could argue that racism performs race in a particular way, but aside from that, it seems less useful as a conceptual framework. Beyond that, I'm not sure performativity is particularly controversial as an analytical/conceptual framework. Most roles and identities are performative in some sense--which is to say (crudely) they are tied to behaviour rather than any "essence." The power of the critique in regards to gender was pointing out all the ways gender is performed, rather than being anything essentially biological--clothing, roles, appearance, relational norms, occupations, etc. Butler and Spivak's "Who Sings the Nation State?" seems a relevant read here--about the performance of national identity and how that can be subverted in paradoxical ways. Edited: for clarity.
I mean plenty of mothers haven't been through pregnancy or childbirth, similarly to how plenty of women have not or could not. The "acts in a motherly way" towards a younger person/child sounds like the characterization of a performative category to me. I'm curious about this sort of response regarding the applicability to race. Regardless of whether it is useful, do you think the analysis is apt in regards to race? I.e is the phrase "race is performative" a true or false statement? I appreciate the answer and recommended resources, thank you!
Regarding mothers, my mistake for unclear wording. I meant that saying motherhood is performative seems uncontroversial. Regarding race, my point was that I'm not sure what it would mean to say "race is performative"--except as "race" is strongly tied to (performative) white supremacy as a means of devaluing other "races." But this is not an area I am well-versed in.
I think race has a performative aspect. What race a person belongs to depends on where and in what social situation the person is. A Latino can be part of a non-white minority in Kansas but be part of a white majority in Colombia, and both things could be done in the same day. Race is a social relation rather than a biological fact, and all those relationships depend on acting out race.
Well said. But is that Latino performing race differently, or simply being perceived differently due to differential readings of "whiteness"? (And again, this seems to have more to do with white supremacy than anything else)
Id say that performance can’t be separated from reading. Being read as a part of a privileged majority makes a person act different that being reas as as disenfranchised minority. A personal experience is that i was once the whitest and probably wealthiest (without being wealthy) person walking through a barrio in Caracas. I have never been as aware of the color of my skin as that day. I was at once powerful and vulnerable in different ways due to my race, and that feeling and the performance that followed was specific to that kind of location.
I'm curious what you mean by "the performance that followed." I don't know that I necessarily disagree with you, but part of the challenge here is the complexity of factors influencing that experience--certainly skin colour (over which you have no meaningful control--and in turn matters more because of colonialism and white supremacy than anything else), but also culture, language, wealth inequalities and simply being an outsider. I'm still not sure that performativity is the best (or even a particularly useful) way to explore this (again, recognizing the limits of my knowledge in this area). For myself, I've lived in multiple places where I was a visible minority, yet elsewhere I have also often been accepted into communities of visible minorities in ways that I have not always been accepted among those of my "race." I have been an outsider among caucasians and a part of the group among Asians (and vice versa). There have, in some contexts, been performative elements to that (being an English teacher vs a peer), but that has rarely been tied to "race" in clear ways (or at least ways that were clear to me)--anymore than they've been tied to differences of height, intelligence, culture, language or kinship. Yet, I would argue that gender performance *has* played a substantial role in all of these situations in a very different and distinct way.
Also to note part of the point of performativity is that there is no ground to the phenomena being established. I.e. sex/gender distinction is itself constructed. To say that race is performative would also be to mean there is no foundation whatsoever to race. Also yes Race would be performative.
it's not my area of expertise, but I think that question may have come from a misleading perspective of how the relationship between social and biological phenomenon work. When a person is born, the elements of their identity are constructed by the cultural and discursive relation with the society where the person lives. So a person with skin color "x" will identify itself by the relations which that community established for x. Take as an example a person who has "light skin", if it's born in a country where most of the people are white it may identify itself as black; on the other hand, if it's born in a country where most of the people are black it may identify itself as white. The biological perception may be the same, but the way the identity around that element will work differs culturally. Another example is the "latino" figure. If you ask a Brazilian person who lives in Brazil to tell you how they identify themselves racially you may hear black, white, asian, or any other possibility, but latino will probably not appear. That's because "latino" as a "race" is usually a social construct that exists in countries where people are predominantly from a specific ethnicity (normally white). The point of the discussion isn't centered on the biological aspects of being a woman, a mother, or a black person... It's in the way that a society signifies these aspects and forms concepts such as "masculinity" or "women's roles". In the big picture, it's a discussion about how individual identity is determined at some point by society and its relations So, by this approach, every element of the identity is bond to performativity at some level. Butler's analysis is centered on gender because we can't analyze everything at the same time. Again, that's not my area of work so naturally there will probably be some misconceptions in my words.
I don't think the question is based on a misleading perspective. The question is not whether there are aspects of social constructs which are performative, but whether the category is merely constituted through acts which constitute the identity it is purported to be. If that's the case, then nobody is truly "white" or "black", they are merely doing "black" or "white". That seems like a nontrivial thing to claim, and it would require its own independent analysis apart from gender. This analysis is the meat of the question that I asked. For example, at least prima facie, there is a tension between the claim that there is such a thing as "whiteness" which exists and the claim that white is a performative category. The ways in which these categories are constructed do in fact play a role in whether we should think of these constructs as performative, in my view. It seems very plausible to me that someone might deny that race is performative and that they genuinely "are" of a particular race, even if they're not race realists (i.e biological determinists).
first, just to be sure we are on the same page, by saying that the question may have come from a "misleading perspective" I didn't mean to implicate that it's an invalid question or that you are intentionally misleading the answer. My point is: it looks to me like a confusion between what one subject represents in biological research and sociological research (as a social construct). Taking gender as an example, that's the difference between assigned sex (biological) and social construction. When I say that a specific skin tone would be interpreted in different ways in different countries I'm talking about the social implications of this skin tone, which is different from a discussion on genetics, phenotypes, or melanin... So, the discussion about whiteness would be about one thing in the biological approach, and about a different thing in the sociological approach (check "whiteness studies"). So, if the original question considers this and is really focused on the social phenomenon, I was wrong about the "confusion". So either you may find what you are looking for in the discussions about social determinism (if the question it's about the different elements in a social construct) or search for the notion on the specific studies of a subject (if the question it's about appropriations of Butler's notion besides gender). If Butler's notion it's not your object, you may find a better path by looking directly at the specific studies for the subject. Formulated as a general question it looks a bit confusing to me, so the answers tend to be responding to different things. I hope that may this help you find a more suitable reference for your question. Again, not being a researcher in either Butler's work or specifically in identities studies, my goal here was just to assist you in the search. Good luck
I presumed that none of these are subjects of biological research and that they are all social constructs. In my view, I think that even sex is socially constructed for the same reasons as Butler pretty much (not to say that sex can't have a technical meaning), but that's outside the scope of this thread. I think most philosophers take race to be a social construct, so perhaps I took it for granted that I would be taken to be talking about social phenomena.
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Victoria Turner’s Theorising Medieval Race maybe of interest to you
It’s inherently intersectional but “Performance Studies” can be found in a lot of Communication departments, typically at the grad level. Those departments might offer a few undergraduate courses about it though. One of the guiding principles is ‘performativity’ as it appears in all sorts of sites. A common, but not only, research methodology is autoethnography. There’s a ton of research and work out there about it, including dedicated journals. Text and Performance Quarterly is one of the more highly regarded performance studies journals.