performative meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

performative

adj

Etymology From perform + -ative.

Human sciences, Linguistics, Philosophy, Sciences Being enacted as it is said.

Saying "I do" as part of a wedding ceremony is performative, enacting a marriage.
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[…]1975 April 15, J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words: Second Edition, Harvard University Press, →ISBN:

Insincere, inauthentic or disingenuous; done solely or largely as a performance, to produce an impression or enhance one's reputation.

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

4 more examples

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 […]2013, Martha McCaughey, Michael D. Ayers, Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice, page 200:
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.2017, Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies, Zero Books, →ISBN, Introduction:
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.2022 January 8, “The rise of performative work”, in The Economist, →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.2024 February 9, Chloe Mac Donnell, “‘Reading is so sexy’: gen Z turns to physical books and libraries”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

Synonyms: performatory, workly, illocutionary
Derived terms: nonperformative, performative authoritarianism, performatively, performativeness, performative utterance, performativism, performativity
Related terms: preformative, preformance, preform

noun

Etymology From perform + -ative.

A performative utterance.

The distinction between constatives and performatives is one of the distinctions that he starts questioning.2011, Phyllis Kaburise, Speech Act Theory and Communication: A Univen Study, page 77: