through adopting the notion that each category is confused with/in the other as
a series of spacings. But, it might be best to think of Butler as a transitional figure.
For example, Kirby (199 7 a) argues that, in her allegiance to sign and referent, she
holds back from the final step: that language is not first and foremost a system of
signification and meaning is not the defining purpose of its expression. Thus:
matter for Butler may not be a blank or passive surface, but it is still a surface,
and one that demands to be interpreted or written upon by something other
than itself. It seems that matter is unintelligible to itself, and this lack of
intelligibility can only be remedied by thought/language. Although matter
possesses the capacity to call upon thought, it is apparently incapable of calling
upon itself to interpret itself: matter can only exceed itself in thoughtless
activity. However if the nature of matter is generative – if it conceives and
construes itself through an involved re-presentation, or differentiation of itself- then why must we presume that thought/language is alien to its identity
or this process?
(Kirby 199 7 a: 115)
Come what may, Butler’s influence on the notion of performance has clearly been
crucial and I will therefore devote some space to it.
Butler’s initial project was to bring discourse theory and performance (espe-
cially as found in the work of Turner and Schechner) together (see, for example,
Butler 1990a, 1990b). Butler’s initial definition of performance was essentially
repetitive and the repetition is normative; ‘performance mobilises history as
and through repetition’ (Pollock 1998: 2). As McKenzie (199 7 ) puts it, this
is ‘command performance’. Thus, according to Butler (1990a: 1 4 0), history is ‘at
once a re-enactment and a re-opening of a set of meanings already socially
established; and it is the mundane and ritualised form of their legitimation’.
History and performance become ‘collaborators in a kind of backward/forward
motion’ (Pollock 1998: 2) in which history is a constraint on the productive
possibilities of performance.
This is, of course, a very conservative notion of both history and performance.
It is as if Butler is unable to ‘disarticulate performance and history. In her formu-
lation they remain entwined like sad lovers, bound to repeat themselves in slow
circling half-steps while, at best, it seems their mutual distress unfolds’ (Pollock
1998: 2). It is no surprise, then, that in her most recent work (see, for example,
Butler 199 7 ), Butler tends to back away from this conception, laying more
stress on the performative side of the equation. Though still enmeshed in textual
metaphors, Butler now pays more attention to the effectiveness of speech acts, to
the force of the utterance. By concentrating on a notion of speech acts as bodily
acts which is boosted by drawing on a Wittgensteinian notion of rule-following
(filtered through the work of Taylor and Bourdieu on embodied activity) she is
able to rework linguistic agency as performative force. But, for her, writers such
as Bourdieu do not go far enough in their attention to performativity. And she
uses Derrida to show this performative deficit. Thus:
Afterwords 129