Performativity as critical praxis: J.L Austin, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Catherine Malabou, c. 1955-2014

n the second half of the twentieth century, the concept of "performativity" came to play a leading role in academic discourse in the philosophy of language, deconstruction, queer and gender studies, art theory, and performance studies. Most recently, it has taken centre stage in the emerging interdisciplinary field of performance philosophy. Despite its ubiquity, however, performativity remains enigmatic. Accounting for the capacity of speech to bring about the action that it designates, and the processes through which identities are enacted, and meaning is produced, the concept lies somewhere in the tensions among language, embodiment, and action. As such, it is a singularly important term in understanding the meaning and significance of contemporary art and performance in relation to modernist norms and values. My dissertation provides a rigorous historicization and theorization of performativity by means of an analysis of the key texts by its major theorists. It argues that J.L Austin, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and Catherine Malabou envision modes of performative writing that enact the ideas that their texts describe. In other words, I propose that they resist traditional modes of logical argumentation and disseminate their theories of performativity in a performative manner. An intellectual history written in the first person, each chapter narrates my phenomenological reception of a rhetorical performance by one of the above philosophers. Through it, performativity emerges as a mode of critical praxis characterized by both discursive resistance and embodied transgression -one that makes the ontological borders between philosophy and art more porous.