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Introduction Introduction
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Butler’s Performativity Butler’s Performativity
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The performative The performative
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Intention vs. iterability Intention vs. iterability
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Language and gender performativity Language and gender performativity
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Embodied performativity Embodied performativity
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Summary Summary
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Performativity and Sociocultural Linguistics—Productive Synergies Performativity and Sociocultural Linguistics—Productive Synergies
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Moving Forward—Affect and the Performativity of Embodied Semiosis Moving Forward—Affect and the Performativity of Embodied Semiosis
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Yours Queerly Yours Queerly
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References References
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Queer Performativity
Get accessTommaso M. Milani is Deputy Head of the Department of Swedish at the University of Gothenburg. His main areas of research encompass language politics and language ideologies, performativity theory, multimodal critical discourse analysis, and language, gender and sexuality. He is Co-Editor of the journals African Studies (Taylor and Francis) and Gender and Language (Equinox); he is also Editor of the book series Advances in Sociolinguistics (Bloomsbury). His work has appeared in many international journals, including Gender & Language, Discourse & Society, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Journal of Language and Politics, Journal of Language and Sexuality, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language in Society, and Linguistics and Education. He has edited Language Ideologies and Media Discourse (together with Sally Johnson) (Continuum), and Language and Masculinities: Performances, Intersections, Dislocations (Routledge).
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Published:04 April 2019
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This version:November 2022
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Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to present and re-read Judith Butler’s well-known performativity theory. The main argument advanced here is that, even though Butler’s work is widely viewed as instigating the field of queer studies, it is perhaps time to revisit performativity in order to queer it. The act of queering should be understood in the context of this chapter in two ways. First, it entails going against the sociolinguistic grain and troubling the linguistic core of performativity in a way that engages with “aspects of experience and reality that do not present themselves in propositional or even in verbal form” (Sedgwick 2003: 6), such as affect, embodiment, and the materiality of the built environment. The embodied and affective aspects of performativity are illustrated with the help of examples from gender and sexual activism in Israel, which show how multi-semiotic and sensory meanings are performatively brought into being in order to stake political claims. Second, queering performativity entails questioning the antinormative mantra encoded in the very notion of queer. This requires going back to a performative utterance par excellence—“I do” in wedding ceremonies—in order open up an uneasy self-reflection about (anti)normativity in queer scholarship.
This chapter has been revised for clarity.
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