Discourse, Theatrical Performance, Agency: The Analytic Force of “Performativity” in Education
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In educational theory, as in other domains of theory, the popularity of a particular concept can wax and wane, and every so often, a (seemingly) new concept emerges that captures imaginations. The concept of "performativity" is a case in point. 1 In discussions with students and other colleagues I have noticed a growing interest in, but also confusion about, what feminist philosopher and queer theorist Judith Butler means by "performative" and "performativity." People say things such as, "Performativity means that identity is not an essence, but that I perform my identity." They understand correctly that Butler's conception of identity is nonessentialist, but misinterpret identity as performed by the subject. That is, they understand correctly that performativity is related to the fluidity of identity, but they interpret that relation in a theatrical sense: "Identity is fluid because I can perform different identities in different contexts." Although there are connections between theatrical performance and the concept of performativity as used by Butler, the reading of performativity as performance by the subject glosses over the way Butler's work reconceptualizes agency. 2 It is this reconceptualization, I will argue, that has important implications for education. In this essay I will retrieve and analyze the differences and points of connection between the theatrical and discursive conceptions of performativity. This analysis will illuminate what Butler's discursive conception of performativity and the attendant conception of agency have to offer educational theorists. I will close by analyzing the educational issue of bullying through this lens of discursive performativity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.086 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.016 | 0.015 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".