Jonathan Culler - The Fortunes of the Performative

The notion of the performative - an utterance that accomplishes the act that it designates

This article follows the change of this notion to show:

1. why it appeared useful for literary theory and what happens when literature is laid out as fundamentally performative

2. how it functions in theory and criticism associated with deconstruction

3. what role it plays in recent work in gender studies and queer theory

Shifts in the concept pose questions about how to think about the constitutive force of language, the nature of discursive events and literature as an act. The concept of performative utterance was developed b J.L. Austin in the 1950ies.

This text looks at: Origin of the notion of the performative. What happens when this notion is adopted by literary theorists and critics to describe literary discourse? What's in it for the term "Deconstruction" where there is a tension between performative and constative function of language? The notion of the performative in queer theory?