ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the differences between the two main discussions of performance current within the geographical literature, ones which explicitly identify with either Erving Goffman's or Judith Butler's account. The authors use Butler's representations of performance and performativity as the start point, the bouncing-off point, for thinking about the critical potential of performance and performativity. Performativity involves the saturation of performances and performers with power, with particular subject positions. The authors push the radical antifoundationalism of Butler's arguments, to make more of the instability and uncertainty of performances and the power which infuses them. Along with a number of geographers, the authors agree that both performance and performativity are important conceptual tools for a critical geography concerned to denaturalize taken-for-granted social practices, and concur with their emphasis on the creativity of everyday life. The execution of research projects, their writing, and their dissemination are supreme examples of academic performance and performativity, and need to be recognized as such.