ABSTRACT
The concept of “performativity” is a founding theoretical principle in the field of performance studies in North America. Coined by language philosopher J. L. Austin and further elaborated by poststructuralist thinker Jacques Derrida and gender theorist Judith Butler, performativity refers to the capacity of a performance event to transform social reality. A classic example is the statement “I do” in a wedding ceremony. The performance of this speech act changes the social identities of the speakers, turning them from single individuals into a married unit. In this sense, a wedding is a performance that has a performative function insofar as it reconstitutes the social relations of those involved.
In modern China, artistic performance, such as drama, dance, and music, has often been theorized and practiced as having inherent performative power. In a range of different contexts over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, activists, intellectuals, politicians, and artists across China and the broader Sinophone world have deployed performance as a tool for not just representing and interpreting but also engaging and transforming the world around them. The quintessential example of this “performative performance” in modern China is the land reform drama of the 1940s and early 1950s. Works such as Liu Hulan, The White-Haired Girl, and Brother and Sister Open the Wasteland aimed to intervene in the lives of China’s rural masses and bring about social change through redistributive justice. As we know from recent historical studies, these dramas actually achieved their intended performative effect in many instances - manifested by the launching of local struggle campaigns, sometimes violent, and the eventual redivision of property, including land, often modeled on scenes first presented in land reform drama. Using land reform drama as one example among several, this essay argues that performativity is a central theme in modern Chinese performance culture.
