ABSTRACT
This chapter is an analysis of Austin’s complex attempt to debunk (what he calls) “the true/false fetish” and the fact/value dichotomy by means of a negative dialectics, a dialectic in which Austin introduces the seemingly obvious distinction between performatives and constatives in order to deceptively make evident that such a distinction does not hold water (which in turn will have some serious reverberations with regard to how we think about the true/false fetish and the fact/value dichotomy). Thus, what we encounter in Austin’s most famous paper, “Performative Utterances,” as well as the William James Lecture’s How to Do Things with Words” is a very sensitive and careful movement of thought, which travels from portraying the distinction between the constative and the performative as obvious, via a long series of failed attempts to ground and secure that distinction, to the intended conclusion that the distinction indeed “breaks down.” In order to develop this more carefully and to bring the relevant nuances into view, I discuss in some detail some of the dialogue of “The Comey Hearing” (the US Senate’s special hearing with the former director of the FBI, James Comey).
