Politics Is Hard Work: Performativity and the Preconditions of Intelligibility

Karen Zivi Grand Valley State University

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines Rancière's account of politics from a performative perspective. It brings insight about linguistic performativity to bear on key examples of political subjectification in order to illuminate the value and limits of a Rancièrean account of politics. It argues that Rancière's account of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political activism helps shed light on how language produces the political subjects of dissensual politics and illuminates the important role citationality plays in that production. Nonetheless, a performative analysis reveals that Rancière's account, with its emphasis on the momentary character of politics and its briefly detailed and decontextualized examples, glosses over the necessity of citational repetition to the intelligibility and disruptiveness of an act of resistance. Without an account of politics more attuned to these iterative dimensions we may be unable to cultivate the ethos required by the conditions of our age or the terms of Rancière's own account.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2016-11-21
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.49.4.0438
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (31)

  1. Austin, J. L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words: Second Edition. Ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà. Cambridge…
  2. Barthold, Lauren Swayne. 2014. “True Identities: From Performativity to Festival.” Hypatia 29 (4): 808–23.
  3. Butler, Judith. 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge.
  4. Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
  5. Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
Show all 31 →
  1. Butler, Judith. 2015. Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  2. Chambers, Samuel. 2013. The Lessons of Rancière. New York: Oxford University Press.
  3. Chambers, Samuel, and Terrell Carver. 2008. Judith Butler and Political Theory: Troubling Politics. New York:…
  4. Cole, John. 2011. Between the Queen and the Cabby: Olympe de Gouges's Rights of Women. Montreal: McGill-Queen…
  5. Deranty, Jean-Philippe, and Alison Ross. 2012. Jacques Rancière and the Contemporary Scene: The Philosophy of…
  6. Derrida, Jacques. 1988. Limited Inc. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
  7. Frank, Jason. 2015. “Logical Revolts Jacques Rancière and Political Subjectivization.” Political Theory 43 (2…
  8. Locke, Jill. 2016. Democracy and the Death of Shame. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  9. Lloyd, Moya. 2007. Judith Butler: From Norms to Politics. Malden, MA: Polity.
  10. May, Todd. 2008. The Political Thought of Jacques Rancière: Creating Equality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Universit…
  11. May, Todd. 2009. “Thinking the Break: Rancière, Badiou, and the Return of a Politics of Resistance.” Comparat…
  12. May, Todd. 2010. Contemporary Political Movements and the Thought of Jacques Rancière: Equality in Action. Ed…
  13. Mousset, Sofie. 2007. Women's Rights and the French Revolution: A Biography of Olympe de Gouges. Translated b…
  14. Pelletier, Caroline. 2009. “Emancipation, Equality and Education: Rancière's Critique of Bourdieu and the Que…
  15. Rancière, Jacques. 1995. On the Shores of Politics. Trans. Liz Heron. New York: Verso.
  16. Rancière, Jacques. 1999. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Trans. Julie Rose. Minneapolis: University of…
  17. Rancière, Jacques. 2004a. Hatred of Democracy. Trans. Steve Corcoran. Verso.
  18. Rancière, Jacques. 2004b. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Trans. Gabriel Rockhi…
  19. Rancière, Jacques. 2010. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Ed. and trans. Steve Corcoran. New York: Continuum.
  20. Rancière, Jacques. 2011. Staging the People: The Proletarian and His Double. Trans. David Fernbach. New York:…
  21. Sparks, Holloway. 2016. “When Dissident Citizens Are Militant Mamas: Intersectional Gender and Agonistic Stru…
  22. Trouille, Mary Seidman. 1997. Sexual Politics in the Enlightenment: Women Writers Read Rousseau. Albany: Stat…
  23. Weber, Max. 1958. “Politics as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans Heinrich Gerth, …
  24. Zivi, Karen. 2008. “Rights and the Politics of Performativity.” In Judith Butler's Precarious Politics: Criti…
  25. Zivi, Karen. 2012. Making Rights Claims: A Practice of Democratic Citizenship. New York: Oxford University Press.
  26. Žižek, Slavoj. 2004. “The Lesson of Rancière.” In The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensibl…