What is "performative"

Usage examples of "performative".

The tertiary level becomes theatrical because the satiric performance by a character echoes the theatrical performance of the satirist, calling attention to the performative nature of the play itself.

The transformative relationship between the old self and the new self is thus paralleled by, but different from, a performative relationship between the real self and the pretended self.

At the end the performative nature of the play is reinforced by the duality of Face as actor and the actor as Face.

He has overlapped as fully as seems possible the tertiary, secondary, and primary performative levels of theatricality, social roles, and discourse, and amid the resulting confusion he has insisted that we make the distinctions necessary to judgment.

He has gone to buy a fish, is swept up by the soldiers, with the help of the canteen owner Leokadja Begbick, and is transformed into a human fighting machine by a performative process of ritual death and rebirth.

She begins the play as a prostitute, but that is only the first of several performative levels that she must play.

But it may also be self-consciously performative in two other ways that help define its satiric character.

The performative nature of satiric drama produces, in turn, a performance by its characters that reveals the evil or silliness of society.

Beyond the performative nature of language itself, it casts characters in social roles that, distinct from the personality of the character who plays them, become performative and, when the discrepancy between personality and role is pronounced, satiric.

Hence, in most legal systems for thousands of years, a report of a performative statement has been admissible as evidence, since it is regarded not as a report of what someone said (for it would then be inadmissible as hearsay) but as evidence of an action, of what someone did.