To

 appear  in  Kira  Hall  and  Rusty  Barrett  (eds)  The  Oxford  Handbook  of  Language  and  Sexuality.  Oxford:  
Oxford  University  Press.  

 
Queer  performativity    
Tommaso  M.  Milani  
University  of  the  Witwatersrand,  Johannesburg  
 
 
1.  Introduction    
 
Over  the  last  two  decades,  performativity  has  become  one  of  the  most  significant  
notions  –  if  not  the  most  influential  one  –  in  the  study  of  language  and  socio-­‐
cultural  processes.  Most  commonly  associated  with  the  work  of  the  American  
philosopher  Judith  Butler  on  gender,  sexuality  and  the  sexed  body  (1990,  1993,  
2004,  2011),  performativity’s  uptake  has  far  exceeded  the  original  focus  of  the  
concept,  and  has  informed  analyses  of  branding  (e.g.  Nakassis  2012),  hip-­‐hop  
(e.g.  Pennycook  2003,  Sarkar  and  Winer  2006,  Williams,  in  press),  language  
ideological  debates  (e.g.  Milani  2007),  multilingualism  and  code-­‐switching  (e.g.  
Stroud  2004,  Harissi,  Otsuji  and  Pennycook  2012),  academic  writing  (e.g.  
Thurlow,  in  press)  and  many  other  strands  of  sociocultural  linguistic  inquiry  (see  
also  Hall  1999,  Zimman  and  Hall  2015,  Cavanaugh  2015  for  useful  overviews).  
Commenting  on  this  ‘performative  turn’  in  sociocultural  linguistics,  Mike  
Baynham  (2015)  would  go  as  far  as  to  propose  that  there  is  something  nearly  
universal  about  the  performative  nature  of  the  “total  linguistic  fact”  (Silverstein  
1985).  If  the  world  was  struck  by  a  quasi-­‐apocalyptic  cataclysm,  he  imgines,  
where  “the  screens  have  definitively  darkened  and  humanity  strives  to  reinvent  
itself,  as  we  settle  back  into  one  of  Benedict  Anderson’s  imagined  communities,  
dominated  by  face  to  face  interaction,  language  would  still  be  performative”  
(Baynham  2015:  1).    
Whilst  appreciating  the  wide-­‐raging  impact  of  the  concept,  I’d  like  to  
propose  that  it  is  perhaps  time  once  again  to  “bring  performativity  back”  (Livia  
and  Hall  1997)  to  its  origins;  this  time  though  it’s  not  its  linguistic  legacy  that  we  
should  rediscover  but  its  queer  pedigree  (Sedgwick  1993),  which  lie  at  the  
crossroads  of  gender,  sexuality  and  the  (sexed)  body.  Such  a  suggestion  might  
sound  paradoxical,  because,  as  we  will  see  below,  the  very  existence  of  an  
origin(al)  is  undermined  by  a  performativity  approach.  However,  renewed  
attention  to  the  body  brings  with  it  the  promise  of  broadening  the  remit  of  
sociocultural  linguistic  beyond  a  narrow  focus  on  language  so  as  to  encompass  
“aspects  of  experience  and  reality  that  do  no  present  themselves  in  propositional  
or  even  in  verbal  form”  (Sedgwick  2003:  6),  such  as  affect  and  materiality  (see  
also  Bucholtz  and  Hall,  in  press,  Peck  and  Stroud  2015).  A  re-­‐centering  of  
performativity  around  its  queer  roots  also  has  the  potential  to  re-­‐frame  ongoing  
discussions  about  (anti)normativity  in  language,  gender  and  sexuality  research  
(see  in  particular  Hall  2013).  
The  chapter  begins  with  a  brief  overview  of  the  theoretical  bricolage  that  
informs  Butler’s  understanding  of  (gender)  performativity,  followed  by  a  
selective  summary  of  the  main  contribution  that  sociocultural  linguistics  has  
offered  to  the  development  of  this  concept.  With  the  help  of  examples  from  
gender  and  sexual  activism  in  Israel,  the  chapter  then  moves  on  to  chart  new  
territories  for  performativity.  These  are  spaces  in  which  bodies,  affect  and  the  
materiality  of  the  urban  environment  work  together  in  order  to  create  multi-­‐

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Oxford  University  Press.  

semiotic  and  sensory  meanings.  The  chapter  closes  with  an  intentionally  
unconventional  lack  of  conclusion,  which,  in  a  self-­‐referential  spirit,  reflects  on  
the  role  of  (anti-­‐)normativity  in  queer  studies.  
 
2.  From  the  performative  to  performativity.  
 
Although  the  terms  performative  and  performativity  are  often  used  
interchangeably  as  synonyms  (see  e.g.  Fleming  and  Lempert  2014  for  a  recent  
case  in  point),  they  should  not  be  conflated  because  they  rely  on  very  different  
premises.  The  concept  of  the  performative  was  originally  coined  by  the  British  
philosopher  of  language  John  Langshaw  Austin  in  the  William  James  Lectures  
delivered  at  Harvard  University  in  1955,  which  were  later  published  in  a  small  
volume  with  the  enticing  title  How  to  Do  Things  with  Words.  Performativity,  on  
the  other  hand,  was  first  outlined  by  Judith  Butler  in  Gender  Trouble  (1990),  was  
later  refined  in  Bodies  That  Matter  (1993)  and  Excitable  Speech  (1997),  and  
received  renewed  impetus  more  recently  as  a  result  of  Butler’s  (2011)  public  
engagement  on  the  ‘Occupy  movement’  and  public  protests  more  broadly.  As  will  
become  clearer  below,  Austin’s  ideas  revolutionized  how  we  think  about  
language  in  relation  to  social  reality,  and  generated  a  long-­‐standing  intellectual  
engagement  on  the  part  of  many  continental  philosophers  –  Emile  Benveniste,  
Jean-­‐Jacques  Derrida,  Pierre  Bourdieu,  Gilles  Deleuze  and  Felix  Guattari  –  traces  
of  which  are  present  in  Butler’s  theory  of  gender  performativity.  What  follows  is  
an  outline  of  the  main  trajectory  of  ideas  from  Austin’s  performative  to  Butler’s  
performativity.  
 
2.1  The  performative  
 
Austin’s  (1962)  aim  was  to  dispute  what  he  calls  the  ‘descriptive  fallacy’  (1962:  
3)  of  Western  philosophy,  namely  the  assumption  that  language  is  simply  a  tool  
through  which  to  describe  an  independent  reality  that  exists  ‘out  there’.  As  is  
succinctly  encapsulated  in  the  title  of  the  book,  words,  and  language  more  
broadly,  not  only  communicate  information  about  the  world  but  also  perform  
acts  –  it  creates  the  world.  In  order  to  separate  these  two  functions  of  language,  
Austin  distinguishes  between  two  types  of  utterances  –  constatives  and  
performatives  –  a  distinction,  one  need  add,  that  was  dismantled  by  the  end  of  
the  book  when  all  linguistic  utterances  are  said  to  be  to  a  certain  extent  
performative.    
 
This  caveat  notwithstanding,  constatives  are  utterances  that  convey  information.  
As  an  example  one  could  take  a  fictitious  headline  of  the  South  African  daily  The  
Sowetan  stating  “AGREEMENT  REACHED!  Sipho  Letsoalo  and  Bongani  Khumalo  
got  married  in  Alex  after  exhausting  lobola  negotiations.”  The  choice  here  of  a  
same-­‐sex  wedding  rather  than  a  heterosexual  one  in  Austin’s  original  
formulation  is  not  random  and  will  become  clearer  by  the  end  of  the  chapter.  
Suffice  it  to  say  for  now  that  the  headline  reports  on  an  event  –  a  wedding  
ceremony  –  that  occurred  in  a  particular  place  –  the  Johannesburg  township  of  
Alexandra  –  and  involved  a  specific  set  of  discursive  and  monetary  transactions  
among  certain  participants  –  the  practice  of  agreeing  on  and  paying  a  dowry  
called  lobola,  which  literally  means  ‘bride  price’.  As  a  constative,  this  headline  

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Oxford  University  Press.  

can  be  true  or  false  depending  on  its  relationship  to  ‘reality’.  Do  Sipho  and  
Bongani  really  exist?  Did  they  marry?  Was  there  a  discussion  about  lobola  at  all?    
 
Let  us  assume  that  Sipho  and  Bongani  are  two  real  people  and  the  lobola  
negotiations  did  take  place.  Let  us  now  imagine  that  we  are  at  the  wedding  
ceremony  in  a  backyard  in  Alexandra,  and  Bongani  and  Sipho  are  standing  in  
front  of  a  South  African  marriage  officer  appointed  for  the  occasions  asking:  “Do  
you  Bongani  Khumalo  take  Sipho  Letsoalo  as  your  lawful  wedded  husband?”  
When  answering  “I  do”,  Bongani  is  not  describing  a  pre-­‐existing  reality.  Rather,  
the  utterance  is  an  act  of  social  magic.  In  the  very  pronouncement  of  this  specific  
linguistic  formula,  Bongani  creates  reality:  he  turns  himself  into  Sipho’s  husband.  
And  this  is  according  to  Austin  a  prototypical  example  of  a  performative.    
 
Unlike  their  constative  peers,  which  can  be  true  or  false,  performatives  are  
subject  to  a  different  value  system;  they  can  be  ‘happy’  or  ‘unhappy’  depending  
on  certain  conditions  being  in  place.  These  include  inter  alia  the  existence  of  a  
conventional  procedure  and  the  uttering  of  particular  words  by  certain  persons  
in  specific  circumstances,  the  ‘appropriateness’  of  the  persons  and  the  
circumstances,  and  the  correct  execution  of  the  procedures.  The  changing  of  
marital  status  in  the  ceremony  in  Alexandra  would  have  been  void  if  Bongani  
and  Sipho  were  not  human  beings  but  teddy  bears  or  the  marriage  officer  had  
not  been  officially  appointed  following  South  African  legislation  on  the  matter.  
Also  for  Austin  a  performative  “will  […]  be  in  a  peculiar  way  hollow  or  void  if  said  
by  an  actor  on  the  stage,  or  if  introduced  in  a  poem,  or  spoken  in  soliloquy.  […]  
Language  in  such  circumstances  is  in  special  ways  […]  used  not  seriously,  but  in  
ways  parasitic  upon  its  normal  use  –  ways  which  fall  under  the  doctrine  of  the  
etiolations  of  language  (1962:  22).  Moreover,  a  performative,  is  unhappy  if  “done  
under  duress,  or  by  accident,  or  owing  to  this  or  that  variety  of  mistake,  say,  or  
otherwise  unintentionally”  (1962:  21).  As  Deborah  Cameron  and  Don  Kulick  
cogently  put  it,  “[t]he  foregrounding  of  speaker  intention  turned  out  to  be  the  
jugular  vein  for  which  the  French  philosopher  Jacques  Derrida  leapt”  (2003:  
126)  
 
2.2  Performative  iterability  
 
In  the  essay  “Signature  Event  Context”,  Derrida  (1991  [1982])  claims  that  what  
Austin  excluded  from  his  analysis  –  the  ‘etiolations,’  and  the  ‘parasitic’  –  are  
actually  the  conditions  of  possibility  that  structure  a  performative.  As  we  saw  in  
the  previous  section,  for  Austin  the  performative  is  ‘happy’  if  the  intentions  of  
the  speaker  who  utters  it  are  genuine;  it  also  succeeds  if  specific  conditions  are  
met.  Yet,  Derrida  would  say  that  too  much  reliance  on  intentions,  and  the  
external  conditions  in  which  the  performative  is  uttered,  blind  us  from  “a  certain  
intrinsic  conventionality  of  that  which  constitutes  locution  itself”  (1991  [1982]:  
101).  For  “[r]itual  is  not  an  eventuality,  but  as  iterability,  is  a  structural  
characteristic  of  every  mark”  (1991  [1982]:  99).  From  such  a  perspective,  then,  
performatives  –  and  all  meaning-­‐making  practices  for  that  matter  –  work  not  so  
much  because  of  speakers’  intentions  but  because  they  are  repeatable  –  they  are  
quotable  (see  also  Mikhail  Bakhtin’s  (1982)  on  a  similar  argument  on  the  
citationality  of  voices).    

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Oxford  University  Press.  

 
Derrida’s  theoretical  point  can  be  explained  with  the  help  of  his  own  signature  
with  which  he  closes  the  essay  (see  also  Cameron  and  Kulick  (2003:  127ff).  For  a  
signature  to  function,  it  has  to  be  repeatable.  For  it  wouldn’t  be  particularly  
useful  if  a  signature  only  worked  only  once.  However,  in  order  to  be  successful,  
the  signature  has  to  be  repeated  in  a  particular  way.  Otherwise  it  won’t  be  
accepted  as  a  lawful  proof  of  one’s  own  identity.  At  this  juncture,  there  are  two  
elements  that  need  to  be  foregrounded,  though.  First,  a  signature  –  no  matter  
how  much  a  writer  tries  –  is  never  exactly  the  same.  Similarly,  iterability  is  not  
static  textual  repetition.  Given  that  repetition  implies  the  grafting  of  similar  
letters  in  new  contexts,  iterability  indicates  a  dynamic  process  of  change  
whereby  new  meanings  can  be  produced  every  time  an  utterance  is  repeated.  
Second,  signatures  can  be  forged.  However,  as  Cameron  and  Kulick  explain,  
“these  forgeries  and  frauds  are  not  faults,  exceptions,  misuses  or  ‘abuses’  of  
language.  They  are,  on  the  contrary,  extremely  clear  examples  of  precisely  the  
way  language  works”  (2003:  128;  see  also  Kramsch  2012  on  linguistic  
imposture).  In  this  sense,  then,  language  is  to  a  certain  extent  always  under  
duress,  or,  as  Derrida  puts  it,  it  is  never  completely  saturable,  that  is,  it  is  always  
beyond  our  control.  Such  instability  might  sound  unsettling  because  we  can  
never  fully  police  how  what  we  say  or  write  will  be  received  and  interpreted  by  
an  audience.  But,  as  we  will  see  in  more  detail  in  the  next  section,  it  is  precisely  
in  the  gap  between  intentions  and  effects,  between  authorship  and  uptake,  that  
there  is  the  promise  of  re-­‐signification,  semiotic  struggle  and  the  potential  for  
political  emancipation.  
 
 
2.3  Performativity  
 
With  a  gesture  of  intellectual  dexterity,  Butler  applies  Derrida’s  reading  of  
Austin’s  performative  to  gender  famously  arguing  in  Gender  Trouble  that      
 
Gender  is  not  a  noun,  but  neither  is  it  a  set  of  free-­‐floating  attributes  […]  
Hence  gender  proves  to  be  a  performative  –  that  is,  constituting  the  identity  
it  is  purported  to  be.  In  this  sense,  gender  is  always  a  doing,  though  not  a  
doing  by  a  subject  who  might  be  said  to  pre-­‐exist  the  deed.  […]  There  is  no  
gender  identity  behind  the  expressions  of  gender;  that  identity  is  
performatively  constituted  by  the  very  “expressions”  that  are  said  to  be  its  
results.  (Butler  1999  [1990]:  33)    
 
This  quote  may  sound  confusing  because  of  the  density  of  its  philosophical  
references.  Issues  of  style  aside,  the  key  argument  here  is  that  gender  is  not  an  
ontological  state  of  being;  it  is  not  something  we  have  and  causes  a  particular  
behavior.  Rather,  it  is  the  effect  of  socio-­‐culturally  situated  discourses  and  
practices.  Moreover,  gender  is  not  a  once-­‐off  accomplishment  but  is  something  
human  beings  constantly  do  with  the  help  of  meaning-­‐making  resources,  
including  language,  body,  dress  code,  make-­‐up  choices,  etc.  This  does  not  mean  
though  that  gender  is  the  social,  cultural,  and  discursive  counterpart  of  a  pre-­‐
existing  biological,  original  sex.  In  a  formulation  that  has  puzzled  many  readers  
over  the  years,  it  is  stated  elsewhere  in  Gender  Trouble  that  “sex  by  definition,  

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Oxford  University  Press.  

will  be  shown  to  have  been  gender  all  along”  (1999  [1990]:  13).  Put  simply,  the  
human  obsession  with  bodily  dimorphism  –  the  anatomic  difference  between  
males  and  females  –  is  no  less  cultural  that  the  opposition  between  what  counts  
as  ‘feminine’  vs.  ‘masculine.’  And  Butler  cautions  against  any  discursive  practice  
that  seams  together  sex  (male/female)  and  gender  (masculine/feminine)  into  an  
apparently  ‘natural’  texture  (e.g.  femininity  as  a  prerogative  of  female-­‐born  and  
female-­‐bodied  individuals)  because  these  entanglements  ultimately  serve  the  
interests  of  ‘compulsory  heterosexuality’  (Wittig  1992).  This  perspective  flips  
upside  down  commonsensical  beliefs  about  the  relationship  between  gender  and  
sexuality:  the  view  that  heterosexuality  ‘naturally’  flows  from  sexed  and  
gendered  arrangements  is  replaced  by  an  understanding  of  heterosexuality  as  a  
principle  that  structures  gender  and  “requires  men  and  women  to  be  ‘opposites’”  
(Cameron  and  Kulick  2003:  46).  
 
All  in  all,  gender  is  like  a  hologram,  which  might  lack  ontological  flesh  but  is  
nonetheless  kept  alive  and  visible  through  the  continuous  degree  of  investment  
that  individuals  put  into  it  in  their  daily  chores.  So,  if  there’s  no  original  gender,  
and  sex  is  also  a  cultural  discursive  construction,  how  is  it  possible  that  human  
beings  are  so  committed  to  these  categories?  And,  is  there  a  way  out  of  the  
sex/gender  straitjacket?  
 
In  a  typically  post-­‐structuralist  fashion,  Butler  (1999  [1990],  1993)  refuses  to  
settle  on  a  definite  answer  on  what  is  ultimately  the  complex  issue  of  the  
interplay  of  structure  and  agency.  With  this  uncertainty  in  mind,  it  is  helpful  to  
think  of  gender  performativity  as  a  matrix  –  a  grid  of  repetitions  that  
simultaneously  enables  and  constrains  individual  and  collective  action.  Initiation  
into  this  matrix  happens  when  a  doctor  or  a  midwife  says:  ‘It’s  a  girl!’  or  ‘It’s  a  
boy!’  These  exclamations  are  not  innocuous  descriptions  of  the  corporeality  in  
front  of  their  eyes.  Put  differently,  they  are  not  Austinian  constatives,  but  
performatives  in  that  that  they  hail  a  small  body  into  the  linguistic  pigeonhole  of  
the  pronouns  “he”  or  “she”,  and,  in  doing  so,  bring  into  being  very  distinct  set  of  
rules  and  expectations  about  how  that  corporeality  should  look,  think,  and  
behave  throughout  the  course  of  its  life.  Interestingly,  doctors  and  midwifes  
don’t  happily  say  ‘It’s  an  intersex,’  but  the  allegedly  ‘natural’  dimorphic  character  
of  sex  is  upheld  culturally  through  the  common  practice  of  surgical  intervention  
in  any  genital  configuration  that  does  not  fit  the  penis/vagina  binary  (see  also  
King  2015).  Of  course,  normative  gender  divisions  do  not  end  at  birth,  but  the  
boy/man  vs.  girl/woman  dichotomy  will  be  consistently  enforced  by  a  variety  of  
authorities  and  institutions  such  as  school,  church,  family,  and  the  military.    
 
In  sum,  through  interpellation,  the  doctor  and  the  midwife  are  not  only  bringing  
into  existence  a  gendered  subject,  but  they  are  inaugurating  a  chain  of  gender  
performativity,  in  which  that  subject  willingly  or  not  will  be  involved  throughout  
their  life.    
 
This  doesn’t  mean  though  that  human  beings  are  like  actors  on  a  stage  that  
repeat  mechanically  a  sequence  of  gendered  lines  that  they  have  learned  by  
heart.  But  they  are  not  entirely  free  to  speak  off  the  gendered  cuff  either.  In  line  
with  Derrida’s  observations  on  iterability,  Gender  Trouble  closes  with  the  

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Oxford  University  Press.  

encouragement  that  “[t]he  task  is  not  whether  to  repeat,  but  how  to  repeat  or,  
indeed,  to  repeat  and,  through  a  radical  proliferation  of  gender,  to  displace  the  
very  gender  norms  that  enable  the  repetition  itself”  (1999  [1990]:  189,  emphasis  
in  original).    It  is  the  very  repetition  that  opens  up  the  possibility  of  a  ‘queer’  
gesture,  an  act  of  ‘abuse’  or  ‘misfire’  that  is  not  fully  compliant  with  a  pre-­‐
established  gendered  script,  but  goes  against  the  proverbial  grain,  and  ultimately  
creates  a  moment  of  rupture  in  the  well-­‐oiled  functioning  of  the  matrix.  The  
example  Butler  gives  is  that  of  drag  performances  in  which  male-­‐born,  male-­‐
bodied  individuals  repeat,  cite,  and  parody  certain  norms  of  womanhood  on  a  
stage.  And,  “by  highlighting  the  disjunction  between  the  body  of  the  performer  
and  the  gender  that  is  being  performed,  parodic  performances  such  as  drag  
effectively  reveal  the  imitative  nature  of  all  gender  identities”  (Salih  2002:  65).  
But,  as  Butler  cautions,  not  all  drag  performances  are  subversive;  nor  are  all  
subversive  acts  performed  on  the  stage,  but  can  happen  “in  the  nooks  and  
crannies  of  everyday  life”  (Besnier  2009:  11).    
 
Over  the  twenty-­‐five  years  that  passed  since  the  publication  of  Gender  Trouble,  
performativity  theory  has  come  under  fire  from  different  disciplinary  and  
epistemological  quarters  (see  Livia  and  Hall  1997,  Salih  2002,  Cameron  and  
Kulick  2003  for  useful  summaries).  Particularly  problematic  for  some  non-­‐
representational  geographers  (e.g.  Thrift  and  Dewsbury  2000)  and  neo-­‐
materialist  thinkers  (e.g.  Barad  2003)  is  the  representationalist  and  discursive  
bias,  which  “mired  in  a  textualism  of  sorts”  (Rose-­‐Redwood  and  Glass  2014)  
reduces  materiality  and  corporeality  to  a  “passive  product  of  discursive  practices  
rather  than  as  an  active  agent  participating  in  the  very  process  of  
materialization”  (Barad  2003:  821).  Indeed,  discourse  and  representation  are  the  
cogs  through  which  the  performativity  machinery  operates.  The  foregrounding  
of  discursive  practices  doesn’t  imply  though  a  naïve  denial  of  the  fleshiness  of  
the  body  and  the  concreteness  of  the  built  environment.  In  Bodies  That  Matter  
(1993),  Butler  made  it  clear  to  her  detractors  that  language  and  materiality  are  
entangled  with  each  other  in  such  a  way  that  “language  both  is  and  refers  to  that  
which  is  material,  and  what  is  material  never  fully  escapes  from  the  process  by  
which  it  is  signified”  (1993:  68).  Cognizant  of  this  dialectic,  then,  the  very  
“delimitation  between  ‘discourse’  and  ‘materiality’  is  itself  a  performative  move  
that  brings  a  conceptual  horizon  into  being  rather  than  simply  describing  a  pre-­‐
existing  ontological  reality”  (Rose-­‐Redwood  and  Glass  2014:  10,  emphasis  
added).  
 
Some  of  the  ideas  about  the  entanglement  of  language,  body  and  the  materiality  
of  urban  spaces  have  been  developed  in  more  detail  in  conjunction  with  recent  
mass  protests  throughout  the  world.  Commenting  on  the  spatial  tactics  of  the  so-­‐
called  Occupy  Movement,  Butler  cogently  argues  that  

when  the  body  “speaks”  politically,  it  is  not  only  in  vocal  or  written  
language.  The  persistence  of  the  body  calls  that  legitimacy  into  question,  
and  does  so  precisely  through  a  performativity  of  the  body  that  crosses  
language  without  ever  quite  reducing  to  language.  In  other  words,  it  is  not  
that  bodily  action  and  gesture  have  to  be  translated  into  language,  but  

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Oxford  University  Press.  

that  both  action  and  gesture  signify  and  speak,  as  action  and  claim,  and  
that  the  one  is  not  finally  extricable  from  the  other.  (Butler,  2011:  4)    

 
Die-­‐in  protests  in  which  activists  pretend  to  be  dead  in  strategic  points  of  the  
urban  environment  in  order  to  raise  visibility  about  issues  of  public  interest  are  
perhaps  the  most  patent  examples  of  how  assemblage  of  bodies  ‘speak  
politically’  via  the  interplay  of  their  corporeality  and  the  material  of  the  built  
environment.  Gender  and  sexuality  are  not  mentioned  in  Butler’s  analysis  of  
mass  protests.  Furthermore,  her  account  of  how  embodied  semiosis  works  
seems  to  foreground  exclusively  the  propositional  content  of  the  political  
message  produced  by  the  body/space  interface  –  e.g.  ‘we  want  peace,  freedom,  
justice,  [or  put  any  other  target  of  political  enfranchisement]’.  What  is  left  
unexplored  instead  is  the  affective  dimension  of  meaning-­‐making  practices  –  
whether  linguistic,  bodily,  and/or  spatial.  In  the  same  way  as  language  and  
materiality  are  entwined,  and  their  very  division  is  a  performative  move  that  
serves  certain  academic  interests,  the  point  I  want  to  raise  here  is  that  rationality  
and  emotion  cannot  be  easily  separated,  but  lead  to  an  “irreducible  
entanglement  of  thinking  and  feeling,  knowing  that  and  knowing  how,  
propositional  and  nonpropositional  knowledge’  (Zerilli  2015,  266,  emphasis  
added).  Moreover,  it  is  worth  reminding  ourselves  that  the  reason/emotion  
distinction  is  itself  the  residue  of  a  long-­‐standing  historical  process  in  Western  
thought,  which  has  served  masculinist  interests.  A  popular  meme  circulating  on  
social  media  at  the  time  of  writing  of  this  chapter  makes  this  point  very  clear:  the  
problem  does  not  only  lie  in  the  sexist  view  that  men  are  rational  whereas  
women  are  emotional  but  in  the  processes  that  have  led  some  of  us  to  believe  
that  men’s  highly  emotional  responses  are  actually  the  manifestations  of  reason.  
 
 
2.4  Summary  
 
The  main  argument  advanced  in  this  section  is  that  performative  and  
performativity,  albeit  related,  should  not  be  conflated  because  they  are  based  on  
different  premises.  The  key  difference  between  the  two  lies  in  their  mutual  
relation  to  social  structure.  The  focus  of  the  performative,  at  least  in  the  way  that  
Austin  conceptualized  it,  is  on  how  individual  utterances  create  social  reality  
provided  that  they  are  in  compliance  with  a  set  of  pre-­‐existing  norms.  On  the  
contrary,  performativity  as  developed  by  Butler  via  Derrida  highlights  the  
systemic  nature  of  never-­‐ending  repetitions  in  which  ‘queer  disobedience’  –  the  
‘abuses’,  ‘misfires’,  and  ‘frauds’  discarded  by  Austin  –  is  not  simply  a  structural  
characteristic  of  semiosis,  but  is  also  the  very  condition  through  which  social  
change  can  happen.  Moreover,  unlike  the  performative,  which  has  a  purely  
logocentric  remit,  performativity  is  grounded  on  a  dialectic  relationship  between  
language  and  the  material  world,  something  which  could  be  expanded  further  so  
as  to  encompass  the  domain  of  affect.    
 
 
3.  Performativity  and  sociocultural  linguistics  –  productive  synergies  
 

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Oxford  University  Press.  

Butler’s  ideas  were  not  completely  new  when  they  appeared  in  print  in  Gender  
Trouble  (1990).  Ethnomethodologists  Suzanne  Kessler  and  Wendy  McKenna  
(1978)  had  made  similar  points  on  the  discursive  construction  of  gender  some  
ten  years  before.  But  as  Scott  Kiesling  notes,  “it  seems  that  in  the  nineties  the  
field  was  ready  to  listen  in  a  way  that  it  wasn’t  in  the  1970s”  (2008:  3).  Actually,  
the  field  was  so  eager  to  listen  that,  according  to  Dennis  Schep  (2012),  
performativity  became  so  hegemonic  to  preclude  any  other  possible  way  of  
conceptualizing  gender.    
 
With  regard  to  linguistically  inflected  scholarship  on  gender  and  sexuality,  
performativity  ignited  a  major  epistemological  turn  from  the  so-­‐called  
‘difference  model’  towards  the  ‘diversity  framework’  (see  Cameron  2005  for  an  
excellent  overview).    This  shift  entailed  a  progressive  abandoning  of  a  view  of  
gender  and  sexuality  as  a  pre-­‐existing  social  categories  that  may  explain  
differences  in  linguistic  performances  –  women  use  more  hedges  than  men;  men  
do  report  talk,  women  do  rapport  talk,  gay  men  have  a  broader  color  
terminology  than  their  straight  peers,  etc.  Instead,  the  analytical  focus  is  on  
investigating  the  relationship  between  practices  and  representations  (see  also  
Cameron  and  Kulick  2003).  Such  a  bifocal  lens  has  meant  giving  detailed  
analyses  of  how  individuals  perform  gender  and  sexuality  in  different  ways  
through  the  deployment  of  particular  linguistic  means  (and  not  other).  It  also  
entailed  unraveling  the  discursive  processes  that  enable  certain  shared  
representations  of  gender  and  sexuality  (but  not  others)  to  come  into  being,  
become  available,  and  thereby  get  circulated,  negotiated  and  contested.    
 
It  is  in  the  linking  of  the  domain  of  practice  with  that  of  representation  that  
sociolinguistics  and  linguistic  anthropology  offered  an  invaluable  contribution  to  
the  otherwise  theoretical  edifice  of  performativity  theory.  Needless  to  say,  a  
comprehensive  overview  of  the  large  body  of  literature  in  the  field  is  beyond  the  
scope  of  this  chapter.  What  follows  then  is  a  rather  selective  choice  that  pivots  
around  the  mutually  related  notions  of  indexicality  and  language  ideology  (see  
also  Cameron  2003).  It  is  important  to  mention  that  not  all  the  studies  to  which  I  
will  now  turn  overtly  refer  to  performativity,  indexicality  and  language  
ideologies,  but,  in  my  view,  these  notions  constitute  the  overarching  analytical  
scaffolding  that  link  them  together.    
 
Language  ideology  is  a  concept  that  has  been  developed  with  the  view  to  
capturing  “mediating  links  between  social  forms  and  forms  of  talk”  (Woolard  
1998:  3).  Unlike  the  notion  of  ideology  in  language,  which  indicates  how  any  
otherwise  specified  belief  system  takes  linguistic  shape,  language  ideology  refers  
to  a  particular  set  of  shared  representations  in  any  ideological  field,  namely  those  
that  pertain  to  linguistic  phenomena  (see  also  Cameron  2003).  Such  ideological  
constructs  are  the  result  of  historically  and  socio-­‐culturally  situated  processes  
that  create  indexical  ties  between,  on  the  one  hand,  certain  features,  genres,  
styles,  registers  or  varieties  of  languages,  and,  on  the  other,  broader  socio-­‐
cultural  images  of  their  speakers/writers  in  terms  of  ethnicity,  nationality,  
gender,  sexuality,  aesthetics  and  morality  (see  in  particular  Woolard  1998).  
These  links  are  indexical  because,  like  the  index  in  Charles  Sanders  Peirce’s  
theory  of  signs,  linguistic  features  point  to  something  else  –  in  this  case,  to  

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Oxford  University  Press.  

particular  social  (stereo)types  and  the  socio-­‐cultural  evaluations  associated  to  

them.  But  how  can  specific  language  ideological  fields,  and  the  indexical  ties  
activated  thereby,  allow  us  to  better  understand  the  workings  of  performativity?    
 
Kira  Hall’s  (2009  [1995])  work  on  sex  phone  lines  provides  us  with  an  excellent  
example  of  how  language  ideological  links  can  be  capitalized  on  –  quite  literally  –  
in  order  to  bring  into  being  specific  social  personas.  Through  detailed  analysis  of  
interviews  with  fantasy-­‐line  operators  based  in  California,  Hall  convincingly  
demonstrates  how  specific  ways  of  speaking  –  e.g.  ‘the  breathy  voice’  or  ‘high  
pitch’  –  are  conventionally  associated  to,  and  therefore  bring  into  being,  specific  
stereotypes  of  womanhood  –  e.g.  the  Mexican  femme  fatale  and  the  young  ‘beach  
bunny,’  respectively.  Because  of  the  lack  of  any  immediate  visual  cues  in  phone  
interactions,  fantasy-­‐lines  operators  skillfully  rely  on  these  indexical  links  and  
exploit  them  in  order  to  keep  male  phone  clients  glued  to  the  phone.  Most  
importantly,  these  examples  also  illustrate  the  expropriability  of  indexical  signs  
–  the  ‘forgeries’  that  Derrida  saw  as  the  sine  qua  non  for  a  performative  to  work.  
Not  all  sex  workers  in  the  study  are  female-­‐bodied  or  heterosexual  but  rely  on  
the  conventionality  of  linguistic  indices  in  order  to  voice,  and  thereby  
performatively  bring  into  existence,  specific  female  personas  that  are  desirable  
for  the  heterosexual  male  callers.  In  a  sense,  then,  the  fantasy-­‐line  operators  
reproduce,  rather  than  contest,  culturally  specific  ideas  about  gendered  language  
for  economic  purposes.  But  they  simultaneously  unsettle  too  easy  conflations  
between  biology,  language  and  gender,  and  show  how  “manipulating  the  female  
conversational  stereotype  can  in  fact  be  powerful,  and  sometime  even  enjoyable”  
(Hall  2009  [1995]:  248).  
 
Such  an  ambivalent  pattern  of  reproduction  and  contestation  also  emerges  in  
Rusty  Barrett’s  (2009  [1997])  well-­‐known  study  of  performances  of  African  
American  drag  queens  in  gay  bars  in  Texas.  Analogous  to  the  fantasy-­‐line  
operators  studied  by  Hall  (2009  [1995]),  African  American  drag  queens  
strategically  deploy  the  indexical  values  of  linguistic  features  typically  associated  
with  what  Robin  Lakoff  calls  ‘women’s  language,’  a  linguistic  variety  that,  besides  
gender,  also  carries  connotations  of  race  (whiteness)  and  social  class  (=middle  
and  upper  class).  In  doing  so,  the  drag  queens  performatively  bring  into  being  a  
‘white  woman’  on  stage,  and  through  the  dissonance  between  the  gendered  and  
racialized  persona  and  their  own  bodies,  they  generate  laughter  in  the  audiences.  
In  this  way,  they  reproduce  rather  than  contest  culturally  specific  gendered  and  
racialized  stereotypes.  But  a  closer  look  at  the  content  of  the  utterances  in  
‘women’s  language’  reveal  a  more  complex  pictures,  one  which  racist  
stereotypes  are  challenged  through  a  parody  of  white  women’s  fear  of  African  
American  men  and  the  violence  associated  with  them.  In  this  way,  African  
American  drag  queens  not  only  perform  an  important  exercise  of  social  critique,  
but  their  sophisticated  deployment  of  ‘woman’s  language’  indicates  that  “the  
appropriation  of  a  dominant  hegemonic  variety  need  not  represent  collaboration  
or  affiliation  with  the  dominant  group,  but  may  actually  serve  to  undermine  the  
hegemony  of  the  dominant  variety”  (Barrett  2009  [1997]:  256).      
 
Hall’s  (2009  [1995])  and  Barrett’s  (2009  [1997])  studies  foreground  one  aspect  
of  performativity  –  the  possibility  of  linguistic  agency,  re-­‐signification,  and  

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Oxford  University  Press.  

contestation  within  specific  regimes  of  language  ideologies.  In  such  a  way,  they  
map  the  ambiguousness  inherent  in  
 
this  relation  of  being  implicated  in  that  which  one  opposes,  this  turning  of  
power  against  itself  to  produce  alternative  modalities  of  power,  to  
establish  a  kind  of  political  contestation  that  is  not  a  “pure”  opposition,  a  
“transcendence  of  contemporary  relations  of  power,  but  a  difficult  labor  
of  forging  a  future  from  resources  inevitably  impure  (1993:  241)    
 
Focusing  less  on  agency  than  on  constraints,  Don  Kulick’s  (2003)  analysis  of  the  
negation  ‘no’  foregrounds  the  other  side  of  performativity,  namely,  the  pitfalls  
and  double  binds  of  existing  discursive  matrices.  Taking  the  examples  of  sexual  
harassment/rape,  and  the  so-­‐called  homosexual  panic  defense,  Kulick  (2003)  
illustrates  how  the  apparently  mundane  enunciation  (or  not)  of  ‘no’  is  linked  to  
gendered  expectations,  and  thus  produces  particular  gender  subject  positions.  
Language  ideological  processes  have  produced  a  discursive  regime  in  which  
saying  ‘no’  is  a  prerogative  of  heterosexual  women,  who  would  otherwise  be  
perceived  as  ‘easy’  or  ‘promiscuous’  if  they  readily  accepted  a  male  sexual  
advance.  Against  this  backdrop,  the  very  utterance  of  ‘no’  performatively  
produces  a  feminine  subject  that  both  “ensnares  and  constrains  the  male  speaker  
in  the  same  bind  that  it  raises  for  female  speakers  who  produce  it”  (2003:  143).  
Following  this  logic,  then,  women  find  themselves  in  a  linguistic  double  bind  in  a  
context  where  they  want  to  refuse  a  sexual  invite  from  a  man.  It  also  becomes  
clear  –  though  not  excusable  –  why  ‘no’  is  not  a  viable  option  for  some  
heterosexual  men  when  they  are  the  targets  of  a  sexual  invite  from  another  men.  
For  saying  ‘no’  would  discursively  put  them  into  the  position  typically  reserved  
to  women,  and  consequently  emasculate  them.  So,  as  Kulick  concludes,  “‘no’  is  
essential  not  so  much  for  the  production  of  a  sexual  scenario  (after  all,  a  ‘yes’  can  
produce  that),  but  for  the  materialization  of  a  particular  kind  of  sexual  scenario  
in  which  the  sexual  subjects  so  produced  are  differentially  empowered  and  
differentially  gendered.”  (Kulick  2003:  146).    
 
Individually  and  collectively,  the  three  studies  summarized  here  give  us  a  
glimpse  of  the  contribution  given  by  sociocultural  linguistics  to  the  theory  of  
(gender)  performativity;  they  provided  us  with  much  needed  empirical  evidence  
to  Butler’s  more  abstract  theoretical  claims,  offering  detailed  analyses  of  the  
shapes  linguistic  agency  takes  within  certain  discursive  regimes.  In  particular,  
sociocultural  linguistics  has  developed  sophisticated  analytical  tools  –  the  
notions  of  indexicality  and  language  ideology  –  via  which  to  grasp  how  gender  
and  sexual  performativity  works  linguistically,  showing  how  individuals  juggle  
with  putting  to  work  Butler’s  encouragement  that  “[t]he  task  is  not  whether  to  
repeat,  but  how  to  repeat.”  That  being  said,  performativity  of  the  body,  with  its  
propositional,  material,  multi-­‐semiotic  and  affective  dimensions,  still  remains  a  
largely  uncharted  territory  of  detailed  semiotic  analysis.  It  is  to  such  a  domain  
that  I  will  now  turn.  
 
 
4.  Moving  forward:  corporeality,  materiality,  affect  
 

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Oxford  University  Press.  

We  saw  in  Section  2.3  that  in  recent  years  Butler  has  increasingly  moved  away  
from  a  focus  on  gender  and  sexuality  and  become  more  interested  in  the  way  in  
which  bodies  can  speak  politically  through  moments  of  movement  and  stasis  in  
the  urban  environment.  To  this  we  added  that  such  embodied  semiosis  
encapsulates  the  nexus  of  propositional  and  non-­‐propositional  content,  of  
rationality  and  emotion.  In  order  to  theorize  such  complexity,  it  is  useful  to  bring  
Butler’s  ideas  about  the  politics  of  the  body  in  space  in  dialogue  with  Sarah  
Ahmed’s  (2004)  theorization  of  the  cultural  politics  of  emotions.  
 
According  to  Ahmed  (2004),  that  emotions  should  be  taken  into  consideration  
less  for  their  ontological  status  than  for  their  performative  ability  to  “do  things,  
[…]  align  individuals  with  communities—or  bodily  space  with  social  space—
[and]  mediate  the  relationship  between  the  psychic  and  the  social,  and  between  
the  individual  and  the  collective”  (Ahmed  2004:  119).  According  to  such  a  view,  
emotions  are  not  states  lodged  somewhere  in  people’s  minds  or  body,  but  are  
social  forces  that  are  produced,  circulate,  and  ignite  social  action  (see  also  Lemke  
2007).  Influenced  by  these  ideas  about  affect  as  movement,  Sally  Munt  goes  not  
suggest  that  “emotions  are  produced  by  attachments,  they  are  effects,  they  also  
make  us  seek  attachments,  and  refuse  attachments”  (2008,  12).  In  other  words,  
emotions  are  like  a  social  glue  that  “work[s]  by  sticking  figures  together  
(adherence),  a  sticking  that  creates  the  very  effect  of  a  collective  (coherence)”  
(Ahmed  2004:  119).  This  stickiness  does  not  necessarily  need  to  be  something  
negative  as  in  the  case  of  the  relationship  between  fear,  hate,  asylum  seekers  and  
international  terrorists  analyzed  by  Ahmed  (2004),  but  can  be  more  ambivalent,  
“incorporat[ing]  some  latent,  positive  effects”  (Munt  2008:  4).  Such  is  the  case  
with  shame,  which  “has  political  potential  as  it  can  provoke  a  separation  between  
the  social  convention  demarcated  within  hegemonic  ideals,  enabling  a  re-­‐
inscription  of  social  intelligibility”  (Munt  2008:  4).    
 
These  theorizations  are  helpful  to  dislodge  emotions  from  an  invisible  cognitive  
inside,  highlighting  instead  its  palpable  social  manifestation  and  circulation;  but  
the  metaphor  of  movement  might  inadvertently  mystify  emotion  as  “untethered,  
a  kind  of  mysterious  social  actor  in  itself,  a  force  which  arises  from  its  
circulation,  attaching  and  detaching  signs  and  objects  and  subjects.  […]  Affect  […]  
seems  to  swirl,  move,  and  ‘land’  like  a  plastic  bag  blowing  in  the  wind.”  
(Wetherell  2015:  159).  In  order  not  to  throw  Ahmed’s  emotional  baby  with  the  
proverbial  bathwash,  Wetherell  suggests  re-­‐focusing  on  “affective  practices”  
suggesting  that  “[r]ather  than  affect  per  se  on  a  pedestal,  as  the  topic,  we  can  
become  interested  in  a  multi-­‐modal  situated  event,  in  a  consequential  set  of  
sequences  in  social,  cultural  and  institutional  life,  and  make  connections  between  
the  emotional  performances  and  other  ordering  and  organizing  constituents.”  
(Wetherell  2015:  159).    
 
How  affect  is  produced  through  multi-­‐semiotic  practices  is  what  I  am  going  to  
analyze  in  the  remainder  of  this  section,  focussing  on  a  die-­‐in  protest  in  the  
context  of  the  rather  controversial  Tel  Aviv  Pride.  For  contextual  purposes,  it  is  
important  to  mention  that  Israel  has  recently  marketed  itself  internationally  as  a  
gay  friendly  tourist  destination.  Also  known  as  ‘pinkwashing’,  such  a  branding  
strategy  works  by  roping  sexual  diversity  into  nation-­‐state  discourses  in  such  a  

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Oxford  University  Press.  

way  that  Israel  presents  itself  to  the  rest  of  the  world  as  a  beacon  of  sexual  
liberalism  in  the  Middle  East.  In  such  a  way,  Israel  seeks  to  obscure  or  even  erase  
its  oppressive  and  neo-­‐colonial  politics  against  Palestinians.  This  project  of  
nation  branding  is  underpinned  by  strong  capitalist  imperatives  in  that  the  
marketing  of  a  ‘gay  friendly’  Israel  ultimately  aims  at  attracting  a  large  number  of  
‘pink’  consumers  from  around  the  world.  One  of  the  most  patent  manifestations  
of  this  nationalist/consumerist  project  is  Tel  Aviv  Pride,  an  event  organized  and  
funded  by  the  local  municipality,  which,  according  to  Israeli  media,  attracted  
over  20,000  foreign  tourists  for  its  20th  anniversary  in  2013.    
 
Academic  and  activist  work  on  Israeli  ‘pinkwashing’  and  homonationalism  has  
unveiled  the  double  binds  arising  when  sexual  minorities  “date  the  state”  
(Franke  2012),  receive  recognition  and  are  thereby  included  into  nationalist  
agendas.  However,  because  of  the  privileging  of  state,  media  and  corporate  
discourses  as  objects  of  analysis,  such  body  of  literature  has  produced  a  grand-­‐
narrative  of  pinkwashing  as  an  all-­‐encompassing  and  fairly  unchallenged  project  
within  Israel,  thus  failing  to  account  for  those  small,  but  nonetheless  important,  
moments  of  ‘queer’  puncture  and  resistance  at  the  grassroots,  such  as  the  die-­‐in  
protest  performed  by  the  queer  anarchist  group  Mashpritzot  (lit.  ‘women  who  
spray’,  which  also  has  the  sexual  connotation  of  ‘ejaculate’)  during  Tel  Aviv  Pride  
parade  in  2013.  
 

 
Picture  1  
 

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To  appear  in  Kira  Hall  and  Rusty  Barrett  (eds)  The  Oxford  Handbook  of  Language  and  Sexuality.  Oxford:  
Oxford  University  Press.  

 
Picture  2  
 
Both  pictures  are  frozen  moments  that  badly  capture  the  complex  dynamics  of  
this  protest.  What  is  important  for  the  purpose  of  this  chapter  though  is  how  
bodies,  together  with  signs,  props  and  the  materiality  of  the  urban  environment,  
constitute  a  complex  multi-­‐semiotic  assemblage  that  not  only  conveys  certain  
propositional  messages,  but  also  performatively  bring  into  being  and  contest  
powerful  feelings.      
 
Such  affective  work  is  perhaps  most  evident  in  Picture  1,  in  which  the  sign  “Here  
lie  the  victims  of  the  communities  priorities”  functions  as  a  caption  for  the  carpet  
of  bodies  of  activists,  who  have  just  pretended  to  fall  dead  on  a  large  rainbow  
flag.  Obviously,  the  colour  pink  plays  an  important  meaning-­‐making  function  
here  in  signifying  pinkwashing  and  its  problems.  What  is  noteworthy  is  how  the  
members  of  Mashpritzot  strategically  use  their  own  corporeality  as  an  
affordance  through  which  to  convey  the  very  material  consequences  of  
pinkwashing,  a  form  of  politics  that  advantage  some  people  but  kills  others,  as  
Mashpritzot  embodies  it.  The  multi-­‐semiotic  aggregate  of  the  placard,  the  bodies  
and  the  rainbow  flag  –  the  symbol  par  excellence  of  lesbian  and  gay  communities  
all  over  the  world  –  is  also  an  act  geared  to  unsettling  the  affective  glue  that  
binds  the  parade  together,  namely,  the  happiness  and  sexual  pride  of  the  
bystanders.    
 
On  a  linguistic  level,  it  is  notable  how  all  the  slogans  but  one  are  in  Hebrew,  
collectively  stating:    
 
• A  quarter  of  bisexual  women  suffer  from  ill  health.  
• Sex  workers  are  part  of  MY  community!  [“MY”  is  partly  covered  in  this  
picture]  
• LGBT  youth  commits  suicide  4  times  more  frequently    ["4  times"  is  
hidden  in  this  specific  picture]  
• 590,000  shekels  per  year  spent  on  the  parade  could  be  used  to  fund  5  
housing  shelters  for...    

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To  appear  in  Kira  Hall  and  Rusty  Barrett  (eds)  The  Oxford  Handbook  of  Language  and  Sexuality.  Oxford:  
Oxford  University  Press.  

 
What  is  particularly  interesting  is  not  only  a  foregrounding  of  bisexuality  and  sex  
work,  two  issues  that  are  typically  overlooked  in  mainstream  sexual  identity  
activism  across  may  different  contexts  (see  also  Baker  2008);  but  there  is  also  a  
degree  of  awareness  raising  about  social  issues  that  don’t  lie  at  the  top  of  gay  and  
lesbian  politics  in  Israel,  a  politics,  one  should  add  that,  at  least  in  2013,  seemed  
to  be  more  concerned  with  trying  to  legalize  same-­‐sex  adoptions,  and  same-­‐sex  
marriages  on  Israeli  soil.  Once  again,  these  signs  don’t  simply  convey  a  range  of  
messages  but  the  also  do  important  emotional  work.  How  this  affective  
performativity  works  can  be  illustrated  with  the  help  of  two  signs,  in  Hebrew  
and  English,  respectively:  “590,000  shekels  per  year  spent  on  the  parade  could  
be  used  to  fund  5  housing  shelters  for.”  and  “Dear  tourist,  have  you  checked  out  
the  checkpoints  yet?”    
 
By  questioning  the  financial  priorities  of  the  municipality,  the  activists  of  
Mashpritzot  seek  to  delegitimize  the  funding  of  the  parade;  they  also  question  
the  very  emotional  labor  on  which  the  parade  is  built  –  the  “sticky  feelings”  of  
pride  and  fun  that  glue  people  together  for  the  day,  which  have  been  made  
possible  through  financial  means  which  could  have  been  directed  to  what  
Mashpritzot  sees  a  more  worthy  social  cause.  By  the  same  token,  the  
“interpellation”  of  an  unspecified  tourist  is  less  of  a  dispassionate  request  for  
information  than  a  sarcastic  rhetorical  question  built  on  tourists’  lack  of  
awareness  vis-­‐à-­‐vis  Palestinian  occupation.  Here,  the  aim  is  to  unsettle  tourists’  
emotional  investment  in  the  parade  by  shaming  their  indifference  towards  the  
Israel/Palestine  conflict.  
 
Of  course,  the  very  choice  of  English,  rather  than  Hebrew,  together  with  the  
choice  of  the  tourist  as  addressee  in  voicing  concerns  about  Israel/Palestine  
politics  is  not  completely  uncontroversial.  Indeed,  English  has  the  status  of  a  
second  rather  than  a  foreign  language  in  Israel  (Shohamy  2006).  Hence  English  
could  have  been  chosen  in  order  to  maximize  the  impact  of  the  message  on  pride  
participants.  But  the  choice  of  “tourist”  as  its  main  interlocutor  somehow  limits  
the  scope  of  the  message.  Should  only  tourists  be  reminded  of  the  Israeli  
occupation  of  Palestine?  Isn’t  the  Israel/Palestine  conflict  also  an  issue  that  
Israelis  need  to  take  into  account?    
 
To  conclude,  Mashpritzot  performed  a  modest  anti-­‐hegemonic  moment  of  
spatial,  bodily  and  affective  rupture  in  the  smooth  functioning  of  Tel  Aviv  Pride.  
However,  it  did  so  in  a  way  that  only  partly  unsettled  the  multi-­‐scalar  complexity  
of  political  issues  in  Tel  Aviv.  Whereas  locals  were  shamed  for  privileging  some  
aspects  of  municipal  and  national  gay  and  lesbian  politics  at  the  expense  of  
others,  their  emotional  attachments  to  the  Palestinian  occupation  remained  
unquestioned.  This,  in  turn,  brings  into  question  the  extent  of  the  ‘queerness’  of  
this  protest.    Queen  or  not,  it’s  still  too  early  to  see  whether  these  David-­‐like  acts  
of  resistance  will  ultimately  put  a  dent  in  the  Goliath’s  armor  of  state-­‐sponsored  
Israeli  homonationalism.  
 
 
Yours  queerly    

  14  
To  appear  in  Kira  Hall  and  Rusty  Barrett  (eds)  The  Oxford  Handbook  of  Language  and  Sexuality.  Oxford:  
Oxford  University  Press.  

 
A  conclusion  is  in  many  ways  performative  insofar  as  it  brings  into  being  some  
form  of  closure  on  the  discussion  presented  in  the  previous  pages.  Like  Derrida’s  
signature,  the  force  of  a  conclusion  is  not  so  much  the  result  of  the  cultural  and  
symbolic  capital  of  the  author’s  expertise,  but  lies  in  it  being  part  of  a  series  of  
repetitions  in  academic  writing  that  require  a  chapter  to  have  a  summation.  So,  I  
embrace  a  queer  stance  that  “rejects  a  minoritizing  logic  of  toleration  or  simple  
political  interest  representation  in  favor  of  a  more  thorough  resistance  to  
regimes  of  the  normal”  (Warner  1993:  xxvi).  And,  in  this  spirit,  I  want  to  finish  it  
with  a  queer  farewell  salutation…but  hold  on  a  second… even  though  I  do  not  
want  to  end  the  chapter  in  a  traditional  way,  I  still  have  to  put  a  stop  somewhere  
because  I  am  constrained  by  the  guidelines  provided  by  the  editors  and  
publisher  of  the  Handbook.  So,  is  an  unusual  close  necessarily  anti-­‐normative,  
although  the  very  notion  of  an  end  remains  unchallenged?    

This  self-­‐referential  discursive  move  is  the  starting  point  for  a  broader  reflection  
on  what  counts  as  (anti-­‐)normative  with  regard  to  gender  and  sexuality.  For  this  
purpose,  let’s  go  back  to  Alexandra  where  we  left  Sipho  and  Bongani  in  the  
middle  of  their  wedding  ceremony.  Whilst  for  Austin  (heterosexual)  weddings  
were  a  rich  source  for  one  of  the  most  prototypical  forms  of  performatives,  they  
ended  up  upsetting  nearly  all  the  most  influential  queer  theorists,  including  Eve  
Kosofsky  Sedwick  who  argues  that    

[t]he  marriage  example,  self-­‐evidently,  will  strike  a  queer  reader  at  some  
more  oblique  angle  or  angles.  Persons  who  self-­‐identify  as  queer  will  be  
those  whose  subjectivity  is  lodged  in  refusals  or  deflections  of  (or  by)  the  
logic  of  the  heterosexual  supplement;  in  far  less  simple  associations  
attaching  to  state  authority  and  religious  sanction.  (2003:  71)    

This  means  that  all  weddings  –  both  hetero  and  homo  –  are  ultimately  normative  
and  they  constitute  the  benchmark  against  which  to  judge  what  is  queer  and  
what  isn’t.  So,  according  to  this  logic,  whilst  the  protest  performed  by  
Mashpritzot  was  a  queer  act  that  questioned  the  fixation  with  same-­‐sex  
marriages  in  Tel  Aviv  mainstream  gay  and  lesbian  agenda,  Sipho  and  Bongani’s  
choice  bars  them  from  any  ‘queer’  domain.  Indeed  same-­‐sex  weddings  are  a  
homosexual  repetition  of  a  typically  heterosexual  institution.  However,  to  
discard  a  priori  the  performativity  of  same-­‐sex  wedding  as  an  ‘unqueer’  gesture  
of  homonormativity  (Duggan  2003)  is  to  pay  selective  attention  to  the  nuances  of  
iterable  performances,  which,  as  Butler  reminds  us,  if  they  “are  not  immediately  
or  obviously  subversive,  it  may  be  that  it  is  rather  in  the  reformulation  of  kinship  
[…]  that  the  appropriation  and  redeployment  of  the  categories  of  dominant  
culture  enable  the  formation  of  kinship  relations  that  function  quite  supportively  
as  oppositional  discourse”  (Butler  1993:  24-­‐241).    

I’m  not  saying  that  we  should  all  work  for  the  marriage  factory,  but  I’d  like  to  
caution  against  some  hegemonic  tendencies  in  ‘queer’  readings  of  performativity  
theory,  which  reveal  an  underlying  anti-­‐normative  mantra  of  queer  studies.  As  
Robyn  Wiegman  has  recently  argued,  

  15  
To  appear  in  Kira  Hall  and  Rusty  Barrett  (eds)  The  Oxford  Handbook  of  Language  and  Sexuality.  Oxford:  
Oxford  University  Press.  

Through  its  own  self-­‐animating  antinormative  intentions,  then,  Queer  

Studies  gets  to  have  its  cake  and  eat  it  too:  it  can  function  as  an  organizing  
referent  for  queer  theory  while  simultaneously  forging  an  
interdisciplinary  critique  of  it;  it  can  promise  to  fulfill  queer  theory’s  anti-­‐
identitarian  commitments  while  proliferating  identity  commitments  of  its  
own;  it  can  refuse  institutionality  while  participating  in  and  generating  its  
own  institutionalized  forms.    (Wiegman  2012:  332)  

 
Same-­‐sex  unions  might  not  be  as  normatively  problematic  per  se,  as  queer  
theorists  nearly  unanimously  want  to  see  them.  What  is  problematic  is  the  
“syntax  of  hegemony”  (Billig  1995)  through  which  family  matters  seem  to  have  
monopolized  the  agenda  of  gay  and  lesbian  politics  in  many  contexts,  obscuring  
or  erasing  other  pressing  issues  for  gender  and  sexual  non-­‐normative  
constituencies.  As  sociocultural  linguists,  we  should  be  wary  of  the  “anti-­‐
normative”  performativity  of  queer  studies,  and  continue  offering  a  fine-­‐grained  
mapping  of  the  complex  interplay  of  norms,  and  forms  of  resistance  to  them,  in  
specific  domains  of  practice.    
 
 
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