Shattered Back Wall
Performative Utterance of A Doll's House
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4552145 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Branislav Jakovljevic (0000-0003-2393-6648, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 431-448 |
| Publication date | 2002-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theatre Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0192-2882 • E-ISSN: 1086-332X |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/tj.2002.0085 |
| OpenAlex | W2075770145 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 7 |
In the last decades of the twentieth century, J. L. Austin's performative speech act theory emerged as one of the most passionately contested philosophical ideas. 1 There are many reasons for this. One of the most significant is that a performative speech act reintroduces the referent into linguistics: it brings language, so to speak, back to the body and to the stormy question of identity. The general performative speech act theory oversteps the disciplinary boundaries of analytical philosophy and enters the domains of poststructuralist theory, feminist theory, and, of course, performance theory, to name some. This is, in part, due to the brilliant clarity and simplicity of Austin's idea to "isolate" utterances "in which by saying something or in saying something we are doing something." 2 The other source of what seems to be the unending actuality of Austin's theory is the way in which, not so brilliantly, he excludes certain performative utterances: "a performative utterance will, for example, be in a peculiar way hollow or void if said by an actor or spoken in a soliloquy . . . Language in such circumstances is in a special way—intelligibly—used not seriously, but in ways parasitic upon its normal use—ways which fall under etiolations of language" (22, italics in the original). Paradoxically, this attempt to exclude literature from the theory of performative speech acts attracts literary critics, and rightfully so; the performative speech act theory not only introduces "plain speech" to philosophy but also establishes powerful connections between literature and its surroundings, between writer and reader, or writer and critic. That is, until we hit upon Austin's [End Page 431] emphatic exclusion of literary performatives from his theory. This adamant rejection of artistic uses of language points precisely toward the theatricality deeply imbedded in Austin's performative speech act theory. 3
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literary criticism · Literary theory · Literature · Materiality (auditing · Metaphysics · Performative utterance · Performativity · Philosophy of language · Referent · Sociology · Utterance · Philosophy · Theatre and Performance Studies
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,13 |
| Citation span | 2003 - 2014 (12) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |