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JL Austin famously distinguished between "performative" and "constative" utterances, the former of which perform the action to which they refer and the latter of which make assertions that can be judged as true or false. Modern philosophy has treated the constative as the norm, and performatives, if considered at all, as bastards.
Austin suggests inverting the hierarchy. It is possible to make a performative utterance without explicitly stating the action you are doing: "I promise to pay you" is no different from "I will pay you." Both have the same illocutionary force. That being the case, it is possible to conceive the constative "The bench is wet" as a performative "I affirm that the bench is wet." The supplement of the performative, the extra sort of speech that is a performative, is seen as the true original; the hierarchy of constative and performative is disturbed and overturned. JL Austin a deconstructionist: Who knew?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 27, 2006 at 05:40 PM
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