Practising Performativity

Performativity is a theory of how reality comes into being. It is also a deconstructive practice. This article addresses the question of performativity as an emergent mode of working in social and cultural research. It does so by way of exploring a research project focusing on prostitution in a mult...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European Journal of Women's Studies
Main Author: Markussen, Turid
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publications 2005
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350506805054273
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1350506805054273
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Summary:Performativity is a theory of how reality comes into being. It is also a deconstructive practice. This article addresses the question of performativity as an emergent mode of working in social and cultural research. It does so by way of exploring a research project focusing on prostitution in a multiethnic context in north Norway, carried out by two researchers doing collaborative work on men, sexuality and knowledge. The author’s interest is in exploring performativity as a mode of engaging, aimed at achieving transformations in the terms through which the real is constituted. The author argues that practising performativity requires an openness within the research process to the possibility that researchers and their practices themselves must alter. Such transformative modes of relating seem to be called for in order to develop effective ways of engaging with the present.