Race as a Kind of Speech Act

8/16/2019 Race as a Kind of Speech Act

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/race-as-a-kind-of-speech-act 1/24

00

OSU

ILLiad TN#: 675676

' Illlll

llll

lllll lllll

lllll

lllll lll llll

Request Date: 20100319

·

Q

V )

·-

Borrower:

U U

Lender String: *OSU,IXA,IXA,UPM,UPM

Patron:

Inda,

Jonathan Xavier

Borrower's ILLiad

TN:

1041068

ILL Number: 63970224

Call : HM101 .C8923

Location:

THO Stacks 7

.....

c

....

·

'

Q

>

·

::::>

Q

.....

ta

.....

V )

0

·

i=

0

Journal Title: Cultural studies.

Volume: 5 Issue:

MonthNear: , 2000

Pages: 85-107

Article Author:

Art icle Title: Louis F Miron

and

Jonathan Xavier

Inda;

Race

as

a

Kind

of Speech Act

OCLC Number: 17011286

Notes: Borrowing Notes; 51-0788 uiu BACKUP

Maxcost: $35.00IFM

ILLiad Odyssey : 130.126.32.10

Email: [email protected]

Ariel: libarlirc01.library.uiuc.edu OR

libarlirc02.libra

Library:

University of Illinois

128 Library

Please send resend requests to

[email protected]

or

call 614-292-6211.

Notice: This material may be protected

by

Copyrigh t Law (Title

17

U.S.C.).

.



RACE

AS

A

KIND OF

SPEECH ACT

Louis F. Miron and Jonathan Xavier

Inda

NATURALIZING DIFFERENCE

In surveying the history

of

racial representation in western culture, Stuart Hall

l

997b) finds that one

of

the more ubiquitous practices used to mark racial differ

ence has been to naturalize the racialized other.

It

has been typical for racialized

regimes

of

representation to reduce the cultures

of

black people to Nature, or to

naturalize difference. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries according to

Hall, popular representations

of

everyday life under slavery tended to cluster

around two principal themes: First was the subordinate status and 'innate lazi

ness' ofblacks- naturally born to, and fitted only for, servitude but, at the same

time, stubbornly unwilling to labour in ways appropriate to their nature and prof

itable for their masters. Second was their innate 'primitivism,' simplicity, and

lack

of

culture, which made them genetically incapable

of

'civilized' refine

ments l 997b,

p.

244). The logic behind these naturalizing practices is rather

simple.

If

the differences between black and white people are 'cultural,' then

they are open to modification and change. But if they are 'natural' a s the slave

holders believed-then they are beyond history, permanent and fixed p. 245).

Naturalization is thus a representational scheme calculated to fix difference for

ever, to secure discursive closure.

It

is a practice designed to render the order

of

Cultural Studies: A Research Annual, Volume 5, pages 85-107.

Copyright© 2 by JAi Press Inc.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

ISBN: 0 7623 0640 8

85



86

LOUIS F MIRON

nd

JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

things natural so natural that no one questions the hierarchical relationships

between different racialized subjects.

f

we look at contemporary modes

of

racial representation we find that the

practice

of

naturalizing difference is still rather common. In 1994 for example

Richard

J

Herrnstein and Charles Murray published a highly popular book

The

Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

which focused on

among other things the intellectual inferiority

of

certain racialized subjects pri-

marily blacks. Their main claim was that America was suffering from a myriad of

social problems

1

all

of

which could be very strongly correlated with low intelli-

gence. Moreover no level

of

social engineering could remedy this situation given

that intelligence which Herrnstein and Murray believed could be accurately mea-

sured using IQ tests was determined significantly by genetics. The implication is

that blacks and other racialized subjects all of whom are associated with these

social problems in general are naturally not intelligent.

2

This means that no mat-

ter how much money one pours into education or welfare or any other social pro-

grams racialized subjects such as African Americans are just not capable

of

moving beyond their marginal social existence. They are simply and naturally not

bright enough to do so. The end result

of

such reasoning is that it naturalizes and

justifies social inequality foreclosing the possibility that social intervention

might remedy the ills that afflict African Americans or any other racially marginal

subjects. All

of

this then amounts to the familiar practice

of

naturalizing differ-

ence of differentiating human subjects into a number of natural and distinct races

based on their typical phenomenal characteristics and the consignment

of

some

groups

as

inferior in this case on the basis

of

putative intelligence. Indeed it

amounts to the familiar practice

of

locating difference in the presocial realm of

locating difference in nature

as

part

of

nature and hence rendering it immutable.

Given the continued saliency

of

such naturalizing practices

of

practices

designed to fix difference until the end

of

time it becomes imperative to once

again put forth arguments which posit that race is not the effect of biological

truths but a historically contingent socially constructed category

of

knowledge.

This

is

precisely what we intend to do in this essay. We will argue that race simply

does not exist

as

a biological fact proposing instead that we think

of

race as a

kind of speech act as a performative of sorts. In speech act theory the performa-

tive refers to those speech acts that brings into being or enact that which they

name. t is that aspect of discourse that in the act of uttering also performs that to

which it refers. To think

of

race in these terms draws our attention to language and

its effects to how it organizes our encounter with the world. More specifically it

suggests that although race may have a foundation in biology since it carves out

populations on the basis of

phenomenal characteristics it is really just a name

albeit a very powerful one that retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the

groupings to which it refers and that it identifies in its own name. Race does not

refer to a pregiven subject. Rather it works performatively to constitute the sub-

ject

itself and only acquires a naturalized effect through repeated or reiterative



Race

as

a ind of Speech ct 87

naming

of

or reference to that subject. This means that since race does not refer to

a preconstituted, natural entity, since the process

of

naming subjects actually

amounts to the very act

of

their constitution, then

'race'

is not an effect

of

bio

logical truths, but is one

of

the ways that hegemonic social fictions are produced

and maintained as 'natural' facts about the world and its inhabitants (Pellegrini

1997, p. 98). t also means that since race is a social fiction, only a sedimented

effect of reiterative practices, it must be susceptible to being rewritten, and that

systems of racial domination are not systemic totalities destined to keep racialized

subjects

in

positions

of

subordination. The meaning

of

race, and hence the consti

tution

of

racial subjects, is fundamentally unstable and open to all sorts

of

resig

nifications.

We propose to put forth what might be called a performative notion of race, to

elaborate on how race is constituted performatively. To do so, we will follow a

theoretical itinerary, one might say a detour, that begins with

J.

L. Austin (1975),

who first brought us the notion

of

performativity, weaves its way through Jacques

Derrida (1988) and Michel Foucault (1979, 1980), and ends up with Judith Butler

(1993a, 1993b), who, through the work

of

these others, developed the concept

of

gender performativity. Basically, we will advance a notion

of

racial performativ

ity akin to Butler's theory of the performative constitution of gender. We begin

our excursion with J. L. Austin.

3

AUSTIN PEFORMATIVE LANGUAGE

One

of

the first people to use the term performative in a substantive manner was

the British philosopher oflanguage J. L. Austin. In

How to Do Things with Words

( 1975), Austin argues that for most

of

the history

of

philosophy it has been com

mon to assume that the business

of

a 'statement' can only be to 'describe' some

state of affairs, or to 'state some fact', which it must do either truly or falsely

p.

1).

In other words, the business

of

sentences, their only business

in

fact has

been to describe, to set forth statements

of

fact, to

report-either

truly or

falsely

on

a given state

of

affairs. All other

utterances-those

which failed to describe the

state

of

the world, those which were not subject to the truth/falsity

criteria-have

been treated as marginal, unimportant, merely as pseudo- or failed statements.

Austin challenges this marginalization, suggesting that while the attribute of truth

and falsehood is essential to those utterances, labeled constatives, that intend to

record or impart straightforward information about the facts (e.g., the cat is on

the mat ), it

is

not the only thing at stake in language. For the so caJled pseudo

statements, rather than setting out to describe the world and failing at it, belong to

a different category

of

utterances altogether-a category named performative, to

which the truth/falsity criterion is not applicable since its business is not to

describe or to inform but to perform the actions to which they refer, to perform an

act through the very process

of

enunciation. For instance,

if

one utters I do

in



88

LOUIS F. MIRON and JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

the course

of

a wedding ceremony, one is not reporting on a marriage or describ

ing what one is doing, one is actually indulging in it. Similarly, ifI say, I promise

to pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today, I am not describing what I am doing

but accomplishing the act

of

promising. Thus,

if

to speak is to act,

if

to utter is to

perform, then these performative utterances cannot be subject to the truth/falsity

criterion so dear to constative language. They can only be successful or unsuc

cessful or, as Austin prefers, felicitous or infelicitous. In other words, the perfor

mative can only be judged on the basis

of

the success or failure

of

the act to which

it refers. One can only judge the utterance I do (said in the course

of

a marriage

ceremony) on the basis of its success or failure in performing the act of marrying.

The distinction between constative utterances, which describe truly or falsely a

state

of

affairs, and performative utterances, which perform successfully or

unsuccessfully the acts to which they refer, is significant because it shows that

language performs actions rather than simply describe them.

t

turns out, how

ever, that this distinction is not really all that stable because, when Austin tries to

determine the criteria for identifying the performative and its various forms, he

realizes that the constative is really just a special case of the performative. One of

the important features

of

the performative, according to Austin,

is

the possibility

of

deleting the explicit performative verb, so that an utterance such as the cat is

on the mat, which is the classic example

of

the constative utterance, can be

viewed as ellipses

of

performative I hereby affirm that the cat is on the mat. And

once

we

admit to the existence

of

these implicit performatives from which the

explicit performative verb has been deleted, it becomes incredibly difficult to find

a sentence that would not fit into this grouping. So constative statements, too, per

form

actions-actions of

stating, describing, and so on. We are thus faced with an

interesting tum

of

events. We began from a philosophical situation where constat

ive statements were the norm of language and any other utterances were treated as

failed statements, and ended up with almost the exact opposite, a situation in

which the constative

is

just a special (and not a failed) case

of

the

performative

a performative from which the explicit performative verb has been excised.

Given this broadened concept

of

the performative, Austin sets out to discover

the conventions that make it possible for any speech act to be performed. He

hopes to reveal these general rules by looking at and classifying types

of

cases

in

which something go s wrong and the act-marrying betting, bequeathing, chris

tening, or what not-is therefore at least to some extent a failure (Austin 1975,

p.

14

). However, before classifying these infelicities, he states schematically

some

of

the necessary, if not sufficient, conditions for the smooth or happy func

tioning

of

a performative.

(A.

I) There must exist an accepted conventional pro

cedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering

of

certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances, and further, (A.2) the

particular persons and circumstances in a case must be appropriate for the invoca

tion of the particular procedure invoked. B .1) The procedure must be executed by

all participants both correctly and (B.2) completely (pp. 14-15). f any

of

these



Race

as

a ind of Speech ct

89

rules were broken, a possibility that always exists, then our performative utterance

would be unhappy (infelicitous); our utterance would fail to bring about the event

that it designates. For example, if we trespass against rules A or

B- that

is if we,

say, utter the formula incorrectly, or if, say, we are not

in

a position to do the act

because we are, say, married already, or it is the purser and not the captain who is

conducting the ceremony, then the act in question, e.g. marrying, is not success

fully performed at all, does not come off, is not achieved (pp. 15-16). Austin

goes

on

to develop a scheme

of

the various infelicities that affect performative

utterances, which will not concern us here, but before doing

so

he takes a signifi

cant

pause-significant

for our

purposes-to

make some general remarks about

these infelicities.

In a fascinating move, one reminiscent

of

the history

of

philosophy-recall that

it was customary for philosophers to exclude utterances

to

which the attribute

of

truth and falsehood was not

applicable-Austin

proposes to exclude from his the

ory

of

speech acts nonserious uses

of

language:

as utterances our performatives are also heir to certain other kinds

of

ill which infect all utter

ances. And these likewise, though again they might be brought into a more general account,

we

are deliberately at present excluding. I mean, for example, the following: a performative utter

ance will, for example, 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. This applies in a similar manner to any and

every

utterance-a

sea-change in special circumstances. Language in such circumstances is in

special ways-intelligibly-used not seriously, but in ways

parasitic

upon its normal u -

ways which fall under the doctrine

of

the

etiolations of

language. All this we are

excluding

from consideration. Our performative utterances, felicitous or not, are

to

be understood as

issued in ordinary circumstances (pp. 21-22).

So where once philosophy used to exclude utterances that were not true or false,

now it seems that Austin is excluding nonserious uses

of

language because they

are parasitical, completely dependent on ordinary language. But can Austin

so

easily exclude these parasites, especially since he recognizes that the nonserious

use of language is a possibility available to every utterance. ...

As

utterances our

performatives are also heir to certain other kinds

of ll

which infect all utterances

p. 21). Indeed, if the parasite infects all utterances, then by excluding the parasite

and basing one's theory

of

language

on

ordinary uses

of

language, may one not be

neglecting what could tum out to be central to the working

of

language as such?

Moreover, since Austin himself opposed the philosophical exclusion

of

those

utterances, the pseudo-statements, which allowed him to determine that constat

ives were only a special case

of

the performative, should we not be wary

of

Aus

tin's similar exclusions as well?

f

we answer yes to this question then our next

job is to inquire into the status of this parasitism.

Is

nonserious speech logically

dependent on the possibility

of

serious uses

of

speech? Or might the parasite be

the condition of possibility

of

the speech act in general?



90 LOUIS F. MIRON and JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

To reiterate, Austin argues that for a speech act to be a speech act it has to take

place. t can only take place, in ordinary language. For example, in order for me

to perform the act of getting married, it has to take place in "real" life, in front of

a judge empowered to perform weddings, and not as part

of

something like a play.

Moreover, he suggests that such forms of pretended speech like saying "I do" in a

play are logically dependent on the nonpretended speech act thus making the pre

tended case parasitical on the nonpretended one. This certainly seems to make

sense. Could an actor pretend to get married in a play if it were not possible to get

married in real life? Indeed, it would appear that the act (not) performed by saying

"I do" in a play is an imitation of the one performed by uttering these words in

front of a judge. The pretended speech act is an empty repetition of the formula

used to perform the act of marriage.

Given such derivativeness, given that nonserious uses

of

language are merely

empty repetitions, it is no wonder that Austin deliberately excludes them, these

parasites, from his theory of speech acts. No wonder indeed But, of course, for

the reasons suggested in the previous paragraph-including Austin's own opposi

tion to and overturning of earlier philosophical exclusions-we do have to won

der. We do have to

be

wary about the status of such an exclusion. t could tum out

that the logic of dependency actually works in reverse. The serious speech act

might be dependent on the nonserious use of language. The excluded parasite

might not be so excludable after all.

In

fact, Jacques Derrida suggests as much,

and even more, in his careful reading of Austin, when

he

asks: isn't it true that

what Austin excludes as anomaly, exception, 'nonserious'

cit tion

(on stage, in a

poem, or a soliloquy) is the determined modification of a general citationality

or rather, a general iterability-without which there would not even be a 'success

ful' performative?" (Derrida l 988, p. 17). In other words, Derrida suggests that

what Austin

excludes-the

nonserious, the parasite-is the condition of possibil

ity of the speech act as such. t would appear that he has indeed reversed the rela

tion of dependency between serious and nonserious uses of language, proposing

that the former is actually dependent on the latter. But there is much more going

on here because Derrida, rather than simply reversing the opposition between

serious/nonserious, actually displaces the entire system.

4

t is grounded not in the

valorization of the nonserious, but in a general citationality or iterability which,

no

longer only the property of the nonserious, makes possible both the serious and

nonserious uses of language. Derrida has,

in

other words, through a double ges

ture, a double writing, "put into practice a revers l of the classical opposition nd

a general displacement of the system" p. 2

I).

DERRIDA ITERABILITY

ND

CITATIONALITY

Perhaps we moved a bit too fast. Permit us to slow down, take a step back, and

proceed by elucidating what Derrida might mean by such clearly central terms as



Race as a ind of Speech ct

91

citation, citationality, and iterability. Only then will we be able to get a clearer

picture of Derrida's double gesture, his double science, and move on to our task

of formulating a performative notion of race. First of all, we have to remember

that Austin calls pretended speech acts parasitic because they are logically depen-

dent on nonpretended utterances because they are empty repetitions, imitations or

copies

of

these nonpretended forms. Derrida suggests, implicitly, that since these

pretended utterances are copies ofnonpretended speech acts, they can also be seen

as citations, as quotations,

of

these serious uses

of

language. For instance, the for-

mula I do (uttered during a wedding ceremony

in

a play) is a citation

of

the

same utterance originally said

in

a real life situation involving a real judge, and a

real bride and groom. Thus, if pretended uses of languages are parasitic because

they are copies, then as citations they are also parasitic, derivative. And secondly,

we

also have to remember that Austin tells

us

that the possibility

of

the performa-

tive depends on conventional procedures,

on

repeatable formulas. There must

exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect,

that procedure to include the uttering

of

certain words by certain persons

in

cer-

tain circumstances (Austin 1975,

p

14). In other words,

in

order for someone to

say I do at a wedding ceremony and count as a speech act, the utterance must

be

recognizable as the repetition of a conventional formula; that is, it must conform

to

a model and be recognized as a repetition. Derrida reminds

us of

this condition

of possibility

of

the performative when he asks: Could a performative utterance

succeed if its formulation did not repeat a 'coded' or iterable utterance, or in other

words, if the formula I pronounce

in

order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a

marriage were not identifiable as

conforming

with

an

iterable model, if it were not

then identifiable

in

some way

as

a 'citation'? (Derrida 1988,

p

18). But

of

course

this is no simple reminder, no simple repetition of Austin. What Derrida is actu-

ally suggesting is that if the speech act, in order to be possible, must repeat a

coded utterance, then it must be recognizable as a citation, a repetition in quota-

tion marks as it were. And we know from our first we have to remember that for

Austin the derivativeness

of

pretended speech acts has to do with their status

as

citations. This is not to say that a citation on the stage is

of

the same sort as ones

used in order to open a meeting or launch a ship. However, it is to say that cita-

tionality seems to be the condition

of

possibility

of

both serious and nonserious

uses

of

language.

Now

we

can return to our first quotation of Derrida, which captures

in

a nutshell

his reading

of

Austin, his reversal

of

serious/nonserious opposition and the gen-

eral displacement

of

the system. Isn't it true that what Austin excludes

as

anom-

aly, exception, 'nonserious,' citation (on stage, in a poem, or a soliloquy) is the

determined modification

of

a general

citationality-or

rather, a general iterabil-

ity-without

which there would not even be a 'successful' performative? (Derr-

ida 1988, p. 17). We know now that the nonserious use

of

language

is

a citation

because it repeats a nonpretended speech act and that because it is a citation it is

considered parasitical by Austin. We also know that the speech act

is

a citation



92

LOUIS F MIRON and JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

because it repeats a conventional formula. Thus, since both serious and nonseri

ous uses

of

language are citations, it seems that a general citationality is the con

dition

of

possibility

of

both. In other words, what Derrida has done is, first,

reversed the opposition between serious and non-serious use

of

language, demon

strating that the former is dependent

on

the latter because the qualities attributed

to pretended speech,

in

this case citationality, are actually a condition of the per

formative, of the speech act as such; and secondly, displaced the system because

rather than belonging to separate orders, as Austin would suggest, the serious and

nonserious speech are both made possible by a general citationality or iterability.

And, of course, this citationality is not of the same sort as in a theatrical play, a

philosophical reference, or the recitation

of

a poem (Derrida 1988,

p

18).

t

is a

citationality without which no utterance, whether performative or otherwise,

could take place. That is to say, an utterance can only take place if it is iterable, if

it can be repeated, quoted or cited in a variety of serious and nonserious contexts.

Thus while there is still a difference between a performative and a pretended

speech act, they are no longer in opposition to each other. Rather, they are differ

ent kinds

of

iteration within a general iterability.

There you have it, then, the double gesture, the double writing that puts into

practice a reversal of the serious-non-serious opposition and a general displace

ment of the system. And with this

we

move closer to a performative theory of the

racial subject, but we still have to make one more move, one that takes us through

Foucault and the subject

of

discourse.

FOUCAULT THE SUBJECT OF DISCOURSE

We

mentioned earlier that the notion

of

performative language draws our atten

tion

to

how language organizes our encounter with the world. Ultimately, this

generates questions about the nature

of

the subject.

5

In its traditional conception,

the subject refers to an individual who is somehow a point

of

origin for larger

historical, social, and even personal events, and who, possessed of valid self

knowledge, is in full charge and control of him/herself. This kind of thinking thus

sees the subject as

an

autonomous and stable entity, as the authentic source of

action and meaning,

of

all that

we

think and speak (Hall l 997a).

t

is our common

sense way

of

thinking We assume that the nature

of

human 'being' is given in

some way that it exists pr or to language simply to label the world

of

its own

experience (Easthope and McGowan 1992,

p

67). This

subject this

rational,

conscious, prelinguistic subject at the center

of knowledge is

often called the

Cartesian subject, named after Rene Descartes, the French philosopher who gave

it its primary formulation back in the seventeenth century; or, alternatively, it

is

referred to as the humanist subject, since it places the human at the center and in

control of the world. Such a conception

of

the subject, although still central to

Western philosophy and political and social organization, has been seriously cri-



ace

as aKind

of Speech

ct

93

tiqued by an alternative formulation that decenters the human subject by problem

atizing the simplistic relationship between language and the subject presumed

by

common sense.

It

replaces human nature with concepts

of

history, society and

culture as determining factors in the construction of individual identity, and desta

bilizes the coherence

of

that identity by making it an

effect

rather than simply an

origin of linguistic practice (Easthope and McGowan 1992, p 7).

In

other words,

the subject is seen

as

made, that is, constituted and regulated by language and its

material supports

in

social institutions and practices.

In

short, language does not

name a subject that preexists it, but actually produces it through naming it.

The French philosopher/historian Michel Foucault (1979, 1980) proposed one

specific formulation of

this decentered subject. His basic claim

is

that discourse,

taken

as

a heterogeneous network

of

texts (languages), disciplines and institu

tions, functions to constitute and regulate objects

of

knowledge. In other words,

the claim

is

that discourse produces knowledge, not the subjects who speak

it

To

be

sure, subjects may be the bearers of certain kinds of knowledges. However,

these are knowledges produced by discourse. The subject is constituted within

discourse; or, to put it another way, discourse itself produces subjects, figures

who incarnate the particular forms

of

knowledge which the discourse produces

(Hall 1997a). Thus,

in

effect, Foucault displaces the subject from its privileged

position in relation to knowledge and meaning.

It

is not the author

of

meaning but

its effect, and as

we

will show below, always an effect

of

power.

Foucault does more than this, more than simply displace the subject from its

privileged position as the source

of

action and meaning. Central to his formula

tion is the belief that knowledge

is

inextricably linked with the workings

of

power. Indeed, he was quite preoccupied with the way knowledge worked

through discourse to regulate the habits and actions of particular subjects. Fou

cault saw knowledge as always inextricably enmeshed

in

relations

of

power

because it was always being applied to the regulation

of

social conduct

in

prac

tice (Hall 1997a,

p

47). So not only is the subject produced within discourse, it

is

also an effect

of

unequal power relations-relations that operate through spe

cific discourses, prescribing and shaping conduct according to certain norms

which set limits on the subject. The subject is positioned within particular dis

courses as an effect

of

power. This is not to suggest, however, that the subject

is

completely determined, that because it is constituted as

an

effect

of

power it is

therefore stripped

of

agency.

As

Judith Butler has noted, if the subject

is

consti

tuted by power, that power does not cease at the moment the subject is consti

tuted, for that subject is never fully constituted, but is subjected and produced

time and again (Butler 1995, p 223). In other words, the discursive constitution

of

the subject is a never ending process, beginning at birth and repeated continu

ously throughout the subject's life. And because it is a never ending process,

because

of

the necessity

of

iterability, the subject can only ever be precariously

constituted, making it is possible for the subject to undermine the forces

of

nor-



94

LOUIS

F.

MIRON and JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

malization, to tum power against itself.

6

This necessity of repetition takes

us

back to the terrain

of

the performative.

BUTLER PERFORMATIVITY

From our discussion

of

Derrida, one will recall that without citationality, without

iterability, no performative could take place. t succeeds "only because that action

echoes prior actions, and accumulates the force o authority through the repetition

or citation o a prior, authoritative set o practices (Butler l 993a, pp. 226-227).

What this suggests, following Judith Butler's (1993a) work on gender performa

tivity, is that the act of subject constitution must not be understood as a singular

act, but rather

as

reiterative practice through which discourse produces the effect

that it names. This act, though, does not so much bring into being what it names,

as produces, through the reiterative power of discourse, the thing that it regulates.

In other words, a discourse gains "authority to bring about what it names through

citing the conventions of authority," so that a norm "takes hold to the extent that

it

is

'cited' as such a norm, but it also derives its power through the citations that

it compels" (l993a,

p. 13 .

What takes place is that through the force

of

such reit

erations the subject that these nonsingular acts name acquires a naturalized

effect-it

becomes sedimented,

as

it were.

In

order to maintain this naturalized

effect, the subject must be continuously interpellated (the process through which

one is hailed as a subject)

in

various times and places. As such, there is no refer

ence to a pure subject which does not itself contribute to the further formation

of

that subject. From this point of view, the utterance It's a girl ," which tradition

ally welcomes a baby into the world, is not so much a constative utterance, a state

ment of fact, as one in a long series of performatives that constitutes the subject

whose arrival they announce and through which the girl is continuously gendered

throughout her lifetime. Indeed, the "girling of the girl" does not end with the

founding act

of

interpellation, but must be reiterated by various authorities and

in

various times and places to reinforce the naturalized gender effect. In short, what

Butler calls performativity is a "matter

of

reiterating or repeating the norms by

which one

is

constituted: it

is

not the radical fabrication of a gendered self.

t

is a

compulsory repetition of prior and subjectivating norms, ones which cannot be

thrown off at will, but 'Nhich work, animate, and constrain the gendered subject"

(1993b,

p.

22).

To suggest that the subject

is

constituted is not to imply, however, that the sub

ject is left without agency, that it

is

completely determined.

t

is

of

course true that

a performative subject acquires a naturalized effect through the reiterative prac

tices through which discourse produces the effects that it names, acquiring this

effect to such

an

extent that it could be said to be hegemonic. Yet, somewhat par

adoxically, the fact that this reiteration is necessary is a sign that the constitution

of a subject is never complete. It is the very same necessity of reiteration, of citing



aceas a Kind of Speech ct 95

previous norms in the constitution

of

the subject, which makes it possible for this

process

of

normalization to be subverted. Indeed, the necessity of reiteration

offers the possibility of reiterating the identity of the subject otherwise, with a dif

ference. In other words, the iterability, the capacity of being cited, which makes it

possible for any subject to acquire a naturalized effect, also makes it impossible

to

ever truly succeed in doing

so

How does this happen exactly? By virtue of this reiteration, gaps and fissures

are opened up as the constitutive instabilities

in

such constructions, as that which

escapes or exceeds the norm, as that which cannot be wholly defined or fixed by

the repetitive labor

of

that norm (Butler 1993a,

p

10). This instability could be

called the deconstituting potentiality in the process

of

reiteration, making the sub

ject the site for the perpetual possibility

of

a certain resignifying process, the site

for the proliferation

of

certain effects that undermine the power

of

normalization.

In other words, while the necessity of reiteration does succeed in producing nor

mative subjects, it also produces the site where the norm

is

called into question

and where it can potentially be rearticulated:

In this sense, disciplinary discourse does not unilaterally constitute a subject ...

or

rather, if it

does, it

simultaneously

constitutes the condition for the subject's de-constitution. What

is

brought into being through the performative effect

of

the interpellating demand

is

much more

that a subject, for the subject created is not for that reason fixed

in

place: it becomes the

occasion for a further making. Indeed, I would add, a subject only remains a subject through a

reiteration

or

rearticulation

of

itself as a subject, and this dependency

of

the subject on repeti

tion for coherence may constitute that subject's incoherence, its incomplete character. This

repetition or, better, iterability thus becomes the nonplace of subversion, the possibility of a

reembodying

of

the subjectivating norm that can redirect its normativity (Butler 1997,

p

99)

The upshot is that the reiterative process, the process

of

infinite repeatability

through which a subject is produced, opens up that subject to redeployment, to

being constituted otherwise. Thus, to think

of

the subject through performativity,

calls our attention to those constitutive instabilities that contest the naturalizing

effects

of

discourse.

R CE AS A KIN OF SPEECH CT

What does all this have to do with the construction

of

racial subjects?

7

Before answering this question,

we

would just like to note that we believe that

any subject is positioned is such a way that it

is

never simply constituted as singu

lar entity, as simply a racial subject for example. This means that the subject is

always multiply constituted, that, as Chantal Mouffe puts it, within every soci

ety, each social agent is inscribed

in

a multiplicity of social relations not only

relations of production but also social relations, among others,

of

sex, race,

nationality, and vicinity. All these social relations determine positionalities or

subject positions and cannot be reduced to only one (Mouffe 1988, pp. 89-90).



9 LOUIS F MIRON and JONATHAN XAVIER INDA

Thus, someone is who positioned as a worker is simultaneously a man or a

woman, heterosexual or homosexual, white or black, Catholic or Protestant,

American or Mexican, and so on. In short, the subject is sutured, stitched

in

place

as

it were, at the intersection of various discourses. A raced subject

is

thus always

a hybrid gendered, sexualized, and class-oriented construct. For the purposes

of

this paper however,

we

will act as if it were possible to talk about the subject as a

singular entity. The reason for doing this is that since this is our first stab,

as

it

were, at thinking through a notion

of

racial performativity,

we

felt it would be eas

ier if, for now,

we

bracketed other socially significant identities. In the future,

with a preliminary theory of racial performativity in hand,

we

will complicate our

analysis by taking up more directly the hybridity of the subject and its relation to

performativity.

8

So frankly, one of the limits

of

this paper is that it excludes the

significant ways in which race relates to other positions, prominent among these

being sex, gender, and class.

Now back to our question: What does all this have to do with the construction

of

racial subjects?

f

you will recall, we noted that the practice of naturalizing

racial difference has a conspicuous history in Western culture.

t

is a practice that

developed in the wake

of

European exploration and colonization during the fif

teenth and sixteenth centuries when Europeans elaborated a worldview that dis

tinguished them, as children of God or human beings, from the others they

encountered

in

the New World and then eventually led to the scientific sys

tems

of

classification advanced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,

which created seemingly immutable hierarchies based on the phenomenal and

biological differences of humankind (Omi and Winant 1994). During this latter

period (1850s), one notable scheme of human classification was put forth by Rob

ert Knox, a Scottish anatomist, who argued as Michael Banton notes:

First, that variations in the constitution and behaviour

of

individuals were to be explained as

the expression

of

different underlying biological types

of

a relatively permanent kind; second,

differences between these types explained variations in the cultures

of

human populations;

third, the distinctive nature

of

the types explained the superiority

of

Europeans in general and

Aryans in particular; fourth, friction between nations and individuals

of

different type arose

from innate characters (Banton 1977,

p

47).

The upshot here is that Knox insists on the essential superiority of white Europe

ans, distinguishing them from the other groups and effectively establishing a

social hierarchy in such a way that physical markers come to designate the place

that a group occupies in social relationships. In other words, Knox grounds his

hierarchy on the belief that certain physical traits, such

as

skin color, body type,

etc., are tied to attributes of behavior, intellect, and morality. As such, race is con

structed as an essence, a natural phenomenon, whose meaning is prior to and

beyond the reach

of

human intervention.

What this really amounts to

is

what is commonly referred to as racism, an

exclusionary and marginalizing practice that quite often works through the con-



Race as a ind

of Speech

Act

97

struction of binary oppositions such as us/them, self/other, and white/black (or

white/other). These binary constructions are hardly ever neutral. There is always

a dimension

of

power between the end points

of

such oppositions. Thus, when we

talk about binary opposition like us/them, as Jacques Derrida has emphasized,

we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence

of

a

vis-a-vis

but rather with a

violent hierarchy. One

of

the two terms governs the other ... or has the upper

hand (Derrida 198

l

p. 41

.

Indeed, these constructions embody a logic that val

orizes the first term while subordinating the second. And this is not simply a mat

ter of semantics because such classificatory practices carry material consequence.

For example, Stuart Hall, focusing on the period

of

plantation slavery and its

aftermath in the United States, points out how the discourses that sought to justify

slavery, and thus the exploitation of a particular group of human beings, were

structured by a series

of

binary oppositions:

There

is

the powerful opposition between civilization (white) and savagery (black). There

is

the opposition between the biological or bodily characteristics

of

the black and white races,

polarized into their extreme

opposites-each

the signifiers

of

an absolute difference between

human types or species. There are the rich distinctions which cluster around the supposed link,

on the one hand, between the white races and intellectual development-re finement, learning

and knowledge, a belief in reason, the presence

of

developed institutions, formal government

and law, and a civilized restraint in their emotional, sexual and civil life, all

of

which are

associated with culture; and on the other hand, the link between the black races and whatever

is

instinctual-the

open expression

of

emotion and feeling rather than intellect, a lack

of

civ

ilized refinement in sexual and social life, a reliance on custom and ritual, and the lack

of

developed civil institutions, all of which are linked to nature (Hall l 997b,

p.

243).

In effect, through such binary constructions people are classified according to a

norm, setting up a symbolic boundary between the acceptable and the unaccept

able, the normal and the deviant. In this particular case, the opposition

is

con

structed

in

such a way that physical features, namely skin color, are linked to

attributes

of

intellect and behavior, establishing a hierarchy

of

quality between

white and black. The essential character

of

these groups is fixed eternally in

nature since physical appearance is linked causally to behaviors by biological

inheritance.

This example

of

naturalizing difference, along with those

of

The Bell Curve and

of

Knox, is often labeled classical or traditional racism since it rationalizes

claims of national superiority or sociopolitical disqualification and economic

exploitation

of

groups

of

individuals within a polity by attributing to them certain

moral, intellectual, or social defects supposedly grounded

in their 'racial' endow

ment which, by virtue of being innate, are inevitable (Stokke 1995,

p.

7).

Although such forms

of

racism that resort to crude biologisms still abound

in

the

late twentieth century both in Europe and in the United States, it is generally

acknowledged that racism, which can be defined

in

general terms as the belief in

and/or practice

of

excluding people on the basis

of

their membership

in

a racially

defined group, has taken a new turn toward what is often called cultural racism



98


(Gilroy 1990; Giroux 1993), neo-racism (Bali bar

1991

, or cultural fundamental

ism (Stokke 1995).

This new cultural racism, rather than asserting different natural endowments of

human races, notions that have lost some appeal and credibility, emphasizes dif

ferences of cultural heritage and their incommensurability. In other words, as Eti

enne Balibar has noted:

It

is a racism whose dominant theme is not biological

heredity but the insurmountability of cultural differences, a racism which, at first

sight, does not postulate the superiority of certain groups or peoples

in

relation to

others but 'only' the harmfulness

of

abolishing frontiers, the incompatibility of

life-styles and traditions (1991,

p. 21

. The logic here is that humanity is divided

into a number of groups who are the bearers of distinct and incommensurable cul

tures, and whose members are prone to enter into conflict with one another since

it is human nature to be xenophobic. In

an

ideal world, each culture would be spa

tially segregated from one another, each

in

its own little piece of earth; only with

such separation could any

of

them flourish. In theory, this view does not imply the

ordering

of

different cultures hierarchically. In fact, it appears to be quite the

opposite, seemingly bent toward the recognition of the variety and equality of cul

tures. But what happens when a particular territory, let us say a national territory,

is inhabited by a multiplicity of cultures? The theory goes as follows: in such a sit

uation which is not unlike the one one finds today in the United States and

throughout Europe, where primarily as a result

of

immigration after World War II,

different cultural groups interact with one another on a daily basis the only

result can be cultural conflict as each culture struggles to maintain its integrity.

Here cultural racism assumes a set

of

symmetrically opposed counterconcepts

(binary oppositions one might say), that of the national and the citizen on one side,

and the alien, the foreigner, the stranger, and the immigrant on the other. This lat

ter grouping, the other of the nation,

is

most often construed as a politic l

threat

to

national identity and integrity on account

of

immigrants' cultural diver

sity because the nation-state is conceived as founded on a bounded and distinct

community which mobilizes a shared sense of belonging and loyalty predicated

on a common language, cultural traditions, and beliefs (Stokke 1995,

p.

8). This

other, since it poses a threat to the nation, is relegated to the margins

of

society,

often blamed for all the social and economic ills that befall the nati.on. Thus,

although the new cultural racism appears to be egalitarian, it actually constructs a

hierarchy such that the national is valued over the nonnational. The curious thing

is that those cultures considered incommensurable to the national culture almost

always belong to people whose visible characteristics distinguish them from the

majority white population. In other words, although the new cultural racism

does not appear to exclude and marginalize populations on the basis of their bio

logical heritage, one cannot really discount the element

of

biology since those

who belong to the incommensurable cultures are most often nonwhite. In either

case whether we are speaking

of

classical racism or the new cultural kind, the



Race as a ind of Speech ct

99

results are the same: those who are nonwhite are often excluded from society. In

short, the hierarchy does not really change. "White" remains

on

top.

In opposition to these naturalizing practices, we would like to argue that race

as

such does not exist. There is simply no biological basis for dividing the human

species into groups based on the idea that certain physical traits, such as skin

color, are tied to attributes

of

behavior, intellect, and morality. Race is not a fact

of

nature. But it does exist to the extent that it is an integral part

of

the classifica-

tory systems through which social order is produced and maintained. The argu-

ment here is that society gives meaning to things by allotting them different places

within a classificatory system; or rather, that social groups impose meaning on

their world by ordering and organizing matter, often through the construction

of

binary oppositions such as us/them, self/other, and white/black (Hall l 997b .

"Race's" power as David Goldberg has pointed out,

has consisted in its adaptive capacity to define population groups, and by extension social

agents, as self and other at various historical moments. It has thus facilitated the fixing

of

char-

acterizations

of

inclusion and exclusion, giving an apparent specificity otherwise lacking to

social relations. To be capable

of

this, race itself must be almost but not quite empty in its own

connotative capacity, able to signify not so much in itself as by adopting and giving naturalized

form to prevailing conceptions of social group formation at different times (1992, p. 558).

Thus, while "race" may not be a natural category, it nevertheless plays a central

role in the construction and rationalization

of

orders

of

difference, making group

relations appear as if they were natural and unchangeable. The fundamental

importance that "race" bears in itself "is not

of

biological but

of

naturalized group

relations" (Goldberg 1992,

p.

559); it gives social relations the facade of long

duration, hence reducing, essentializing, and fixing difference. If race has the

countenance

of

being a steadfast interior depth, it is only to the extent that it is a

reiterated enactment

of

norms that retroactively constructs the appearance

of

race

as a static essence.

This means that race, rather than being a biological truth,

is

a kind

of

speech act,

a performative that in the act

of

uttering brings into being that which it names. It

resolutely does not refer to a preconstituted subject. It is simply a name that retro-

actively constitutes and naturalizes the groupings

to

which it refers. Race, in other

words, works performatively to constitute the racial subject itself, a subject that

only procures a naturalized effect through repeated reference to that subject. This

suggests that, what might be called racial performativity, is not a singular act

of

racial subject constitution, but a reiterative practice through which discourse

brings about the effect that it names. It is only through the force

of

reiteration that

the racial subject acquires a naturalized effect. And it is only through the contin-

ued interpellation of the racial subject that this naturalized effect is maintained.

As

such, there is no reference to a pure racial subject which does not itself add to

the further constitution of that subject. From this perspective, much like the dec-

laration It's a girl ," the utterance "Look, a Negro," which for Franz Fanon




( 1967) calls the racial subject into a system

of

racialized meanings, is not so much

a statement

of

fact, a constative utterance, as one in a long string

of

perfonnatives

through which the racial subject

is

continuously raced throughout his/her lifetime.

The racing

of

a subject

is

a never-ending process, one that must be reiterated by

various authorities in order to sustain the naturalized effect

of

race. In short, per

fonnativity is a matter

of

reiterating the nonns through which a racial subject is

constituted.

t

is the power

of

discourse to bring about what it names through the

citing or repetition

of

nonns.

This should not

be

taken to mean that the construction of race is simply a matter

of

language. That is, when we speak

of

race as a kind

of

speech act or as a discur

sive construct, we do not mean to reduce it to a linguistic category. To be sure,

discourse is normally used as a linguistic concept. But

we

utilize discourse

in

an

entirely different manner. For us, following Stuart Hall,

A discourse is a group of statements which provide a language for talking

about-i.e.

a way of

representing-a

particular kind of knowledge about a topic. When statements about a topic are

made within a particular discourse, the discourse makes it possible to construct the topic in a

certain way. It also limits the other ways in which the topic can be constructed. A discourse

does not consist of one statement, but of several statements working together to form

...

a dis

cursive formation. The statements fit together because any one statement implies a relation to

all others ... One important point about this notion

of

discourse is that it is not based

on

the

conventional distinction between thought and action, language and practice. Discourse is about

the production of knowledge through language.

But

it is itself produced by a practice: discur

sive practice -the practice of producing meaning. Since all social practices entail

meaning

all practices have a discursive aspect. So discourse enters into and influences all social prac

tices (1996, pp. 201-202).

The important thing to note here is that this concept

of

discourse is not purely a

linguistic notion. This is so

in

two senses. First, discourse aims to sunnount the

conventional distinction between what one says (language) and what one does

(practice). Discourse, then,

is

about language and practice.

9

t

is about language

and practice to the extent that language becomes meaningful in the context

of

practice. The idea here is that meaning is learned from, and shaped in, instances

of use;

so

both its learning and its configuration depends on practice. Thus every

discursive object is constituted in the context

of

action. As such, the distinction

between linguistic and behavioral aspects

of

a social practice

is

inappropriate and

ought to find its place as a differentiation within the social production

of

mean

ing, which is structured under the form

of

discursive totalities (Laclau and

Mouffe 1985,

p

107). Second, discourse is not a purely linguistic phenomenon

inasmuch as it is not a simple system

of

ideas but is embodied in institutions, rit

uals and

so

forth (Laclau and Mouffe 1985,

p

109). In other words, discourse

operates to constitute subjects through its material embodiment in institutions; it

is in institutional settings that discourse

is

put to work to regulate the constitution

of subjects. As a whole, then, the idea of discourse we employ here includes writ

ten documents, speech, ideas, concrete practices, rituals, institutions, and empiri-



Race

as

a ind of Speech Act

101

cal

objects-insofar of

course, as they are meaningful for us in a given context.

Thus our analysis refuses the distinction between discursive and nondiscursive

practices.

1

This means that to speak

of

race

as

a discursive construct

is

to

see it

as

embedded across a range

of

texts and at a number

of

different institutional sites

within society.

t

is through its material embodiment in texts, rituals, and institu

tions that discourse produces that effect that it names and continuously races the

subject.

The significant thing here is that the racing

of

the subject, through discourse and

its material embodiments, is a never-ending process, one that must be reiterated in

various time and places in order to sustain the naturalized effect

of

race. f this is

the case, that is,

if

the process

of

naming racial subjects actually amounts to their

constitution, then race cannot be an effect

of

biological truths. We have to think

about it instead

as

one

of

the ways through which dominant social fictions are

fashioned as natural facts. This means that since race

is

a social fiction, only a sed

imented effect

of

repetition, no scheme

of

racial domination can be a systemic

totality predestined to hold racialized subjects in subordinate positions. Put differ

ently, since the racing

of

a subject is a never-ending act, since reiteration is neces

sary in order to sustain the naturalized effect

of

race, this signifies that the

constitution

of

a racial subject is never complete. There are gaps and fissures that

open up in the process

of

reiteration which make it possible for the performance

of normalization to be subverted. The necessity

of

reiteration offers the possibility

of reiterating the identity

of

the racial subject otherwise, against the norm, making

the racial subject open to the ever-present possibility

of

a resignification. In short,

although the process

of

reiteration is designed to fashion normative racial sub

jects, it also makes it possible for the norm to be called into question and be poten

tially rearticulated.

We can offer a brief

of

example of this rearticulatory process

by

looking at the

historicity

of

the term black. The term black, to the extent that it has historically

been associated with pathology and insult, has operated

as

a discursive practice

whose effect has been to shame the subject it names. The performative acts

through which such shaming interpellations have taken place and authorized

varying sets

of

racial relations have been

of

necessity repetitions. The idea here is

that a performative act

of

racial shaming and constitution succeeds only insofar as

that action echoes prior actions, and

accumulates the force o authority through

the repetition

or

citation o a prior, authoritative set o practices

(Butler l 993a,

p

227). This means that the term black has historically derived its force to consti

tute racial subjects through the repeated invocation by which it has become linked

to degradation, pathologization, and scorn. As such, the term functions performa

tively only to the extent that it invokes convention, that is, to the extent that it

draws on its historicity.

t

also only functions performatively to shame subjects

insofar as this invocation is a continuously repeated invocation. So for a perfor

mative term such as black to have binding power, it is not enough for it to draw

on its historicity; it must also draw on it repeatedly and continuously. Simply put,




then, the success of a performative act of racial shaming and constitution depends

on the force

of

reiteration.

This basically means that the term black cannot be taken as referring to a pre

constituted entity.

t

must be seen, instead,

as

a name that retroactively produces

and naturalizes the entities to which it refers.

As

such, the term black, as a slur or

derogatory remark,

is

not so much a constative utterance, a statement of fact, as a

performative through which a racial subject is produced and shamed. This sham

ing interpellation, however, is not a one-time proposition. In order for it be effec

tive and acquire a naturalized effect, it must cite previous acts of shaming as well

as compel future citations. So the term black, as a shaming interpellation, takes

hold to the extent that it cites the conventions of authority and obliges ongoing

citation. In short, the shaming

of

a subject only acquires a naturalized effect

through the force

of

repetition. Moreover, in order to maintain this naturalized

effect, the shamed subject must be continuously interpellated

in

various times and

places. One could argue, then, that the fact that this reiteration is necessary is a

sign that the shaming of a subject is never complete that the shaming of the

racial subject is a never-ending process.

One could argue, too, that since this

shaming

is

never complete, that since the term black must continually be

repeated in order to effectively shame racial subjects, it means that the racial sub

ject is open to the possibility

of

resignification, that the term black is open to the

prospect of being rearticulated otherwise. The subversion of the processes

through which the racial subject is shamed thus becomes a matter of inhabiting

the practices of rearticulation.

This

is

precisely what has happened in reference to the term black. Since the

1960s, as a result of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, a term that sig

naled degradation and shame has been represented to signify a new and affirma

tive assemblage of meanings. So rather than being a mark of shame or a

paralyzing slur, black becomes a sign

of

pride.

12

The resignification

of

the racial

subject thus takes place through the appropriation of the power to name oneself

and set the conditions under which the name is employed. This strategy is meant

to consign the term black to past degradation and present or future affirmation. As

such, the shaming interpellation black is not simply taken as an order to be obeyed

but as the imperative to be cited and refigured. Thus the subject who

is

raced

through the shaming interpellation black takes up the very term as the discursive

basis for

an

opposition. However, as Butler points out in reference to the term

queer,

the expectation of self-determination that self-naming arouses is paradoxically contested by

the historicity of the name itself: by the history

of

the usages that one never controlled, but that

constrain the very usage that now emblematizes autonomy; by the future efforts to deploy the

term against the grain

of

the current ones, and that will exceed the control

of

those who seek to

set the course

of

the terms in the present (Butler l 993a, p. 228).



Race

as

a ind of Speech ct

103

In other words, although the term black can and has been used as a site of col-

lective contestation, it is a term that can never be fully controlled. Not only is it

constrained by its past articulations, but it must also be open to future and unfore-

seeable enunciations. It is simply impossible to sustain any kind o mastery over

the trajectory

o

any discursive categories. In this sense, although it is possible to

lay claim to the term black in its affirmative sense, it will always remain in tension

with its deployment as a racist term in everyday life. In the end, then, performa-

tivity describes this relation o being implicated in that which one opposes, this

turning

o

power against itself to produce alternative modalities o power, to

establish a kind o political contestation that is not a 'pure' opposition, a 'tran-

scendence' o contemporary relations o power, but a difficult labor o forging a

future from resources inevitably impure (Butler 1993a,

p

241).

The upshot

o

all this is that since race as such does not exist, then in order for

a group or collective subject to become a race, to be called a race, it really has to

be

made or categorized into one. In other words, since race does not refer to

an

already constituted object, a group cannot be a race outside o the active forces

that construct it. Thus a racial subject, in order to be itself, has to undergo some

kind o process that would turn it into itself. We call this process racial perfor-

mativity, which basically refers to the power o discourse to procure what it

names. It refers to how race is constituted performatively as a kind o speech act

that, in the very act o uttering, retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the sub-

jects to which it refers. The racial subject only acquires a naturalized effect

through repeated reference to that subject, through the force o reiteration. t is

also through this reiterative process, the process

o

infinite repeatability through

which a subject is produced, that the racial subject is opened to redeployment, to

being constituted otherwise. Racial performativity thus brings to our attention

those constitutive instabilities that challenge the naturalizing effects o dis-

course. There is no guarantee, o course, that subversion will ensue from the

reiteration o constitutive norms, but at least there is hope. What racial perfor-

mativity does is steer us to thinking about race in terms

o

processes rather than

as a natural category. t calls attention to the ways in which race is always

actively constructed, to how its referents are inherently unstable, thus making it

open to multiple rearticulations.

NOT S

I These problems included crime, homelessness, illiteracy, poverty, teenage pregnancy, unem-

ployment, and the breakdown

o

the family.

2 Herrnstein and Murray end up constructing a hierarchy in which whites are on the top end

o the intelligence scale while blacks are on the bottom.

3 We would just like to clarify that the theoretical itinerary we follow here is one that leads us

directly to Butler. In other words, the reason we focus on Austin, Derrida, and Foucault, to the exclu-

sion o others, is because these are the theorists that Butler herself draws from and engages with

in



104


developing her notion of performativity. A more thorough approach to, for example, speech acts

would take us not only through Austin and Derrida, but also through theorists such as Shoshana Fel

man, Barbara Johnson, J. Hillis Miller, Paul de Man, John Searle, Emile Benveniste, and Erving Goff

man (for a discussion of the relation between Goffman and Derrida see Clough [ 1992[). But this is

beyond the scope

of

this essay. What we are doing here is developing what could be called a Butlerian

perspective on race.

4. System refers to the way in which Austin organizes his thought around the binary opposi

tion serious/non-serious, relegating each side to separate orders. Derrida displaces this system because

he dissolves this opposition, making both serious and nonserious speech dependent on a general cita

tionality. This should become clearer in the next section.

5.

To suggest that we are going to talk about the nature

of

the subject

is

to enter dangerous

waters because the subject,

or

rather the notion of the subject, is polysemic. Paul Smith suggests that

over the last two decades the discourses

of

the human sciences have adopted this term, the 'subject,'

to do multifarious theoretical jobs. In some instances the 'subject' will appear to be synonymous with

the 'individual,' the 'person.' In

others-for

example, in psychoanalytical

discourse-it

will take on a

more specialized meaning and refer to the unconsciously structured illusion

of

plenitude which we

usually call 'the self.'

Or

elsewhere, the 'subject' might be understood as the specifically subjected

o ject of

social and historical forces and determinations (Smith 1988, p. xxvii). Our formulation will

be closer to the latter.

6. This

is

not to suggest, however, that the subject

is

therefore outside

of

power. The undermin

ing of the forces of normalization can be attributed power turning against itself in the process of reit

eration.

7. Some of the ideas discussed in this section are also taken up in Torres, Miron, and Inda

(1999).

8. A particularly important intersection seems to be that between race and sex. For instance,

Ann Stoler (1995), following Foucault, notes that in the late nineteenth century technologies of sex

were most fully mobilized around issues of race. The pseudo-scientific theory of degeneration was at

the core of this mobilization: The series composed of perversion-heredity-degenerescence formed

the solid nucleus of the new technologies of sex.... Its application was widespread and its implanta

tion went deep. Psychiatry, to be sure, but also jurisprudence, legal medicine, agencies of social con

trol, the surveillance

of

dangerous

or

endangered children, all functioned for a long time on the basis

of

'degenerescence' and the heredity-perversion system. An entire social practice, which took the

exasperated but coherent form

of

state-directed racism, furnished this technology

of

sex with a for

midable power and far-reaching consequences (Foucault quoted in Stoler 1995, p. 31

.

Stoler thus

argues that this theory

of

degeneracy, with its vast theoretical and legislative edifice, secured the

relationship between racism and sexuality:

It

conferred abnormality on individual bodies, casting

certain deviations

as

both internal dangers to the body politic and as inheritable legacies that threat

ened the well-being

of

a race (Stoler 1995, p. 31

.

Eventually, nineteenth-century degeneracy theory

crystallized in eugenics, developing as a national project that came together with more comprehen

sive purity campaigns for improved natality and selective sterilization. In other words, theories

of

degeneracy lent credence

to

efforts to control undesirable racial groups through the regulation of

their sexual practices.

It is

just such intersectionalities that we hope to discuss in the future through

the notion of performativity.

9. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe clarify the interconnection

of

language and practice in the

following terms: Let us suppose that I am building a wall with another bricklayer. At a certain

moment I ask my workmate to pass me a brick and then I add it to the wall. The first act-asking for

the brick-is linguistic; the second-adding the brick to the

wall-is

extralinguistic. Do I exhaust the

reality of both acts by drawing the distinction between them in terms of the linguistic/extralinguistic

opposition? Evidently not, because, despite their differentiation in those terms, the two actions share

something that allows them to be compared, namely the fact that they are both part of a total operation

which

is

the building

of

the wall. So, then, how could we characterize this totality

of

which asking for



Race

as

a

ind of Speech

ct

105

a brick and positioning it are, both, partial moments? Obviously, if this totality includes both linguistic

and non-linguistic elements, it cannot itself be either linguistic or extralinguistic; it has to be prior to

this distinction. This totality which includes within itself the linguistic and the non-linguistic, is what

we call discourse ( 1997, p. 70).

10. In suggesting that race

is

a kind speech act

or

a discursive construct, we also do not mean

to

deny the existence

of

racial bodies or the materiality

of

race. Indeed, if race

is

anything, it

is

material. That is to say, racial difference is

an

issue of material differences to the extent that race is

a difference inscribed on the body. However, racial difference is never simply a function of material

differences that are not in some way both marked and formed by discursive practices. In other

words, the argument here is that there can be no access to a pure materiality of the body outside or

before signification and, by extension, no access to a pure materiality of bodily life that is separate

from discourse. The signifying act could thus be said

to

be performative to the extent that it delimits

and contours the racial body. We should point out, however, that the discursive character

of

the

racial body does not imply putting its existence or reality into question. As Laclau and Mouffe point

out: The fact that every object is constituted as an object

of

discourse has nothing to do with

whether there

is

a world external

to

thought,

or

with the realism/idealism opposition. An earthquake

or the falling of a brick is an event that certainly exists, in the sense that it occurs here and now,

independently

of

my will. But whether their specificity as objects

is

constructed in terms

of

'natural

phenomena' or 'expressions of the wrath of God,' depends on the structuring of a discursive field.

What is denied is not that such objects exist externally to thought, but the rather different assertion

that they could constitute themselves as objects outside any discursive condition of emergence

(1985, p. 108). In other words, the existence of the body is independent of its discursive articulation,

but it only becomes meaningful within discourse. In short, a racial body can only become a racial

body within a specific discursive configuration.

This suggestion that racial bodies, to the extent that they are meaningful, are effects

of

discourse

does not only apply to bodies. The same could also be said of any other object that people think of as

natural facts of physics, biology or astronomy. In other words, all natural facts are also discursive

facts: And they are so for the simple reason that the idea of nature is not something that is already

there, to be read from the appearance of things, but is itself the result of a slow and complex histori

cal and social construction. To call something a natural object is a way of conceiving it that depends

upon a classificatory system. Again, this does not put into question that fact that this entity which

we

call a stone exists, in the sense of being present here and now, independently of my will; neverthe

less the fact

of

its being a stone depends on a way

of

classifying objects that is historical and contin

gent.

f

there were no human beings on earth, those objects that we call stones would be there

nonetheless; but they would not be 'stones', because there would be neither mineralogy nor a lan

guage capable

of

classifying them and distinguishing them from other objects (Laclau and Mouffe

1997,

p.

71

.

In short, since our conception of nature is itself discursively constructed, we can only

come to know and grasp natural phenomena, whether bodies or otherwise, through historically spe

cific theoretical discourses. This is not to deny their materiality. t is to suggest, though, that this

materiality only becomes meaningful within discourse.

There

is

a lot more

to

be said about the materiality

of

the racial body. The above remarks are

meant only to serve as

an

indication

of

the kind

of

perspective that

we

are developing on this topic.

We feel that the materiality

of

the racial body is so important and controversial an issue that it needs

to be treated in a separate work. This separate work, which we are in the process of writing, is tenta

tively titled The Materiality

of

the Racial Body. In this piece, we will deal not only with Judith

Butler, but also with other theorists

of

the body and materiality such as Pierre Bourdieu, Susan

Bordo, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Colette Guillaumin, Susan Hekman, Vicki Ktrby, Elizabeth

Wilson, and Elizabeth Grosz, to name only a few.

11. This means that it has operated through language and its material embodiments.

12. For a longer discussion

of

the resignification

of

the term black see Hall ( l 997b

.



106


REFEREN ES

Austin,

J.

L. 1975 [1962]. How to Do Things with

Words

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Balibar,

E.

1991. Is there a Neo-racism?

n Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities,

edited by

E. Balibar and

I

Wallerstein. London and New York: Verso.

Banton, M. 1977.

The

Idea o Race. Cambridge: Tavistock Publications.

Butler,

J.

l993a. Bodies that Matter:

On

the Discursive Limits

o

Sex. New York: Routledge.

___ 1993b. Critically Queer. GLQ: A Journal o Lesbian & Gay Studies 1(1): 17-32.

___

1995. Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of 'Postmodemism'. Pp. 213-

232

in Critical Encounters: Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing,

edited by

C. Caruth and D. Esch. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

___

1997.

The

Psychic Life o Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University

Press.

Clough. P.

T.

1992.

The End(s) o Ethnography: From Social Realism to Social Criticism.

Newbury

Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Derrida, J. 1981. Positions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

·. 1988.

Limited Inc.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Easthope, A., and K McGowan. 1992. Subjectivity: Introduction. Pp. 67-70 in A Critical and Cul-

tural Theory Reader, edited by A. Easthope and K. McGowan. Toronto and Buffalo: Univer

sity of Toronto Press.

Fanon,

F.

1967.

Black Skins, White Masks.

New York: Evergreen-Grove Press.

Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and Punish:

The

Birth o he Prison. New York: Vintage.

___

1980.

The

History o Sexuality (Vol. 1 . New York: Vintage.

Gilroy,

P.

1990. One Nation Under a Groove: The Cultural Politics

of 'Race'

and Racism in Britain.

In Anatomy o Racism, edited by D. T. Goldberg. Minneapolis and London: University of Min

nesota Press.

Giroux, H. 1993. Living Dangerously: Identity Politics and the New Cultural Racism: Towards a

Critical Pedagogy of Representation. Cultural Studies 7( I): 1-27.

Goldberg, D. T. 1992. The Semantics of Race. Ethnic and Racial Studies 15(4): 543-569.

Hall, S. 1996. The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power. Pp. 184-227 in Modernity: An Introduc-

tion to Modern Societies, edited by

S.

Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert, and K. Thompson. Oxford:

Blackwell Publishers.

___

l 997a. The Work

of

Representation.

Pp.

13-74 in

Representation: Cultural Representa-

tions and Signifying Practices,

edited by

S.

Hall. London: Sage Publications.

___

l 997b. The Spectacle of the 'Other. ' Pp. 223-290 in Representation: Cultural Representa-

tions and Signifying Practices, edited by S. Hall. London: Sage Publications.

Herrnstein, R. J., and C. Murray. 1994.

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American

Life.

New York: Free Press.

Laclau, E., and

C.

Mouffe. 1985.

Hegemony Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Pol-

itics. London: Verso.

___

1997. New Reflections on the Revolution

of

Our Time. Pp. 70-71 in

Representation: Cul-

tural Representation and Signifying Practices,

edited by

S.

Hall. London: Sage Publications.

Mouffe, C. 1988. Hegemony and New Political Subjects: Toward a New Concept of Democracy.

Pp. 89-104 in

Marxism and the Interpretation

o

Culture,

edited by C. Nelson and L. Gross

berg. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Omi, M., and H. Winant. 1994. Racial Formation

in

the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s

(2nd ed.). New York and London: Routledge.

Pellegrini, A. 1997. Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race. New York: Rout

ledge.

Smith, P. 1988.

Discerning the Subject.

Minneapolis: University

of

Minnesota Press.



Race as a ind of Speech Act

1 7

Stolcke, V. 1995. Talking Culture: New Boundaries, New Rhetorics of Exclusion in Europe. Current

Anthropology 36(1): 1-24.

Stoler, L A 1995. Race and the Education o Desire: Foucault s History o Sexuality and the Colonial

Order o Things. New York: Routledge.

Torres, R D., L. F Miron, and J. X. Inda. 1999. Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader. Oxford:

Blackwell.

Documents

Race as a Kind of Speech Act