for - performativity - definition

definition - performativity - In the context of futures studies, performativity explains how visions of the future shape and coordinate social action in the present that results in the construction of the future vision. - Performativity converts the fiction into the nonfiction, the imaginary into the real - There are four aspects to performativity: - sociology of expectations - sociologies of affect - collective imagination - material-semiotic approaches // question - what does this mean?//

Author expects to be asked consent before posting their words in another web venue, here crossposting to Twitter. I don't think that's a priori a reasonable expectation. The entire web is a public sphere, and expressions in it are public expressions. Commenting on them, extending on them is annotation, and that's fair game imo. Problems arise from how that annotation is used/positioned. If it's part of the conversation with the author and others that's fine depending on tone e.g. forcefully budding in, yet even if unwelcomed. If it is quoting an author and commenting as performance to one's own audience, then the original author becomes an object, a prop in that performance. That is problematic. I can't judge (no links) here which of the two it is.

Alles wat niet wordt gedisciplineerd en gestructureerd door natuurwetenschappelijke wetmatigheden hangt samen met de menselijke creativiteit en behoeften. Van de inrichting van steden tot de inrichting van de maatschappij hebben we te maken met het ontwerpactiviteiten. De relatie tussen die inrichting en het gedrag van gebruikers waarvoor die inrichting is bedoeld is een vrij complexe. Of zoals Churchill het eens (1943) verwoordde:

“We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.”

Niet veel later (1967) werd een vergelijkbare uitspraak (ten onrechte) toegeschreven aan McLuhan:

"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."

Degene die deze uitspraak deed, John Culkin, illusteerde dit aan de hand van de intrede van de auto

Once we have created a car, for example, our society evolves to make the car normal, and our behavior adapts to accommodate this new normal.

De wederkerige invloed (performativiteit) van al hetgeen de mens creëert (uiteenlopend van gebouwen en apparaten tot 'simme steden' en algoritmes) is een belangrijk om te begrijpen dat een ontwerp meer is dan kenmerk dat het gebruik bevorderd. Ontwerpkenmerken hebben blijkbaar wederkerig effect op het menselijk gedrag. Ze zetten niet alleen aan tot gedrag dat is bedoeld en wordt getriggerd door de affordances van het ontwerp: unieke relatie tussen de kenmerken van een ‘ding’ in samenhang met een gebruiker die beïnvloedt hoe dat ding wordt gebruikt. Een relatie die verder gaat dan een eenzijdige perception-action coupling.

Met betrekking tot sociale media kunnen we bijvoorbeeld spreken van 'transactional media effects':

"... outcomes of media use also influence media use. Transactional media-effects models consider media use and media effects as parts of a reciprocal over-time influence process, in which the media effect is also the cause of its change (Früh & Schönbach, 1982)."

Het gegeven dat ontwerpers vaak alleen de positieve ervaring van gebruikers voor ogen hebben is volgens Danah Abdulla niet constructief.

"...optimism in design is not always constructive. In fact, it hinders the politicization of designers. If design is going to contribute to tools that can change the world positively, it must begin to embrace pessimism."

I'm reminded here of the Lit. Theory readings for this week. One of the theorists compares poetry to drama in its performativity, and its performativity is exactly the reason that a poem's "meaning" cannot be categorized or nailed down. In the same way, is Barad pointing to the subjectivity in examining what it means to be human? If being human involves performativity, our current rhetoric will never be able to come close to capturing it...which I suppose is where "posthumanism" comes into play as we search for new ways to grapple with articulating subjectivity.

Mulling this over: words can, in a sense, be material--we can record them on paper or other tangible things. Letters are symbols but they have narrowly defined meanings. Letters combined can become words that represent material things.

Performativity is, by its very nature, ephemeral, even if it is in some sense material (bodily, as discussed above). The premise, then, seems to be that if discursive practices are performative, they naturally challenge power because power can only be obtained upon something longer-lasting. Or, alternatively, that performativity challenges power because the understood meaning(s) cannot be represented by words.

Doesn't the assumption that words have power act to give words more power?

Dr. Rivers, please freaking help.

Am I reading Barad right? Is she saying here "If not only the internal workings of the mind of the subject and the subjects actions are shaped by performativity, but also the physical compilation of the universe, then it is all the more important that we understand performativity and how it causes this shaping of the physical world."

Sentence reused by Butler in Gender Trouble:

The challenge for rethinking gender categories outside of the metaphysics of substance will have to consider […] that « there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming; the ‘doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything. » […] There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is perfomatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be its results. » (Gender Trouble Routledge, 1990 p. 25)