Performing the self: Performativity and discursive psychology.

Abstract

Butler’s notion of performativity has been incredibly useful for Discursive Psychology, sharpening its theoretical underpinnings and contributing to a social theory that connects the individual with the social. In turn, Discursive Psychology has also had something to offer to this strand of feminist theory which has been seen as notoriously difficult to apply. Discursive Psychology’s firm grounding in empirical approaches and social science methodology provides useful analytical concepts for the empirical analysis of selfhood in concrete, everyday social situations. We outline Butler’s theory of performativity at the beginning of this chapter. We then provide an overview of how the critique of an essential self that is so central to Butlerian theory played out within psychology. In the process, we sketch out the major trajectories that led to psychology’s ‘discursive turn’ and then explore how the notion of the self was developed in consequence. Thereafter, we describe some key concepts in Discursive Psychology related to the empirical analysis of self-making and provide two illustrations. We utilize two recent studies of heterosexual parenthood to show how Discursive Psychology concepts can be used to ground performativity theory in empirical work. We close with a discussion of some recent struggles and ongoing debates in this trajectory of work, and point out some important avenues for future theoretical and empirical work. We trust that this chapter will prove useful in providing an overview of developments regarding one important theoretical avenue of theorizing the self, and in offering a point of departure for further dialogue on this topic.