Realistic Approach to the Performativity of Gender

Abstract

The role of language in doing gender is a very important theme in feminist movements and in the post-structuralist approach of gender by queer theorists: Butler, for example, has mobilized a concept from the ordinary language philosophy (“performativity”) to analyze gender and what she calls the “discursive construction of sex”. Her conception has been criticized by various feminist theorists for “derealizing” social relations: forgetting the materiality of the body and neglecting the concrete conditions of women’s work and life. This paper explores how ordinary language philosophy, and especially Wittgenstein’s approach of language, may support butlerian perspective in developing a realistic understanding of the power of language.