The Lacanian Performative: Austin after Žižek

Abstract

In this chapter, I am going to interpret the early work of Slavoj Žižek (between 1989 and 1994) as proposing what is in effect a theory of language as theatrical. That would be a theory of speech in which speaking was not only action, but also act, that is, an attempt to affect auditors by speaking, as well as to coordinate efforts through speech. In the examples that Žižek discusses, as well as the example that Žižek’s own work itself provides, these effects are mainly shock and seduction, but other effects — persuading, delighting, amazing, frightening and so forth — are also possible. Regarding speech as inherently theatrical means focusing on the ways in which the speaker, in seeking to affect an audience, expresses their subjectivity as well as engages with social conventions and refers to the objective world. Based on pragmatic theories of language, a dramaturgical theory of language includes an acknowledgement that speech involves social coordination with a normative dimension, as well as information exchange in the interests of referential descriptions of things in the world. Going beyond language pragmatics, though, including theories of communicative action, recognition of the theatricality of language means acknowledgement that speech happens between embodied subjects and depends for its effectiveness upon the dialogue partners’ mutual presuppositions about their speech community.