The performative interval in
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...
refers to a unit of analysis in the interaction order defined by the disjunct between practice and the self, or between what an actor "does" and what an actor "is".
The concept is developed by sociologist Adam Isaiah Green,
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institu ...
, as a
heuristic
A heuristic (; ), or heuristic technique, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediat ...
device to illustrate the irreducibility of the self to a social category in
symbolic interactionist and
queer theory renderings of the subject (Green 2007). In Green's reflection on these two latter literatures, the actor "acts toward" a given social category — be it a racial, ethnic,
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...
or
sexual orientation
Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generally ...
classification — through aligning behavior, affect and the body with
norms that define the category. Nevertheless, the category is never fully realized in the self, an insight that builds directly on
Judith Butler
Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. In 1993, Butle ...
's (1997) conception of "performative failure" (for more, see the concept of
performativity
''Performativity'' is the concept that language can function as a form of social action and have the effect of change. The concept has multiple applications in diverse fields such as anthropology, social and cultural geography, economics, gender s ...
), but also on the earlier sociological work of
Mead
Mead () is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey mixed with water, and sometimes with added ingredients such as fruits, spices, grains, or hops. The alcoholic content ranges from about 3.5% ABV to more than 20%. The defining chara ...
and
Goffman, among others. According to Green, whereas pragmatist and interactionist
sociological
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...
approaches to the self typically focus on how a given actor shores up the gap between "doing" and "being" in the performative interval, queer theory focuses on the inability of the self to ever realize a social category as an ontological property of the self. Rather, for queer theorists and within
poststructuralism
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
more generally, the self is an ever-dissolving iteration of a norm absent a knowable interior or a stable core.
See also
*
Outline of sociology#General sociology concepts
References
*
Butler, Judith 1997. ''Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative'', London: Routledge
* Green, Adam Isaiah. 2007. “Queer Theory and Sociology: Locating the Subject and the Self in Sexuality Studies”, ''Sociological Theory'', 25, 1:26-45.
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Sociological terminology