ENG: The Performative: Violence and Demiurgic Power

Performatives: Violence and demiurgic power

«Performatives: Violence and demiurgic power»

by Dimitar Vatsov

Source:Critique and Humanism Journal (сп. Критика и хуманизъм), issue: 35 / 2010, pages: 229254, onwww.ceeol.com.

http://www.ceeol.com

http://www.ceeol.com

229 Everyday Life and Ordinary Practices: A Micrology of Power

Dimitar Vatsov

PERFORMATIVES: VIOLENCE AND DEMIURGIC POWER

This text has two main parts that correspond to two specifi c tasks.The fi rst task is a critical one. It is to problematize the critical theories that

reduce communication to argumentation. The pioneer here is of course Jürgen Habermas, who defi nes communicative rationality as criticism and grounding of validity claims.1 I will be critiquing precisely Habermas’s theory, but also other authors who conceive of argumentation as the keystone of linguistic in-teraction, as a source of its rationality which, if explicated by an appropriate procedure, guarantees the legitimacy and legality of the norms of communica-tion itself.

However, before going on to critique Habermas, I want to note two of his important achievements in the area of ‘critical theory’ and more generally of political and social philosophy, with which I fully agree:

Firstly, this is Habermas’s ‘pragmatist turn’ in critical theory, where ration-ality stops being thought of as an activity unilaterally determined by a meta-subject (Historical Necessity or Instrumental Reason) and practice is reinter-preted in pragmatist terms as multilateral and (in Habermas, only partially) non-predetermined interaction.

Secondly, this is Habermas’s ‘linguistic turn’, where linguistic articula-tions become the privileged segment in the analysis of practical interactions. Of course, the conception of interaction primarily at the linguistic level can have only methodological, not ontological, priority. That is because, due to the public character of language, explicit articulations are more susceptible to analysis, minimizing the need for speculative presuppositions. Furthermore, Habermas’s analytical approach to linguistic interactions precisely through speech act theory also seems to me to be a very productive idea.

From this point on, however, I will disagree with Habermas.I will argue that the conception of linguistic interactions as ‘criticism and

grounding of validity claims’ is one-sided and reductionist. Here I will subject to critical revision the basic term ‘validity claim’ which – despite Habermas’s ef-forts to the contrary – continues to carry as an irreducible metaphysical remnant a representationalist notion of language. Moreover, by this term an important aspect is crossed out and eliminated even at the basic level – the power aspect

230Critique & Humanism, vol. 35, special issue 2010

of our performatives. I believe that because Habermas conceives of ‘speech acts’ without taking into account the immanent power in every performance, his theory cannot produce a positive concept of ‘power’ not only at this micro-level but also fails to conceive it in a positive way as a social macro-phenomenon. Hence, ‘power’, on the one hand, and ‘validity’ and ‘legitimacy’, on the other, turn out to be opposite and incompatible terms in Habermas’s social theory: power turns out to be an external to communicative rationality and invariably illegitimate ‘strategic action’.2

In opposition to that, the second positive task of this text is to reveal a basic level of linguistic interactions that remains invisible to Habermas and his fol-lowers. I have long called this level the level of immediate affi rmative power of speech acts (cf. Vatsov, 2009; 2010). By ‘affi rmative power’ I understand a particular form of decisionism characteristic of actual performances which precedes and makes possible both the critique of validity claims and their sec-ondary legitimation or de-legitimation through recognition by others. This level of ‘affi rmative power’ is, however, a level of immediate and non-predetermined performative power – or, following Derrida and in order to underline the ef-fect of non-predetermination, it may be better to call it level of ‘performative violence’. Without understanding that level it is impossible to construct any realistic theory of linguistic and social interactions.

In fact, in order to identify the level in question, here I will focus on a basic phenomenon. Namely: an important and non-negligible effect is to be observed in every actual performance precisely while it is actual (while it is in progress, while it is being articulated). Every actual performance conjoins sign, mean-ing, and referent into one, with an – as it were – demiurgic gesture whereby things are immediately done with words. This gesture – which I will herein-after call ‘demiurgic effect’ of actual performances – has often been grasped by various thinkers. Similar intuitions are to be found in phenomenology and especially in the ethnomethodological concept of indexicality developed on the basis of phenomenology.3 Such intuitions are also to be found in the late Witt-genstein’s insightful fragments when he criticizes the parallelism between mind and language or when he defi nes the rule-following paradox.4 Here I will try to demonstrate this basic phenomenon by the example of declarations as a specifi c type of speech acts – rethinking Searle and citing Derrida – in order to show that the demiurgic effect is not specifi c to declarations, it is an effect of every actual performance, of every act of doing things with words.

1. Habermas’s MistakeThe mistake in Habermas’s conception of linguistic interactions is a basic

one: according to Habermas, the main function of speech acts is to ‘raise valid-ity claims’.

In his essay ‘What Is Universal Pragmatics?’, Habermas (1998b, p.23) dis-tinguishes four main types of validity claims: comprehensibility, truth, truthful-

Access via CEEOL NL Germany

231 Dimitar Vatsov: Performatives: Violence and Demiurgic Power

ness, and rightness. In The Theory of Communicative Action and his later works (and further on in the above-mentioned essay), he reduces them to three main types: truth, truthfulness, and rightness (Habermas, 1984; see also Habermas, 1998a, p.228). What is signifi cant here is not the exact number of the types of validity claims, but the fact that by using the term ‘validity’ Habermas tells us an important thing. Namely, that by their very performance utterances consti-tute a space of uncertainty – they, so to speak, themselves raise the question of whether they correspond to the speaker’s intention, to the state of affairs, or to grammatical and moral norms. For by saying that an utterance raises a ‘claim’ we imply an already questioned, an already contested and uncertain utterance that needs to be proved. From here on begins the procedure of criticism and grounding of the raised validity claims, a procedure such as communication is, according to Habermas, and which must end in agreement on ‘the best argu-ment’.

Here I will not critique the formalism of the theory or its hidden ideal-izing assumptions, for this has been done repeatedly and I, too, have done it elsewhere (Vatsov, 2006, pp.29-48). I will look at one point only: the claim Habermas raises by the very term ‘claim’.

The word ‘claim’ usually signifi es a particular type of uncertainty as to the identity of something or someone: it or they are not immediately themselves, they are not what they are, they only ‘claim to be’ what they are. In ordinary languages, ‘claim’ implies that the identity, the relation, the correspondence of something or someone to themselves or to something or someone else (‘X claims to be a celebrity!’) have been called into question. X may or may not be a celebrity. ‘Claim’ expresses uncertainty between ‘is’ and ‘pretends to be’ (lies, impersonates). The sanction of claims is their subsequent recognition or non-recognition – only ex post recognition can legitimate a claim.

The same holds for Habermas. Utterances only claim to be true, sincere, and right, without being immediately such. Hence, the sanction of their recog-nition depends on their subsequent grounding. This means that utterances are thought of as being already critically uncertain, even at the moment of their performance. The critical function of language is presupposed even at the level of actual performance. A performative – every performative – presupposes a distance between what it immediately says (the words) and what it explic-itly or implicitly expresses (the intention, the state of affairs, or intersubjective norms). This distance – this, presupposed as intrinsic, split between linguistic expression and meaning – presupposes, in turn, that the relation of fi t or of cor-respondence between the two split terms has already been contested. In fact, it is precisely this split, the critically produced distance between the two terms, that makes possible the question of correspondence: we can ask whether an utterance really corresponds to the speaker’s intention, the state of affairs, or intersubjective norms only after the two terms between which we are looking for correspondence have already been divided.


It is important to avoid a misunderstanding. Habermas formulates three (or four) types of validity claims, thereby distinguishing three (or four) terms in re-lation to which the question of the correspondence of an utterance is asked. In-tentions, norms, grammar, the state of affairs (we can extend this list by adding context, habits, etc.) are instances that are presupposed as being different from utterances, so as to make it possible to ask the question of whether a particular utterance corresponds to them. Hence, the different types of validity claims are only different directions of validation of utterances – in relation to different presupposed instances. But even though the instances are more in number, the relevant type of validation is practically always done in relation to one, and only one, instance – that is to say, the relation of correspondence is measured between two terms, one of which (intention, the state of affairs, or norms) is presupposed as serving as a measure for the other: an utterance is sincere if and only if it corresponds to the speaker’s intention; it is true if and only if it cor-responds to the state of affairs; and so on.

Of course, Habermas, being a consistent critical thinker, does not allow for any privileged and immediate naturalistic access to the measure (to reality, sub-jective experiences or intersubjective norms) that will give us an absolute meta-physical criterion for the validity of utterances. On the contrary, he leaves the question of validation to communication, and more precisely, to the subsequent intersubjective recognition or non-recognition of the raised validity claims. In other words, Habermas reinterprets the question of correspondence from cor-respondent into coherent terms. Here the external instance that validates a given utterance is no longer some ‘external reality’ (facts, norms, intentions) but an-other utterance-argument that validates ex post (that is to say, formally ‘from the outside’ again) the previous utterance.

This revision of the question of correspondence from correspondent into coherent terms, however, does not eliminate the basic mistake. Habermas’s mistake is that he allows for a split between utterances and what is meant by them even at the basic level – at the moment of immediate articulation. The term ‘claim’ implies precisely such a split and, hence, uncertainty of the rela-tion of correspondence. I call this move a mistake because I will demonstrate that sign, meaning, and referent are indistinguishable at the moment of actual performance. They can be distinguished ex post only – when they are contested by others – but this contestation is always secondary in relation to the actual performance. If the critical distinction between sign, meaning, and referent is assumed to be a primary (and not a secondary) phenomenon, we lose sight of the affi rmative power of our performatives. We lose sight of a defi nite basic level of decision-making power, of power (and even violence) of actual per-formatives, and instead of being able to analyze their live power struggle for meaning we exclude power from communication as an intrinsically illegitimate strategic action, thereby reducing communication to purely theoretical and for-malized argumentation.


However, before moving on to that level of generalization of conclusions and evaluations, we need to see where the split in performatives, presupposed by Habermas, comes from. One may say that Habermas found the already pre-pared split of utterances from intentions and from the state of affairs in speech act theory, and above all in Searle’s version of speech act theory. In other words, Habermas’s mistake is largely inherited from Searle’s mistake.5

2. Searle’s MistakeSearle’s main mistake is, fi rst, that he posits the distinction between ‘illo-

cutionary force’ and ‘propositional content’ as an invariant structure of speech acts – the so-called F(p) structure. Of course, this distinction is a revision of Austin’s distinction between ‘force’ and ‘meaning’, but Searle’s mistake is that he universalizes it as a general structure, while in Austin (1962) it is only a working distinction without any claim to generalization.

Moreover, Austin explicitly doubts that such a distinction is applicable to all cases. In ordinary language illocutionary force is often inseparable from propositional content, and this is not a matter of the elliptic or enthymematic nature of utterances. ‘I will…’ is an entirely common and relevant utterance, where it is impossible to determine a priori whether it expresses a promise, an intention, a prediction, etc. It is not even necessary that while uttering it the speaker must ‘know’ and ‘distinguish’ exactly what illocutionary act he/she is performing. Hence, the ambiguity of such utterances – an ‘ambiguity’ which appears only when we try to think of them ex post in terms of the familiar distinctions between types of illocutions – will in fact turn out to be a primary phenomenon; because, Austin (1962, p.71) says, ‘“I will…” is earlier than “I promise that I will…”’ The distinction between illocutionary force and propo-sitional content, as well as the distinction between the different types of illocu-tionary forces, are a later phenomenon. In ‘primitive languages’ or in ‘primitive or primary forms of utterance’, says Austin (ibid., pp.71-72), there are no such distinctions; they are historically and logically constructed ex post.6

My analysis will lead precisely in this direction.Searle, however, presupposes these distinctions.Why? What is their function?The structural analogy between the F(p) form of illocutions in Searle and

Husserl’s noetico-noematic correlations is self-evident. Especially considering that Searle (1979b; 1981) posits the same structure at a basic pre-linguistic level – as a basic correlation between intentional state and intentional content. Here, however, I only outline one possible direction of reading speech acts as delimited а priori at the level of consciousness, with all familiar arguments against such an assumption.

However, what seems more important to me is to see what is the practical function of the strict distinction between illocutionary force and propositional content. My thesis is the following:


The presupposed analytical division of every speech act into two parts, il-locutionary force and propositional content, serves both as an explanation and a validation of the relevant act in two directions – in relation to two classic but likewise presupposed instances: the presupposed subject and his/her inten-tions, on the one hand, and the presupposed reality or ‘the world’, in Searle’s words, on the other. Speech acts in Searle are included in a variant of copy theory where, in order to avoid the problems found in classic theories which assume that there is only a one-way relation (either to the state of affairs or to mental concepts), speech acts are divided into two so that each of their parts will express one of the two instances. Searle’s representationism is declared explicitly in what he calls the Principle of Expressibility (Searle, 1968, p.415), according to which every thought and every state of affairs can be expressed linguistically through the available resources of language and their recombina-tion (‘whatever can be meant can be said,’ as Searle (ibid.) puts it). In other words, there is nothing that cannot be expressed in language, nothing that is inexpressible, and language has no function other than literal expression. Ac-cordingly, it is assumed that there are two basic validity predicates sanctioning the rightness of an expression in the two above-mentioned directions: sincerity/insincerity, which measures the correspondence of the illocutionary force to the speaker’s intentional state; and true/false, which measures the correspondence of the propositional content to the world.

Habermas inherited precisely this structure of speech acts and its func-tions. Following the logic of its construction, Habermas adds a third direction of correspondence of speech acts – in relation to intersubjective norms.7 Thus the double, F(p) structure of speech acts in fact becomes a triple, I – Thou – p structure in Habermas. Of course, as noted above, to avoid naturalistic presup-positions, Habermas does not assume that it is possible to measure directly the correspondence of speech acts to the speaker’s intention, the state of af-fairs, or norms, leaving it to be validated by the subsequent acts of recognition in communication. In other words, to avoid naturalism, Habermas reinterprets correspondence from correspondent into coherent terms – the correspondence of an expression to reality, intentions or norms is validated not by reality itself but by subsequent arguments. However, this critical move does not change the fact that the types of validity claims are types of questionable correspondence to different instances that are presupposed as being different from and external to speech acts as well.

3. Why Are These Mistakes?An entirely correct but incomplete answer to this question would be: be-

cause such theories base the analysis of speech acts on too many dogmatic met-aphysical presuppositions. Both in Searle’s strong version and in Habermas’s critically loosened version the thesis that language expresses instances that are external to it could hardly stand up to critical anti-representationist arguments


such as those advanced by the late Wittgenstein and other scholars.Such an answer, however, is insuffi cient because it is destructive only. It

does not tell us how speech acts are validated in practice.I will try to answer this last question by looking at two not insignifi cant

details in Searle’s analyses as well as at the diffi culties he encounters when he tries to apply the general F(p) structure as a framework of the different types of illocutionary acts.

In his taxonomy of illocutionary acts Searle (1979a) identifi es fi ve main types:

1. Assertives: all illocutionary acts that commit the speaker to the truth of something: I insist that…; I believe that...; I suppose that... (something is the case).

2. Directives: all illocutionary acts by which the speaker tries to get the hearer to do something: I ask you to...; I order you to…; I insist that you...; etc.

3. Commissives: all illocutionary acts that commit the speaker to some fu-ture action: I promise that...; I undertake to...; etc.

4. Expressives: all illocutionary acts that express the speaker’s psycho-logical state about something: I congratulate you on...; I apologize for...; I de-plore...; etc.

5. Declarations: all illocutionary acts that bring about the immediate ex-istence of some state of affairs solely by declaring that state: I hereby declare war!; I pronounce you husband and wife!; You’re out!; etc.

According to Searle (1979a, pp.vii-viii), these fi ve general types account for all possible illocutionary acts, and all of them can be analyzed in terms of their F(p) structure. Searle describes the differences between these types by us-ing several indicators of which two can be said, with some oversimplifi cation, to be the most important ones. The fi rst indicator specifi es the differences in the type of correspondence between the illocutionary force and the speaker’s in-tentional state – Searle calls it sincerity condition. The other indicator specifi es the differences in the type of correspondence between the propositional content and the state of affairs – Searle calls it direction of fi t.

According to Searle (ibid., pp.4-5), the differently expressed psychological or intentional states are the sincerity conditions of the different illocutionary acts. The sincerity condition of assertives is expression of the speaker’s Belief that (something is the case – р). The sincerity condition of directives is expres-sion of the speaker’s Desire or Want that (something be done – р). The sincer-ity condition of commissives is expression of the speaker’s Intention to (do something – р). The sincerity condition of expressives is the variable Р, which refers to various psychological states (regret, happiness, indignation, etc.). The curious fact I want to note here is that Searle cannot specify an intentional state corresponding to declarations – that is why he says that there is no sincerity condition of declarations and puts the null symbol (0) in the sincerity condi-


tion slot in his symbolized representation of their structure. In declarations like ‘I pronounce you husband and wife!’ or ‘You’re fi red!’ it seems impossible to identify an intention or a psychological state that can serve as an objectifi able sincerity condition. Here Searle (ibid., p.19) is intellectually honest and refuses to invent new arguments for the sole purpose of supporting the general frame-work of his theory.

The other indicator, direction of fi t, is one of the strong points of Searle’s theory and although, as I will show, this indicator is introduced in an inaccurate way, it can prove to be very productive at another level of analysis.8 As noted above, ‘direction of fi t’ is an indicator that specifi es the differences between the types of correspondence between the propositional content and the existing state of affairs, that is to say, between words and the world.

Searle (1979a, pp.3-4) distinguishes two main directions of fi t: the word-to-world direction of fi t and the world-to-word direction of fi t.9 Thus, in his own classifi cation, illocutionary acts that have a descriptive function – assertives – have a word-to-world direction of fi t since words are supposed to be adjusted in order to match the measure of the world (hence, assertives are assessable as true or false). Conversely, illocutionary acts that have a prescriptive function – directives and commissives – have a world-to-word direction of fi t because both in commands and in promises the world is supposed to be adjusted in order to match the measure of the words (the hearer or the speaker must do something in order to match the future state of things to the given command or promise – hence, directives and commissives are felicitous or infelicitous).

From the common-sense point of view, this distinction seems convincing, especially when applied to illocutionary acts that we usually think of as be-ing clearly distinguishable according to some fi rm dichotomies, such as (1) a priori and a posteriori , or (2) description (fact) – prescription (value, norm). However, there are practical problems with the ‘direction of fi t’ of the other two classes of speech acts, which are diffi cult to describe in terms of the above dichotomies.

In the case of expressives, it turns out that there is no direction of fi t (Searle puts a null symbol in the direction-of-fi t slot in their symbolized structure) be-cause, Searle (1979a, p.16) explains, ‘[t]he truth of the proposition expressed in an expressive is presupposed.’ When we say ‘I apologize for stepping on your toe’ or ‘I congratulate you on winning the race’ we express our psychological state while taking the coincidence of the propositional content of the utterance and the existing state of affairs to be an unquestionable fact (it is an incontest-able truth). In other words, in such utterances there is no difference between the words and the fact of ‘your winning the race’ or ‘my stepping on your toe’.10

Whereas expressives prove to have no direction of fi t, something strange occurs also in the case of declarations. According to Searle (ibid., p.19),

[D]eclarations do attempt to get language to match the world. But they do


not attempt to do it either by describing an existing state of affairs (as do assertives) nor by trying to get someone to bring about a future state of affairs (as do directives and commissives).

Utterances like ‘I pronounce you husband and wife’ or ‘I resign’ create problems for the concept of direction of fi t promoted by Searle, for in their case there is obviously no single direction of fi t: neither from words-to-world nor from world-to-words. Faced with this diffi culty, Searle resorts to a rash and illogical move: if declarations resemble neither assertives nor directives nor commissives, then they – he tacitly assumes, without explaining and provid-ing arguments – must resemble assertives and directives and commissives. The hidden substitution of a conjunction for the disjunction, of cataphatic for apophatic (which smacks of mystical theology) leads to the ‘categorical conclu-sion’: in the case of declarations, ‘the direction of fi t is both words-to-world and world-to-words’ (ibid.).

This conclusion is more than surprising. For, as I said, to measure cor-respondence or ‘direction of fi t’ (irrespective of whether it is one-way or two-way), there must be an already existing distance or difference between the two terms that are tested for correspondence. But there is no such difference in declarations – they immediately resist analysis through such a distinction. Let us take several well-known examples:

‘You’re fi red!’ – told by an employer to an employee.‘You’re out!’ – uttered by a referee.‘I hereby declare war!’ – uttered by a commander-in-chief.‘I defi ne х through у!’ – written in a scientifi c treatise.‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth!’ – pronounced by a captain at a

ship-naming ceremony.And so on.Even these ordinary examples, some of which are used by Austin in for-

mulating his thesis of performativity, resist the scheme Searle tries to impose on them. Of course, they could easily be transformed according to the F(p) structure through a secondary analysis: I announce that р (‘that X is fi red’); I declare that р (‘that as of today the country is at war with…’); etc. The fi rst thing, which I will only note now, is that this transformation of an utterance into an F(p) structure is always secondary – it is done ex post and it is not innocu-ous.11 But what is more important here is that even if we were to distinguish the propositional content from the illocutionary force through a secondary analysis, it would still be very diffi cult to distinguish the propositional content from the state of affairs. In speech acts such as declarations one thing is obvious: the state of affairs they declare does not exist before it is declared in words; but then, in a sense, neither do the meanings of the words in the declaration exist before the declared state of affairs;12 that is because the declared state of af-fairs as well as the meaning of the words in the declaration can be said, at the


risk of exaggerating and overemphasizing the phenomenon, to emerge (begin to exist) simultaneously with the utterance of the declaration. If we return to Austin, declarations directly do things with words. And what is specifi c here is that during their actual performance – while they are being done – words and things are actually indistinguishable; while the declaration is in progress, words and things in effect merge into one. When I say I hereby declare war, war as meaning and war as fact are immediately one and the same thing – it is upon its utterance that war becomes a fact in a defi nite sense. Even if just for an instant, while we are actually uttering the declaration, the propositional content and the state of affairs are indistinguishable – they are not two different things that have or do not have a direction of fi t, be it one-way or two-way. ‘Direction of fi t’ is a term that is inapplicable to declarations, at least during their actual perform-ance, for direction of fi t presupposes a distinction between two terms, such as does not exist. During the actual performance of declarations, sign, meaning, and referent coincide immediately.

4. Declarations and the Demiurgic Power of PerformativesDeclarations are performatives that reveal the specifi c demiurgic power

of language. Although the examples we are using are deliberately ordinary, not extraordinary, a careful analysis shows that during the actual performance of declarations, sign, meaning, and referent coincide immediately. One is re-minded here of the Creation story: ‘And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.’

I, however, have no intention of introducing into the analysis of language the myth of the Logos that creates the world ex nihilo.13 The demiurgic power of everyday declarations is much weaker and fragile, for many reasons. Here are two of them: no matter how highly codifi ed is the power (authoritative) position from which an ordinary declaration is performed (the position of the commander-in-chief, the judge, the referee), this power position is never ab-solute. Hence, the demiurgic power of everyday declarations is limited from the very start – it does not begin ex nihilo, it is contextually bound to a defi nite social position that amplifi es (as by a ‘microphone’) or muffl es its might, that is to say, its chance for success. Moreover, everyday declarations are fragile primarily because they are open to contestation by others – their felicity is not guaranteed, it is directly dependent on respondent performances related to their recognition or non-recognition. Unlike the ‘divine act’, they do not begin ex ni-hilo, they are unavoidably exposed to resistances – declarations are never a sin-gular act, they are always a moment in live interaction. It is precisely because of this unavoidable exposure to resistances that I use the term ‘demiurgic’, and not ‘divine’, power.

Hence, performatives in general as well as declarations in particular are never acts of absolute sovereignty. This, however, is not to say that a defi -nite demiurgic aspect which I (Vatsov, 2009; 2010) have hitherto referred to as


‘affi rmative power’ of performatives (or their micro-sovereignty) ought to be ignored. This ‘demiurgic’ aspect was also Austin’s key discovery, the core of performativity. It is to be found immediately in declarations as clear examples of doing things with words.

A brilliant analysis in support of this thesis – an analysis that shifts the focus of interest from declarations as singular acts onto declarations as a larger text, as a series of performances – is offered by Jacques Derrida (1986) in his essay ‘Declarations of Independence’.

His analysis focuses on the United States Declaration of Independence. Derrida’s main purpose is to show that the subject-positions (those of ‘the rep-resentatives’ in Congress) are something that was invented by the Declaration itself but did not exist before the Declaration. In other words, here ‘representa-tion’ is shown to be a performative construct, and not a refl ection of already existing interests or intentions. Derrida (ibid., p.10) sums up all this in his own terms: ‘The signature invents the signer!’ Here is a summary of the main points in Derrida’s demonstration:

- Jefferson de facto wrote the text of the Declaration (he is its ‘draftsman’) but was not authorized to sign it in his own name (in this case he did not rep-resent himself, he represented ‘the representatives’);

- The ‘representatives of the United States in General Congress assembled’, in turn, de facto signed the Declaration and eo ipso authorized themselves (de jure) to sign it – again not in their own name, but in the name of ‘the good people’ of the United States (the representatives likewise did not represent themselves, they represented the people);

- The people, in turn, could not represent themselves either, simply be-cause, in a sense, they did not exist before the Declaration: they were not con-stituted either as a political body (populus) or as individual citizens (cives) of a political community, they became such only by the act of the Declaration.

Thus, in the series of performances, such as is the history and the text of the Declaration, ‘representative’ never represents an already existing subject-po-sition, it constantly refers to ever newer subject-positions that are constituted in the interplay of their actual performative articulations. Before the Declaration there was nothing in the world that was to be represented and that would be an unambiguous model/source of its legitimacy. Nor was there an ideal meaning of ‘representative’ that could simply be applied to the new factual reality – for the Declaration invented ‘the people’ as a sovereign, that is to say, it gave the word ‘representative’ new meaning. Of course, to prevent an endless regression into contestation of the legitimacy of the newly emerging representatives, the Declaration ultimately resorted to the fi gure of the last instance (that is to say, it invoked an already codifi ed meaning of ‘representative’) – God, the ‘supreme judge’ – in whose name all other ‘representative’ subject-positions were legiti-mated and which, as a transcendental signifi er, ended the possibility of further regression. However, Derrida’s careful deconstructive analysis shows that the


Declaration in fact invented not simply a new country, the United States; it also invented the representatives (at the different levels and positions of representa-tion), for whom the new country had to guarantee a just framework. It invented them simultaneously at the two levels which we usually think of as separate – at the level of meanings (what does ‘people’, ‘sovereign state’, ‘representative’, etc., mean?) and at the level of referents (what thing in the world is a ‘people’, ‘sovereign state’, ‘representative’, etc.?). That is precisely how declarations have demiurgic power.

Of course, the Declaration of Independence is a ‘collective’ text, as are other such declarations – not just because they constitute a collective politi-cal subject but also because, being larger texts, they constitute ‘collectives’ of smaller performances, of separate performatives that are attached to and super-imposed on each other.14 What exactly is the ‘logic’ of the superimposition of singular performances into a collective performative (text), and how exactly is affi rmative power at the micro-level transferred and accumulated into the big-ger affi rmative power of the collective performative? This is a very important question which we will leave aside for now. Here, using Derrida’s example – and at the risk of taking a big leap between the micro-level of the singular speech act and the macro-level of the text – we will consider only one central question.

We have hitherto shown that declarations – both at the micro-level at which they are studied (to some extent inaccurately) by Searle and at the macro-level of the large text analyzed by Derrida – demonstrate one and the same pow-er, which may be smaller or bigger, more vulnerable to contestation or more weighty and insistent, but which is invariably structurally analogous: their de-miurgic or affi rmative power. Both the Declaration of Independence and the declaration ‘You’re fi red’ declare one and the same thing – that they do some-thing with words, where words and things (sign, meaning, and referent) coin-cide at the moment of their utterance. It is precisely this actual indistinguish-ability – the momentary conjunction of sign, meaning, and referent into one in the actual performance – that is the indicator of their demiurgic effect.

The important question we must consider, following Austin and Derrida, is then: is the demiurgic power of declarations characteristic only of one specifi c case, of one specifi c type of speech acts and texts, or, conversely, this demiurgic power can be found in every actual performance, in every singular illocutionary act and in every text?

The answer to this question is also suggested by Austin and Derrida: if, as I think, demiurgic power is the central discovery, the core of performativity, then following Austin’s example we ought to stop making any fundamental distinc-tions between performatives on one side, and constatives on the other. Or, if we turn Searle’s taxonomy against him, we must say: we certainly cannot make a fi rm distinction between declarations, on one side, and all other illocutionary acts (such as assertives, directives, and commissives, which have, according to


Searle, a ‘direction of fi t’ – that is to say, where there is a split, not coincidence, between sign and referent), on the other. We must accept that the demiurgic ef-fect is an immanent effect of every performance/illocution and, moreover, that it is an effect which allows us to speak of performativity, performatives, illocu-tions (etc.) and to make internal distinctions between their types.

Of course, demonstrating the demiurgic effect of all illocutionary acts would be a vast, practically endless and impossible, task. That is why here I will limit myself to a single example. I hope, however, that it will be convincing enough, for it belongs to the type of examples we usually think of as directly resisting the idea of a demiurgic effect in every actual performance. I have in mind the most ordinary descriptions (assertives), of which we say by habit that they do nothing of their own, merely repeating an existing state of affairs:

‘The plate is on the table’15 – uttered without any specifi c intention, with-out a specifi c ostensive function, as a simple assertion.

But also:‘It’s sunny outside.’‘George is late.’‘My car’s broken down.’And the like.Could any demiurgic power be at work in those almost mind-numbingly

banal examples?Without being specifi c indexical expressions, each one of those examples

has a certain indexical aspect which I will reinterpret here as a demiurgic ef-fect. The fi rst example is especially suitable for demonstrating my point, and I have used it elsewhere (Vatsov, 2009, p.191ff), because two of the words in it are polysemous: both ‘plate’ and ‘table’ could mean different things. Yet when we say, hear, read or write The plate is on the table, the ambiguity disappears in the actual performance.

That is because when I say The plate is on the table what I immediately have in mind is plate as crockery and not, for instance, ‘plate iron’ or ‘window-plate’; I immediately have in mind table as a piece of furniture and not, say, ‘multiplication table’, and I mean to say that the plate is literally on the table, not that it is ‘presented for discussion’. Thus, the actual performance of the ut-terance immediately fi xes one, and only one, actual meaning of the articulated words – one among many possible meanings, some of which can even be found in the dictionary.

The same effect, however, is to be found at the level of referents. That is because upon performing the utterance The plate is on the table, I immediately have in mind precisely this not ‘that’ table, precisely this not ‘that’ plate’. In other words, the actual performance immediately fi xes one, and only one, ac-tual referent of the word among many possible referents, some of which can even be found in the world.

Moreover, when I say The plate is on the table, plate as meaning and plate


as referent, and table as meaning and table as referent are actually indistin-guishable. The actual performance conjoins, as it were, the meaning and the object into one – we are speaking of one plate (not of two ‘plates’, one of which belongs to the realm of concepts and the other to the realm of objects; such a difference is absent in the actual utterance and would be absurd); we are also speaking only of one table. And so on.

This indexical effect of immediate fi xation of meaning and referent into a single actual thing (which is simultaneously a meaning and a referent) – the thing the word does immediately – is the explicit indicator of the demiurgic power of performances. And this fi xation of meaning and referent into one is not simply a matter of ‘choice’: of choosing a particular meaning of the word and the object we will apply it to. Such a level of refl exivity and conscious-ness where we choose beforehand which words to use and to what end is, in a pragmatist sense, a secondary and incomplete achievement – for however well-trained we may be in refl exivity, we never have full intentional power over words. Even when we are lying – and this is why lying is possible – we actually perform such a conjunction of sign, meaning, and referent into one: that is why lies work. For conjunction is a function of actual speech, of actual performance, and not a matter of intention. It reveals the demiurgic power of speech, not of the speaker.

This demiurgic or affi rmative power can be found in all types of speech acts: it is most explicit in declarations, we feel it clearly in commands and promises where we do things with words, and it is visible even in expressives.16 Although it seems to be less visible in the simplest constatations (in assertives), I hope my analytical demonstration has exposed it at this level too.

To generalize: every actual performance – precisely while it is actual, while it is being performed – has such demiurgic power. The indicator of this power is the immediate indexical conjunction of sign, meaning, and referent into one.

5. The Demiurgic Effect and the JudgeMany might still be wondering whether it is possible to speak of a demi-

urgic power of performatives, even in such banal examples like the declaration ‘Out!’ (uttered by a referee) or in the simple everyday assertion ‘The plate is on the table.’ After all, doesn’t everyone know a priori what ‘out’, ‘plate’, ‘table’, ‘on’, etc., is? We can clearly see the touch lines and goal lines of the football fi eld and we can carefully follow the trajectory of the ball, can’t we? We do see what objects are in a room, don’t we? Where, exactly, is the constitutive power of performatives to be found, common sense – that is to say, our prejudices – asks us.

Whereas we have already given an answer to this question by demonstrat-ing the actual coincidence of sign, meaning, and referent into one, we need to explain it a little further before moving on. We owe this explanation to our prejudices, which should be respected and taken seriously because they refl ect


our experience both in everyday life and in scientifi c research.Of course, every performance of an utterance starts – more or less – from

pre-knowledge of some already codifi ed meanings of words which, moreover, can usually be found described in detail in the dictionaries of the relevant lan-guage. Thus, not just objects but also the meanings of words as objects are characterized by a defi nite type of existence or presence that precedes their actual use. To paraphrase Wittgenstein (1958a, § 11), words are like tools in a tool-box, waiting to be used; their meanings are already lying before (behind) us as strategic ‘potentialities’ or ‘possibilities’, delimiting the possible use of words, their potential actualization. The meanings of words as potentialities or possibilities are always already existing.

Similarly, the objects we encounter in the world are usually immediately existing as well (for the moment, let us rule out the case of the child who is yet to learn to distinguish them, or our exceptional encounters with something unknown which we still cannot make out and defi ne clearly). The more famil-iar the objects are to us and the more immediately present they are, the more clearly they tell us exactly what we can do with them, what their potentialities in the world are and how those potentialities can be actualized. Hence, ob-jects, too, are like tools waiting to be used; they, too, lie before us as strategic ‘potentialities’, delimiting their possible practical use (in Heidegger’s sense of Zuhandenheit, ‘readiness-to-hand’); but also delimiting their possible signifi -cation, themselves indicating the words that can be adequately used to signify them. For it is as if objects, too, do not allow us to call ‘a molehill a mountain’ or ‘black white’.

Thus, every actual performance takes place in a fi eld of already existing, already codifi ed ‘potentialities’ or possibilities. Every actual performance is distinctly determined both at the level of already established (codifi ed) gram-mars and dictionaries, and at the level of different, already established in their distinct existence (that is to say, also codifi ed) referents in the world which, too, delimit the possible use of words. If we want to complicate the picture – which would be more realistic than the present methodological oversimpli-fi cation – we ought to add more than two levels of determination: in relation to the specifi c situational or event-context of the utterance but also in relation to different – of a higher order and more stable – conditions of its perform-ance (institutional, cultural, social, and other norms, procedures, and rituals), etc. But even when it is complicated with such additional features, the general picture remains essentially the same. No matter how complicated is in practice the web of determinations in which actual performances take place, no matter how non-homogeneous it is – for we can easily arrive at an analysis of the in-consistencies in this web and see the holes, contradictions, and leaps between its different levels – the web invariably remains a web of – invisibly or visibly existing – ‘potentialities’. Moreover, of ‘potentialities’ which – more or less di-rectly, more or less consistently – delimit the possible uses and map out the path


of actual performances. Does this mean that every actual performance is simply an actualization of pre-given potentialities? And is there ‘room’ for demiurgic power here at all?

There is, of course. To begin with, we can distinguish a specifi c function of every actual performance: namely, that of terminating the hesitation between the different pre-given potentialities, of actualizing some of them and suspend-ing others. If we think of the performance of speech acts as unfolding in a fi eld of heterogeneous potentialities, such as are the different meanings of words, referents in the world, and any other more or less institutionalized instances, we will see that every actual performance brings about a short-circuit between several (but never all) potentialities. It immediately decides which potentialities to turn into actuality.

This decision-making power of performances is especially distinct in the examples of the referee who rules ‘Out!’ during a game and the judge who rules ‘Guilty!’ at the end of a trial. Here the short-circuit between the ball, the foot of the last player who played with it, the lines of the football fi eld, and the rules of the game occurs in a single word (‘Out!’) – but, at the same time, this short-circuit suspends all other ‘potential’ short-circuits (for example, ‘Corner kick!’ or absence of an explicit ruling, that is to say, continuing the game). We hear an analogous short-circuit between some of the arguments of the defence and the prosecution, between some of the articles of evidence, and some of the witness and expert testimonies in the declaration ‘Guilty!’ which, by its very performance, suspends all other potential interpretations of the facts and of the law. Of course, the short-circuit in such declarations does not mean that we cannot – vocally or mentally – make a parallel alternative or even opposite judgment and, on its basis, contest, appeal or even rebel against the decision of the judge or the referee. We can and very often do make another short-circuit.17 The point is not that the short-circuit produced by the judge’s decla-ration is infallible and incontestable in principle – it is exactly the opposite. The point is that the declaration – every declaration (even the one we perform mentally against the judge) – immediately produces such a short-circuit which at least temporarily – during the actual performance of the declaration – pro-hibits all other interpretations and judgments.18 Thus the actual declaration serves momentarily as a judgment or ruling. It interrupts the interpretative game between the multitude of pre-given and existing potentialities and stops all hesitation in order to judge what is and what should be. The actualization of potentialities eliminates in one go the multiplicity of potentialities – af-fi rming as actual a single state of affairs. That is why here it may be danger-ous – if we are not cautious – to speak of ‘actualization of potentialities’ in the classic sense, according to which actualization means simply fi lling the pre-given empty space of potentiality. On the contrary, by producing a short-circuit, actualization (in the sense in which we understand it here) interrupts the fi eld of potentialities in order to constitute demiurgically the potentiality


which is actualized. Actualization affi rms, in a sovereign way, the potentiality, the actuality of the potentiality, and this affi rmation transforms the ‘pre-given’ space of the potentiality, which is transformed or reaffi rmed, every time anew, in the actual performance.

Of course, declarations and the short-circuits produced by them are of-ten infelicitous. The felicity or infelicity of a declaration directly depends on whether it will be recognized by others, on whether the short-circuit produced by it will be repeated and thereby legitimated or, conversely, contested and refuted. Most often, at least in ordinary situations, recognition is regulated by certain conventions and institutions (in the broad sense of the words) which determine what can or cannot be recognized, and, in the event of a dispute, who has the fi nal say, who has the right to judge. The power of judgment of the child, the citizen, the expert, the judge, etc., is different. Yet despite this ‘difference in power’, despite the additional force that codifi ed authoritative social positions (as well as other institutions, such as the dictionary, grammar, morality, and especially the world) give to the different performances, even the most insignifi cant performances – of ‘the child’ and ‘the madman’ – have a certain, at least minimal, power of judgment. For their declarations too, no matter how ridiculous or absurd they might sound sometimes, produce the same short-circuit as the one found in the declaration of the honorable judge. We will not see their demiurgic effect – their decision-making power – only if we refuse a priori to listen to them.19 But they do have a demiurgic effect because the short-circuit between sign, meaning, and referent, as I said, is not an effect of the speaker or of his/her abilities and positions but of the speech act itself, of its actual articulation. It is precisely on this demiurgic effect of the performance of speech acts, and not on ‘the truth about himself’, that the madman relies when he declares: I am Napoleon! By this declaration the mad-man tries to constitute himself, irrespective of whether we are ready to listen to him, to believe him and to recognize his declaration or, conversely, to mock him.

Moreover, the decision-making power of every actual performance is something we constantly try to, and practically do, institutionalize. For the playing and wandering in the web of different possibilities or potentialities ultimately must stop somewhere, there ultimately must be a limit to the mul-tiplication of interpretations and to the possibility of contestation, and instead of skeptically pondering various validity claims, we must make a decision on validity. We must make a short-circuit between facts, norms, experiences, and their linguistic expressions. Here the fi gures of the judge and the referee are typical examples of the institutionalization of the demiurgic effect, of codifi ca-tion of the decision-making power of actual performances. In these cases the institutionalization consists in that a micro-effect of the actual performance – the conjunction of sign, meaning, and referent into one – is codifi ed as an effect not of the actual performance of the judge but as a macro-effect of his/


her position, as his/her ‘authority’ or ‘right’. The function of this institutionali-zation is a simple one: by this move, recognition of the judge’s declarations is required a priori, the possibility for their contestation is precluded a priori, or at least the possible contestation is maximally removed from the immediate in-teraction and thereby impeded. In other words, the judge is always a critically limited (because of the existence of terms of offi ce, a jury, a right of appeal, a limited sphere of competencies, and so on) but nevertheless institutionalized demiurge. We can think of the emergence and reaffi rmation of other privileged social positions, of the different social hierarchies, and the rights of the actors in them, as different practical institutionalizations of the demiurgic effect of actual performances as well.20 And irrespective of the substantive differences, these practical institutionalizations of the demiurgic effect can be conceived of in their common form as transformations of the micro-power of actual per-formances into codifi ed authority of social positions. Authority is codifi ed and alienated – that is to say, typifi ed and impersonalized – power.

Thus, the judge is by no means an exceptional fi gure. A number of others can be listed in the same category: the politician, the military offi cer, the schol-ar, the expert, the entrepreneur, the employer, and why not also older fi gures, such as the priest, the knight, the nobleman, etc. However different the profi les of those ideal-typical fi gures may be, however the spheres of their rights and duties may vary (historically but also daily), there is a clear thread that con-nects them. Each one of them has a defi nite right to authority, a defi nite – codi-fi ed by tradition or by explicit regulations? – sphere of judgment, of demiurgic power. Moreover, even low social positions, even slaves in antiquity – insofar as and wherever the division of labour is codifi ed – have their own, albeit more limited, spheres of demiurgic power.21 In fact, the very division of labour – let us use this phrase in a more general, not strictly economic, sense to signify every web of established social roles and positions – is always precisely this: codifi cation of the demiurgic effect in defi nite spheres of authority, an attempt at spatial division and regulation of power through its distribution in authorita-tive positions.22

Thus, the demiurgic effect can be observed at least at two levels: (1) at the micro-level of every actual performance which may be very weak, fragile, instantly contestable, negligible; and (2) at the macro-level of the ‘demiur-gically’ codifi ed authoritative positions which greatly amplify but can also weaken the actual performance and its demiurgic effect because they deter-mine its possible recognition or non-recognition. In both cases, however, one thing is important: it is the short-circuit between sign, meaning, and referent that stops contestation, even if often just for an instant. It stops the blurring of the boundaries and fi xes the identity of things in a decision.

That is because, let us not forget, here we are following a thesis we have already arrived at: that the demiurgic effect is not a ‘property’ specifi c only to one type of speech acts (declarations). On the contrary, it is to be found


in every actual performance, even in the most ordinary assertive (The plate is on the table!). Here, too, we see a moment of judgment, of decision-making: it is the actual articulation that decides what ‘plate’ and ‘table’ mean, and which, exactly, the plate and the table are. The ambiguity disappears with the deci-sion, as does the multiplicity of referents in the world. Who is the judge here? Here the judge is, in the fi rst place, the actual performance: although it starts in a fi eld of different codifi ed possibilities or potentialities (that is precisely how we ought to think of facts, meanings, norms, social positions, and so on), the actual performance decides anew which are the facts, meanings, norms through the short-circuit it makes between them. And it is only in the second place that the function of judgment can and is taken by a given ‘judicial posi-tion’ in which a defi nite right to authority is codifi ed: but only to the extent that the potential social energy sedimented and codifi ed in it becomes actualized, to the extent that potential power becomes kinetic power in and by its actual performance.

6. Power: Violence and LegitimacyBy now there should be no doubt that every actual performance is pow-

erful (and, at a second level, authoritative) because it has the character of a decision, of a judgment. Yet even so, the need for a clearer distinction in the meanings of ‘power’, a distinction such as I have not made in my studies so far – becomes compelling. With the help of Derrida again, here I will try to answer this requirement.

In his essay ‘Force of Law. The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’, Derrida (1990, рp.941-943) demonstrates clearly that law can be neither in-stituted (founded) nor even simply enforced without an actually existing ‘per-formative force’ that is its ‘unconditioned condition’, its ‘unfounded founda-tion’. Furthermore, this constitutive performative force has the character of ‘performative and therefore interpretative violence that in itself is neither just nor unjust’ (ibid.).

By way of an explanation, let us take the following quote which I, too, would readily ‘sign’:

To be just, the decision of a judge, for example, must not only follow a rule of law or a general law but must also assume it, approve it, confi rm its value, by a reinstituting act of interpretation, as if ultimately nothing previously existed of the law, as if the judge himself invented the law in every case. No exercise of justice as law can be just unless there is a “fresh judgment” … In short, for a decision to be just and responsible, it must, in its proper moment if there is one, be both regulated and without regu-lation: it must conserve the law and also destroy it or suspend it enough to have to reinvent it in each case, rejustify it, at least reinvent it in the reaffi rmation and the free confi rmation of its principle. Each case is other,


each decision is different and requires an absolutely unique interpretation, which no existing, coded rule can or ought to guarantee absolutely. (Ibid. р.961)

Derrida defi nes the act of judgment, which reinstitutes law, as ‘violence’ (Gewalt), referring back to Walter Benjamin’s ‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt’ and Carl Schmitt’s account of sovereignty. Here I will not explicitly discuss the dangers posed by the return to those two thinkers, and the implicit onto-theo-logical logic of their terms and concepts.23 I will distinguish only those aspects of their concepts that are used by Derrida and that, to my mind, can be truly productive.

1. In both Benjamin’s idea of ‘divine violence’ and in Schmitt’s account of ‘sovereignty’ there is a radical revolutionizing moment of disruption – both terms signify the act of suspending the law, a radical gesture of disobedience and transgression of the established order that culminates in the suspension of order in general (declaration of a ‘state of exception or emergency’). There is no doubt that what is at issue in this negative context is radical violence;

2. But in both Schmitt’s idea of ‘sovereignty’ and in Benjamin’s ‘violence’ there is also a positive or constitutive moment. Although Benjamin attempts to distinguish (a utopian attempt indeed!) ‘mythical violence’ which imposes law from ‘divine violence’ which imposes justice, it is important that we dis-tinguish this constitutive moment of imposition of a defi nite form of power. The same idea is to be found in Schmitt: the sovereign suspends order so as to impose order. There is no doubt, however, that what we have in both cases here – in positive terms – is a form of constitutive violence whose function is to impose power and order.

If we now tone down the mystico-messianic overtones in both thinkers and redirect their concepts from the theological fi rmament of Divine declara-tions to the fragile and everyday performatives, we can still keep – following Derrida – the leading thread in the above distinction. For the everyday uses of the word ‘violence’ likewise clearly specify its meanings in the same two di-rections – as negative rejection of every pre-given order and as positive impo-sition of order. These two aspects can be found simultaneously in every actual performance. Thus, however fragile it may be, however exposed to resistances and hence to a risk of infelicity it may be, every actual performance performs – and this is an entirely immanent operation – an act of performative violence. It immediately suspends every rule, every pre-given ‘potentiality’ of power and, in this sense, it eliminates every authority so that it will, simultaneously with that, reaffi rm and reconstitute a defi nite rule, particular ‘potentialities’, a particular form of authority. Every actual performance instantly and radically interrupts the pre-given regimes of its reproduction, it interrupts the logics of codifi ed authority and sovereignty in order to transform, reaffi rm or reject them in an immediate and sovereign way – through its demiurgic effect.


By this we have already introduced a terminological distinction in the meanings of ‘power’. (1) At the level of actual performances – through their demiurgic effect – we have exposed an immediate, unfounded, and non-codi-fi ed dimension of power manifested as performative violence. (2) At the same time, we have distinguished this violence from the codifi ed and institutional-ized forms of power, that is to say, from authority. With the help of Austin and Derrida, we have shown that at the basic ontological level violence is a condition of possibility of authority, and not vice versa. That is because no form of institutionalized power (authority) can work or even exist without the constitutive for it demiurgic violence of actual performances.

Derrida (1990, p.943) says the following about this demiurgic effect of violence which, in itself, is neither just nor unjust for there is no external cri-terion by which it can be judged: ‘Here the discourse comes up to its limit: in itself, in its performative power itself. It is what I here propose to call the mystical. Here a silence is walled up in the violent structure of the founding act.’ That is how Derrida interprets – after Montaigne and Pascal – ‘the mysti-cal foundation of authority’.

Contrary to Derrida, however, we must say: there is nothing mystical here. For even though we cannot inquire deeper – below or behind the violent demiurgic effect of discourse – even though we cannot fi nd a reason or crite-rion by which we can judge or justify it in some ‘objective’ way, we actually have no need of a similar – other, external – criterion or reason. By exposing the demiurgic violence involved in every actual performance, we have arrived at a point of negativity which ought to be taken as a starting point in recon-structive work as well; and more importantly, which we practically take as a starting point whenever we say or write something, every time anew. For if every actual performance immediately exercises demiurgic violence, then our performances too – the ones we are performing now – have the same violent demiurgic effect. By this I want to underline that we do not need to look for an external reason for legitimating a given performance or to mystically con-template ‘the absence of reason’, because the instance that judges in practice is the actual performance we are performing now. The actual performance immediately suspends all former and possible future performances in order to transform, reaffi rm or reject them immediately – that is to say, the act of legiti-mation and de-legitimation is our actual act, hence our actual responsibility.

Still, to lower the tone and to prevent possible exaggeration of the de-miurgic effect of actual performances, let us posit several conceptual critical limitations:

1. Every actual performance produces an effect of demiurgic violence, but not because it implies the existence of some preceding it Demiurge. The sedimentation of a subject-point of the performance is part of its demiurgic effect.

2. Every actual performance produces an effect of demiurgic violence,


but not because it is some ‘extraordinary event’. On the contrary, insofar as the demiurgic effect is to be found in every actual performance, it is the most ordinary and everyday event.

3. Every actual performance produces an effect of demiurgic violence, but not because it is infallible and incontestable. On the contrary, it is always di-rectly contestable but always and only from the outside – by another counter-performance, instant or subsequent, which, in its turn, actually produces an effect of demiurgic violence; etc.

A more complicated task, which I will not resolve here, is the analysis of the concrete ways in which violence is contested, revised, and recognized in linguistic and pre-linguistic interaction so as to sediment the different codifi ed – legitimate and illegitimate? – forms of authority, that is to say, the different norms, rules, and institutionalized positions in interaction. Still, to go back to the beginning, I will say: power, at that, in an extreme form – as immediate violence – is to be found at the most basic level of interaction as a specifi c feature of every actual performance. And this violence is an immanent condi-tion of possibility of every norm, which is always a practically codifi ed form of authority. If that is so, then every account of the validity and legitimacy of utterances and norms which presupposes in principle the elimination of power from communication is doomed to failure. On the contrary, we ought to com-pletely change our conceptions of validity and legitimacy. Here validity and legitimacy can mean one thing only: immediately recognized power.

NOTES

1 ‘These refl ections point in the direction of basing the rationality of an expression on its being susceptible of criticism and grounding’ (Habermas, 1984, p.9).

2 The insensitivity of the Habermasian communicative theory to the problematics of power, as well the polarization of debates in contemporary critical theory to the point of an excluding disjunction of ‘power’ and ‘validity’, are brilliantly reconstructed by Amy Allen in her latest book (Allen, 2008). Whereas I fully agree with Allen’s project of reintegrating the problematics of power into normative theories, I am trying to shift the accent of this task more towards the basic level of actual performances than towards the codi-fi ed forms of power.

3 For a careful initial derivation of ethnomethodological indexicality from Heidegger’s concepts of ‘haec-ceitas’ and ‘formal indication’, see Koev, 2008. Despite the difference in the vocabulary, here there is a basic similarity in the problematic – with regard to what I will try to demonstrate as being a ‘demiurgic effect’ of performatives. I am looking forward to Kolyo Koev’s further studies on the problem.

4 This problem in Wittgenstein is examined in my essay ‘The Skeptical Paradox in Wittgenstein: Other Ways of Solving It?’ (in Bulgarian) in Vatsov, 2009, pp.101-118. There I agree with Saul Kripke (1982) in insisting that the skeptical paradox is central to all of Wittgenstein’s later work. Already in The Blue Book Wittgenstein (1958b) says clearly that it is not rules that defi ne the meaning of words; it is the last interpretation of a rule (that is to say, the actual performance) that immediately – ‘demiurgically’, in my vocabulary – fi xes the meaning of words (‘Every sign is capable of interpretation; but the meaning shouldn’t be capable of interpretation. It is the last interpretation.’ Ibid., p.34; underlining added). Later, in Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein (1958a, § 98-202) largely neutralizes the ‘demiurgic effect’ he himself had already discovered, and presents rule-following as a ‘custom’, ‘use’, ‘institution’ – which, as


I insist in the above-mentioned essay, is not a solution to, but rather an evasion of, the problem, a compro-mise.

5 Although Habermas refers more often to Austin than to Searle, he has nevertheless internalized in his read-ing of Austin Searle’s point of view and reads Austin like Searle.

6 I have shown how meaning is shifted and rewritten ex post in the propositional content of utterances in ‘The Temporal Turn in the Concept of Truth’ (in Bulgarian), in Vatsov, 2009, pp.118-149; also p.171ff. Darin Tenev (2010) has recently made an excellent demonstration of how the meaning of the illocutionary force is also shifted and rewritten ex post, in subsequent acts of explication of previous statements.

7 In fact, what Habermas did in this respect was not particularly new either: already in Austin, as well as in Searle, a third instance in relation to which the validity of a given performative is measured consists of its contextual felicity conditions (extra-linguistic ‘intersubjective’ conventions, procedures, and institutions that play the role precisely of a normative grammar of performatives).

8 Searle’s mistake in treating the ‘direction of fi t’ is that he takes it for granted that there is a split (difference) between words and the world. This is what I will argue against here. ‘Direction of fi t’, however, may prove to be a productive term in analyzing the ways words split from the world (contestation of the truthfulness or felicity of an utterance) as well as the ways they are brought back into synchrony (validation, recogni-tion of an utterance).

9 Searle’s distinction is structurally analogous to the classical distinction between the directions of truth as adaequatio in Thomas Aquinas: truth is either the correspondence of human concepts to the things in the world (adaequatio intellectus humani ad rem creatum), or the correspondence of things in the world to divine concepts (adaequatio rei creandae ad intellectum divinum). Of course, Searle does not speak of concepts or of God, but the logical function of the correspondence is the same. For a more detailed analysis of the problem through Heidegger’s critique of truth as correspondence, see ‘The Temporal Turn in the Concept of Truth’ (in Bulgarian) in Vatsov, 2009, pp.118-148.

10 If we introduce an element of doubt as to the coincidence of the propositional content of an expressive and the existing state of affairs, we will get nonsensical statements: ‘I apologize for possibly stepping on your toe’; ‘I congratulate you on winning the race, which I’m not sure you did!’ ‘My condolences on the loss you may have suffered!’; etc.

11 Let us recall Austin’s example of ‘I will…’, which can be interpreted only ex post as an expression of an intention, promise or prediction. What is important in this case is that ‘I will…’ does not necessarily have to be any of the three upon the actual performance of the utterance. Such examples demonstrate that the ex post defi nition of the type of illocutionary force involves a moment of violence, of changing the meaning of the utterance, and is not an innocuous and impartial explication of what is meant. Let us take a most ordinary example: a child says ‘I will…’ and his/her parent subsequently holds him/her accountable for a promise (‘You promised…’) as if such a promise had been made explicitly. The second illocution directly exercises violence upon the fi rst one – violence is an unavoidable part of the training in which we learn to be refl exive and responsible.

This problem will be examined in greater detail elsewhere – here this note should be read as a warning that the transformation of an illocution into ‘its F(p) structure’ is not merely an explication of enthymemati-cally omitted moments that have already existed in it, but a rewriting or even addition of moments that did not exist in it. We may even say that in a number of cases, analyzing an illocution in terms of F(p) form is in fact tantamount to ascribing it an F(p) form ex post, a form which it did not have at all upon its actual performance. To use Deyan Deyanov’s felicitous term (Deyanov, 2003, p.113ff), to think of ‘I will…’ in this way means to think of it in terms of an ‘imposed logical type’ (as ‘I promise I will…’), and not ac-cording to – its (sic!) actual – measure. Thus, the ex post ascription of an F(p) form to a given illocution is always an ascription of an ‘imposed logical type’ – another question on which I disagree with Deyanov is whether it is at all possible to speak of ‘own logical types’, of ‘own measure’, etc., if we take into account the actuality of performances.

12 The fact that the performance of an utterance actually changes and even constitutes the meanings of words is not very obvious from the standard examples we have used so far. Common sense would ask: after all, doesn’t everyone know a priori what war is, even before war is declared? The effect of constituting mean-ing is examined in the next section, in the part on ‘Declarations of Independence’, but also as found in ordinary assertives.

13 The task of this analysis is to show that the demiurgic power of speech, which is immanent in the actual performance of speech acts, should by no means be conceived of as entry of transcendence (of some divine or messianic power) into language. On the contrary, the immanent and weak demiurgic power of


performatives is the prototype that is hyperbolized and stripped of involvement in interaction in order to produce the myth of the super-powerful act of divine creation ex nihilo. This transformation of the weak and immanent demiurgic power of performatives into a super-powerful and transcendent power (instance) is a standard logical operation that is part of strategies for codifying the positions of performative power. In a nutshell, the strategy for codifying demiurgic power is the following: if God created the world by means of an absolute declaration, then anyone who speaks in His name (the charismatic leader, the king, the pope, the people, etc.) has ‘the right’ to make declarations that may not be contested.

14 The logic of construction of ‘collective’ or, to use Todor Petkov’s felicitous term, ‘molecular performa-tives’, is something that should become the subject of careful future analysis. However, I prefer the expres-sion ‘collective performative’ because ‘molecular’ has connotations of the analytic distinction between atomistic and molecular, that is to say, it introduces too much ‘logic’ into the analysis of performativity – the word can mislead us into neglecting the illogical effects of escape, shift, and superimposition of meanings in the interplay of performatives.

15 Translator’s note: ‘Listat e varhu masata’ in the Bulgarian original which, in this particular case, would translate literally as ‘The sheet [of paper] is on the table’. In Bulgarian, both ‘list’ and ‘masa’ have homo-nyms, ‘list’ meaning leaf (of a tree or any plant; leaf of a book), sheet of paper, or sheet or plate of metal, and ‘masa’ meaning table (as a piece of furniture), or mass (as physical mass, ‘the multitude’, or ‘lots of’).

16 Many people are uncomfortable with the formality and distinct ‘hollowness’ of some expressives in ritual-ized situations: for instance, saying ‘My condolences’ to the family of a deceased person at a funeral may sound to someone clichéd to the point where the phrase has lost its meaning and is incapable of expressing the speaker’s feelings. Although it is something we often feel, this feeling of the banality and emptiness of clichés does not take into account the specifi c function of ritualized clichés. This function is demiurgic: for the actual repetition of the phrase, however hackneyed it may be, is meant to immediately constitute a position of compassion, to invent such a position even if it is non-existent. In fact, all rituals rely precisely on this: by actually repeating set phrases, insofar as the demiurgic power of language is activated in their actual performance, they reconstitute the world anew.

17 It is obvious that here I presuppose a multiple conception of actuality that allows for the existence of paral-lel – ‘in time’ – actualities.

18 I use the phrase ‘short-circuit’ in order to indicate that the connection of the different ‘elements’ (percep-tions and terms) into one is not a logical process. On the contrary, at the basic level the process is illogi-cal – what we have here is ‘equating what is unequal’ (Gleichsetzen des Nicht-Gleichen), in the words of Nietzsche (1954, p.46), a radical metaphorical leap (see Vatsov, 2009, pp.149-171).

19 Here of course we must refer the reader to Michel Foucault and his genealogy of madness, where ‘reason’ constitutes madness as its other and dooms it to silence. Foucault’s project is an excellent demonstration of the fact that codifi cations are constituted on the basis of the principle of exclusion of – some – other which is doomed, to a greater or lesser extent, to silence. And that codifi cations and the limits constructed through them are not ‘natural’ but shift and vary historically and, I would add, daily.

20 Of course, the institutionalization of the demiurgic effect of actual performances is always concomitant with something I will provisionally call here institutionalization also of the critical effect. For in practice, the codifi cation of rights is unavoidably bound to codifi cation of duties and responsibilities, that is to say, to the construction of limits beyond which the acts and declarations from the relevant position prove to be contestable. Only the metaphysical monotheistic ideal of the Absolute Judge claims it is not subject to such a critical limitation – the most compelling example of this is the postulate of the ‘infallibility’ of the pope. Fortunately, secular critique has distanced modern law from all attempts at such – in fact, practically impossible – absolute institutionalization of the demiurgic effect. As for the question of why and how such absolute institutionalization is practically impossible, the answer is: because even though it is declared to be absolutely sovereign, the position of the ruler in fact functions in interactive mode, through the ‘mir-rors’ of his immediate recognition or non-recognition – see the excellent study on this subject by Anastas Gerdzhikov (2007). See also the conceptual analysis of Sergey Stefanov (2010), according to whom ‘the transcendence of the power’ of mediaeval rulers is a secondary and added ideological construct posited ex post to legalize an interactively achieved asymmetry in powers.

21 Suffi ce it to recall that the so-called ‘Scythian Archers’ in ancient Athens, who performed the functions of a ‘police force’, were slaves who, however, had quite broad powers.

22 This phenomenon is examined – in terms of ‘spatialization of power’ – in Vatsov, 2009, pp.185-189.23 The implicit essentialist and messianic logic of ‘mythical’ and ‘divine violence’ in Walter Benjamin and


even of the radically-critical rethinking of these concepts by Giorgio Agamben is deconstructed in an excellent way by Boyan Manchev (2010) in his essay in this issue.

REFERENCES

Allen, A. (2008) The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Austin, J.L. (1962) How To Do Things With Words. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.Derrida, J. (1986) Declarations of Independence. Translated by T. Keenan and T. Pepper. New

Political Science, 15, рр.7-15.Derrida, J. (2000). Limited Inc. 6th paperback ed. Translated by Samuel Weber. Evanston, IL:

Northwestern University Press.Derrida, J. 1990. Force of Law. The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’. Translated by Mary

Quaintance. Cardozo Law Review, 11, рр.920-1045.Deyanov, D. (2001) Uvod v logikata i metodologiyata na humanitarnite nauki. Plovdiv: Plovdiv

University Press.Gerdzhikov, A. (2007) Kachestvata na imperatora spored korpusa na latinskite panegiritsi. So-

fi a: Iztok-Zapad.Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationali-

zation of Society. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A

Critique of Functionalist Reason. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1998a) Actions, Speech Acts, Linguistically Mediated Interactions, and the Life-

world. In: Habermas, J. On the Pragmatics of Communication. Edited by Maeve Cooke. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp.215-255.

Habermas, J. (1998b) What Is Universal Pragmatics? In: Habermas, J., On the Pragmatics of Communication. Edited by Maeve Cooke. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp.21-103.

Koev, K. (2008) Opisanie i nesigurnost: sotsiologicheskata relevantnost na Heideggerovoto for-malno ukazvane. Sotsiologicheski Problemi, 1-2, s.40-62.

Kripke, S. (1982) Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-versity Press.

Manchev, B. (2010) Between Sovereign Violence and Human Action. Giorgio Agamben and the Critique of Political Sovereignty. Critique & Humanism, 35 (special issue), pp.39-56.

Nietzsche, F. (1954) From On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense. In: The Portable Nietzsche. Edited and Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: The Viking Press, pp.42-47.

Searle, J.R. (1962) Meaning and Speech Acts. The Philosophical Review, 71 (4), pp.423-432.Searle, J.R. (1968) Austin on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts. The Philosophical Review, 77

(4), pp.405-424.Searle, J.R. (1979a) Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.Searle, J.R. (1979b) What Is an Intentional State? Mind, 88 (349), pp.79-92.Searle, J.R. (1981) Intentionality and Method. The Journal of Philosophy, 78 (11), pp.720-733.Stefanov, S. (2010) Figurata na kralya: asimetria na spravedlivostta i transtsedentnost na vlastta.

Critique & Humanism, 33 (3), s.253-268.Tenev, D. (2010) Austin and Mauss with Derrida: Gift and Speech Acts. Critique & Humanism,


35 (special issue), pp.275-284.Vatsov, D. (2006) Svodoba i priznavane. Interaktivnite izvori na identichnostta. Sofi a: New Bul-

garian University.Vatsov, D. (2009) Opiti varhu vlastta i istinata. Sofi a: New Bulgarian University.Vatsov, D. (2010) Performativat: suverenna vlast vmesto saprotiva. Critique & Humanism, 32

(2), s.159-178.Wittgenstein, L. (1958a) Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. In: The

Collected Works of Ludwig Wittgenstein. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Wittgenstein, L. (1958b) The Blue and Brown Books. Preliminary Studies for the ‘Philosophical

Investigations’. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. In: The Collected Works of Ludwig Witt-genstein. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

ENG: The Performative: Violence and Demiurgic Power

Documents

Transcript of ENG: The Performative: Violence and Demiurgic Power