Claudia Briones
cbriones@filo.uba.ar
CONICET/Universidad de Buenos Aires

Abstract:

This article aims to review some knowledge derived from performative theories of identity to reflect on the performativity of the theories. Even though it is vital to critically examine the capacity of agency and materiality that carries scientific discourse – a discourse authorized by excellence, especially when it takes place more in the center than at the margins of the hegemonic activity – one of the questions that I want to offer and share is if the notion of performativity is the best way of doing so. Taking constructivism as a quasi posture of common sense in contemporary social investigators, I am interested in revising some of their regulatory fictions – like the one of contrastivity – to point out certain theoretical, political and ethnographic effects that result from basing analysis on a “cliché of performativity”.

Keywords: politics of identity, performativity, subjectivities, ethnography, critical theory