Judith Butler, "Performativity, Precarity and Sexual Politics" (Summary)

Gender performativity and precarity are concepts that focus on conditions that threaten life in ways that appear outside of one's control. Gender is performative, meaning it is a certain kind of enactment, often mistaken for its internal truth. Precarity, on the other hand, describes conditions that pertain to living beings, such as the possibility of undoing or redoing norms in unexpected ways, opening up the possibility of a remaking of gendered reality along new lines. Social and political institutions are designed to minimize conditions of precarity, especially within the nation-state. However, precarity is a politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death. This can lead to diseases, poverty, starvation, displacement, and exposure to violence without protection. Precarity is directly linked with gender norms, as those who do not live their genders in intelligible ways are at heightened risk for harassment and violence. Gender norms play a role in how we appear in public space, distinguish between public and private spaces, and who will be criminalized based on public appearance.

The concept of power is rooted in the idea that it cannot remain in power without reproducing itself. This means that every act of reproduction risks going awry or adrift, producing effects that are not fully foreseen. The subject, in such contexts, is not a sovereign precondition of action and thought but a socially produced agent and deliberator whose agency and thought is made possible by a language that precedes that "I". Power relies on a mechanism of reproduction that can undo the strategies of animating power and produce new and even subversive effects. This paradox arises in politics, where the subject is not a precondition of politics but a differential effect or power. Sexual and gender norms condition what and who will be "legible" and what and who will not. The performativity of gender is bound up with the differential ways in which subjects become eligible for recognition. The desire for recognition can never be fulfilled, but to be a subject at all requires first complying with certain norms that govern recognition. Non-compliance calls into question the viability of one's life and the ontological conditions of one's persistence.

In May 2006, illegal immigrants in Los Angeles began singing the national anthem of the United States in English and Spanish, and sometimes sang one anthem right after the other. Their aim was to petition the government to allow them to become citizens. However, they were exercising the right of free assembly without having that right, which belongs to citizens. This public performance was an act of asserting the right to free assembly without having it.

There are political battles in California and other states about whether English should be the obligatory language for all public services and schools. Those who defend the "English-only" policies are fearful about the multilingual reality of the public sphere and the cultural presence of the Spanish language. Singing in Spanish asserts the multilingual reality of the public sphere and refuses privatization strategies that require English in the public and relegate other languages to the home.

Singing in Spanish on the street gives voice and visibility to populations that are regularly disavowed as part of the nation, exposing the modes of disavowal through which the nation constitutes itself. In essence, the singing exposes and opposes those modes of exclusion through which the nation imagines and enforces its own unity.

Hannah Arendt's work explores the link between the nation-state and stateless persons, and how those who are stateless can exercise rights even when they are not guaranteed or protected by positive law. Arendt argues that the exercise of rights is not an individual act but rather an action with others, in public and with the sphere of appearance. She believes that the true exercise of freedom comes from social conditions such as place and political belonging, and that the right to have rights should be guaranteed by humanity itself. Arendt asserts that the right to free speech and public freedoms comes into being through its exercise, and that equality is a precondition for making and changing the world. To be a political actor, one must act and petition within the terms of equality, making the "I" a "we" without being fused into an impossible unity. Equality is a condition and character of political action itself, and equality is its goal.

Spivak argues that the borders of the nation-state were established in the service of colonialism, and who counts as a citizen of the nation-state is not answered by pointing to the populations that live within its borders. She argues that the nation-state is brought into being on the backs of stateless peoples, and this is the legacy of colonialism in the making and sustaining of the nation-state. Spivak argues that the nation-state belongs to Europe, but it is not possible to claim the globe as one's place of belonging. She also points out that migrancy and deportation are forcibly regulated throughout the globe, and ideas of hypermobility are based on patterns of mobility within the European Union or between firstworld countries. Spivak also questions the idea that the state represents a given nationality, understood as monolithic and monolingual. She argues that the connection between nation and state is a transient and historically contingent nexus, and that Africa is a place for the experimentation of NGOs and a laboratory for thinking and doing non-nation-centered states.

The text explores the concept of performativity in the context of nation-states and cultural translation. It highlights that a state cannot be considered a single nation, as it can divide populations and force disenfranchised populations together. This creates precarious populations that are exploited by state-sponsored capitalism. The task of cultural translation is crucial for producing alliance in difference and is not a simple multiculturalism.

Spivak argues that indigenous people must acquire dominant languages to be represented by politics and law, and those who fail to do so have no chance to assert rights within recognizable codes. Arendt identifies ideal rights for those without rights, but this way of exercising rights is presumed to work even without supporting conditions.

In subalternity, especially within the Global South, the only way to lay claim to rights is through assimilating to juridical structures that continue to require the effacement and exploitation of indigenous cultures. Translation is a performative exercise that produces a set of connections through language that cannot produce linguistic unity.

To lay claim to rights when one has none, it means translating into the dominant language, exposing and resisting its daily violence, and finding the language through which to lay claim to rights to which one is not yet entitled.

The concept of performativity and precarity is central to understanding the dynamics of public space and citizenship. It is not just about explicit speech acts but also the reproduction of norms that govern the intelligibility of the body in space and time. These norms are conditioned and mediated by social norms, which are made and re-made, sometimes entering into crisis. The theory of gender performativity suggests that norms act on us before we have a chance to act, and when we do act, we recapitulate the norms that act upon us, in relation to norms that precede us and exceed us. This process of being worked on makes its way into our own action.

Gender performativity does not necessarily imply an always acting subject or an incessantly repeating body. It establishes a complex convergence of social norms on the somatic psyche, and a process of repetition that is structured by a complicated interplay of obligation and desire. When political actions are taken, they are already within a set of norms that are acting upon us, and when subversion or resistance becomes possible, it does not necessarily come from a fully deliberate and intentional set of acts.

Gender and sexuality are distinct issues, but they cannot be fully dissociated. Some forms of sexuality are linked to phantasies about gender, and certain ways of living gender require specific sexual practices. There are significant discontinuities between gender norms and normative sexuality, but none of us has the choice to create ourselves ex nihilo. Sexuality is crafted and mobilized by signifiers that none of us actually choose, and we are given over before we decide where and when to give ourselves over. Performativity is a process that implies being acted on in ways we do not always fully understand and of acting in politically consequential ways. Precarious life characterizes such lives who do not qualify as recognizable, readable, or grievable. Queer theory posed questions about how to live with the notion that one's love is not considered love or loss is not considered loss. This differential distribution of grievability ties people in knots without hope of ever becoming undone. The question of how performativity links with precarity can be summarized in questions about how the unspeakable population speaks and makes its claims, what disruption this causes within the field of power, and how they can lay claim to what they require.