Judith Butler e il carattere performativo del potere

Résumé

Butler, like Foucault, believes that power is no longer constrained within sovereignty, but it pervades the social fabric and has, using the Austinian lexicon, a performative character, as it produces “normal” subjects and excludes others as “abnormal”, establishing norms of social intelligibility. Butler learns from Derrida that a norm, like every sign, works if it is iterable, if it can be cited by all members of a community. However, the rehearsal of the conventional formulae in non-conventional ways also governs the possibility of a counter-hegemonic re-conceptualization of politics. In the performativity are inscribed both the normalizing exercise of power and a breaking force, an insurrectionary potential of the collective imaginary, which is embodied, for Butler, especially in plural performances of critical protest, like public assemblies. Performative politics is a politics of imagination, which dismantles the supposed natural order, creating possible alternatives.