Hamlet:
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature:
for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose
end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the
mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own
image, and the very age and body of the time his form and
pressure.
I have, previously, remarked upon the fact that I believe Shakespeare understood performativity better than anyone who has ever lived. But as I read Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, I am discovering that N. alone, of all of whom I am aware, probably understood performativity nearly as well if not better. Indeed, as I read Nietzsche, I am beginning to formulate a realization: So much that I have written over the last year or so, perhaps over the last decade, appears to have been written first by Nietzsche, although I never knew it.
If you want an entry into the subject of performativity, you could do far, far worse than by reading The Gay Science. I would suppose that Nietzsche’s general lack of awareness of the word, “performativity,” might mean that a prior brief, basic understanding of the word might be useful before attempting The Gay Science; but that is the only caveat I would give. (Incidentally, this appears to be the hallmark of all who have gone before: so many philosophers, stretching back at least to Plato/Socrates and not excluding Shakespeare, appear to have been fumbling toward an understanding of and explanation of performativity without knowing that was their goal. I make a slight exception for Shakespeare in this characterization, since he appears to have spent his effort in displaying it rather than explaining it—although one might say that displaying it as he did might be the highest, best form of explanation possible for the concept of performativity. Besides which, one might find ample cases of direct explanation of performativity within those displays, scattered here and there.)
I have just read for the first time section 354 of The Gay Science—which goes about as far toward presenting the basic foundation for a study of performativity as I have read. I would present it here, but it is a rather long section in a book filled with brief sections. Section 354 has as its opening the phrase, “On the ‘genius of the species.’—” I am inspired to contemplate Shakespeare & Nietzsche, together,* from this line in that section of The Gay Science:
The whole of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror.
The entire exploration of “the genius of the species” concerns the origin of performativity (at least of the human performativity): the social concerns, the original utility of performativity, the emergence of consciousness & language, the scope and reach of performativity even now. Even without finding his assertion of the origin of consciousness and language to be 100% accurate (and I am not saying that it is not), the general thrust of the section is to the point and valuable. (I would recall here once again that a failure to conceptualize performativity as such might lead to gaps, oversights, abridgements, and so forth…I am formulating a hypothesis: That a great portion of what has gone before went before in order to lead us, as it appears, sooner or later, to a full understanding of the implications and realities of performativity.)
I am reading the Walter Kaufmann translation of The Gay Science, which I highly recommend. If you want an out-of-context (respecting the whole book) acquaintance with section 354, for the sake of the context of this post, here’s a link to a different translation: 354. (Lack of paragraphs, proper emphasis, and even very poor punctuation, etc., make for a much worse translation. I may type and upload Kaufmann’s at some point….)
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* I am aware of Nietzsche’s reading of Shakespeare, and use of Shakespearean tropes, from various critical works I’ve read. So I am not presuming a new conflation of the two.
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