Editing Performance studies (section)

===Speech-act theory and performativity===
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An alternative origin narrative stresses the development of speech-act theory by philosophers [[J.&nbsp;L. Austin]] and [[Judith Butler]], literary critic [[Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick]], and also [[Shoshana Felman]]. The theory proposed by Austin in ''How To Do Things With Words''  states that "to say something ''is to do something'', or ''in'' saying something we do something, and even ''by'' saying something we do something".<ref>Austin, J. L. ''How To Do Things With Words''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. p. 94</ref> the most illustrative example being "I do", as part of a marriage ceremony. For any of these performative utterances to be felicitous, per Austin, they must be true, appropriate and conventional according to those with the proper authority: a priest, a judge, or the scholar, for instance. Austin accounts for the infelicitous by noting that "there will always occur difficult or marginal cases where nothing in the previous history of a conventional procedure will decide conclusively whether such a procedure is or is not correctly applied to such a case".<ref>Austin, J. L. ''How To Do Things With Words''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. p. 31</ref> The possibility of failure in performatives (utterances made with language and the body) is taken up by Butler and is understood as the "political promise of the performative".<ref>Butler, Judith. ''[[Excitable Speech : A Politics of the Performative]].'' New York: Routledge, 1997 p. 161</ref> Her argument is that because the performative needs to maintain conventional power, convention itself has to be reiterated, and in this reiteration it can be expropriated by the unauthorized usage and thus create new futures. She cites Rosa Parks as an example:<blockquote>
When [[Rosa Parks]] sat in the front of the bus, she had no prior right to do so guaranteed by any…conventions of the South. And yet, in laying claim to the right for which she had no prior authorization, she endowed a certain authority on the act, and began the insurrectionary process of overthrowing those established codes of legitimacy.<ref>''Excitable Speech : A Politics of the Performative.'' New York: Routledge, 1997 p. 147</ref>
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The question of the infelicitous utterance (the misfire) is also taken up by Shoshana Felman when she states "Infelicity, or failure, is not for Austin an accident of the performative, it is inherent in it, essential to it. In other words&nbsp;... Austin conceives of failure not as external but as internal to the promise, as what actually constitutes it."<ref>Felman, Shoshana ''Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J.L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages'' pp. 45–46</ref>