Editing Performativity (section)

=== Jacques Derrida ===
Philosopher [[Jacques Derrida]] drew on Austin's theory of performative speech act while deconstructing its logocentric and phonocentric premises and reinscribing it within the operations of generalized writing. In contrast to structuralism's focus on linguistic form, Austin had introduced the ''force'' of speech acts, which Derrida aligns with [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche's]] insights on language.

In "Signature, Event, Context," Derrida focused on Austin's privileging of speech and the accompanying presumptions of the presence of a speaker ("signature") and the bounding of a performative's force by an act or a context. In a passage that would become a touchstone of [[Post-structuralism|poststructuralist]] thought, Derrida stresses the citationality or iterability of any and all signs.<blockquote>Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the current sense of this opposition), in a small or large unit, can be ''cited'', put between quotation marks; in doing so it can break with every given context, engendering an infinity of new contexts in a manner which is absolutely illimitable. This does not imply that the mark is valid outside of a context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center or absolute anchorage [''ancrage'']. This citationality, this duplication or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is neither an accident nor an anomaly, it is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could not even have a function called "normal." What would a mark be that could not be cited? Or one whose origins would not get lost along the way?<ref>{{Cite book|title=Limited, Inc.|last=Derrida|first=Jacques|publisher=Northwestern University Press|year=1988|isbn=978-0810107885|location=Evanston|pages=12}}</ref></blockquote>Derrida's stress on the citational dimension of performativity would be taken up by Judith Butler and other theorists. While he addressed the performativity of individual subject formation, Derrida also raised such questions as whether we can mark when the event of the Russian revolution went awry, thus scaling up the field of performativity to historical dimensions.