This international workshop will be dedicated to an exploration of the range and scope of contemporary deployments and interrogations of ‘the performative’. Since the publication of J. L. Austin’s How to do Things with Words, the term ‚performativity‘ has been the object of re-contextualisation in and across domains of knowledge with significant and complex effects. Exciting scholarship has emerged in the fields of gender studies, sociology, anthropology, economics, cultural studies, film and media studies, philosophy of science and bioscience, as theories of ‘the performative’ increasingly turn to examine objects of enquiry as diverse as financial markets, new ethnicities, ‘race’ and audit cultures, quantum physics, embodiment and agency in the context of Islamist piety movements, aging and new subjectivities, in addition to ongoing engagements in literary studies.
The workshop will provide an opportunity to trace and reflect upon the plural histories of performativity, whilst seeking to engage with its contemporary permutations in and across different ‘contexts’ and domains of knowledge. It will seek to promote analysis of the ongoing significance of ‘performativity’, as well as problems and limitations with, and possibilities inherent in its deployment across the social sciences and humanities.
Please note that spaces are limited to 30.
Participants include: Karen Barad (University of California Santa Cruz), Judith Butler (University of California Berkeley), Shoshana Felman (Emory University), Clare Hemmings (London School of Economics), Donald MacKenzie (University of Edinburgh), Henrietta Moore (London School of Economics), Diane Negra (University of East Anglia), Carolyn Pedwell (London School of Economics), Kalpana Ram (Macquarie University Sydney), Eve Sedgwick (City University of New York), Susan Squier (The Pennsylvania State University), Shirley Anne Tate (University of Leeds).
Contact
Dr Silvia Posocco and Dr Sadie Wearing
Performativities: Contexts, Domains, Perspectives International Workshop
Gender Institute
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street 
London WC2A 2AE
UK
Tel. (Posocco) +44 207 955 7771 (Wearing) +44 207 955 7194
Fax: +44 207 955 6408