Performativity: Not a Circus, but a Carnival

By Maia R. Becerra

Over the past couple of months, the word "performative" has been flying around social media like no other. In a context that is oddly reminiscent of Butler, "performativity" has become the new buzzword for pointing fingers at a person doing something to appear "cool". The keyword here is that for someone to be seen as "performative", somebody else must be able to witness their performance. The idea of performativity becomes a symbiotic relationship between the judge, the spectator, the audience, and the protagonist, the clown, the man reading Joan Didion on the bus. The pseudo discourse arising from these questions is one centered around the idea of the self, and the way identity is portrayed and correspondingly perceived by others: Is reading on public transit performative? Am I performative for wearing artificially distressed clothes? Is my Che Guevara wallet post-ironic? Is my partner performative for reading me French poetry as I fall asleep? Who won the Montreal performative man contest, and why was it not a butch lesbian?

There is a growing concern in this era of overwhelming social media presence and constant surveillance from cameras all around us, that leads to a dystopian feeling of being perpetual spectators and performers in the circus that is everyday life: everyone is obsessed with grasping at how others perceive them, while simultaneously judging the "performativity" of those around them. I am oh so certain that I'm the only person who brings a book to the bar to actually read and not to look interesting... I'm sure everyone else knows that I do this from a place of sincerity and not performance, while if anyone pulls out a book at the bar, I will roll my eyes at them because they're just trying too hard!

We have become actors within our own quotidianity: people spend hours on Instagram reels at the end of a jarring work day following a 4-step tutorial on "how to define their own destiny", but will spend their lunch break at an overpriced café journaling in a hand-bound notebook. To be seen by a spectator doing something "interesting", "profound", or "pretentious" opens the door for the illusion of becoming automatically better than those who are not a part of the one-man show.

This social phenomenon of the cult of performativity has brought to mind the concept of "the carnivalesque" in literary studies. Defined by Mikhail Bakhtin in an analysis of the work of the French novelist Francois Rabelais. Bakhtin, in the book Rabelais and His World, establishes a framework to understand the medieval carnival as an instance of sanctioned, but permitted rebellion, madness, and celebration, where social hierarchies are reversed, power dynamics mocked, and the people are able to disguise themselves as something they are not. Bakhtin defines the period of the carnival as the world upside down, inside out, where social relations resemble those of a play or a spectacle (Bakhtin 7), yet, emphasizes that there are core differences to the performance within theatre, where there is a clear division between actors and audience, and that of the carnival:

"The carnival does not know footlights, in the sense that it does not acknowledge any distinction between actors and spectators. [...] Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time, life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom" (Bakhtin 7).

Bringing this back to the current discussions on performativity, one of the key aspects of the carnivalesque is the disorder that comes with the reversal of roles, and the creation of new ones: clowns become princes, kings become beggars, and so on. Contemporarily, we ache for role reversals: people taking public transit dressed in "old money" clothes, trust-fund artists wearing the same thrifted shirt for a week straight. A performance of something we were not born as becomes an essential part of identity formation and a kind of subversion against the cards we're dealt. Thus, performativeness carries bigger implications than just appearing to look cool, well-read, or interesting. There are racial, gendered, and sociopolitical elements to this "performance". Performance, ultimately, harbours the fantasy of social mobility. "Dress for the job you want and not the job you have", among other illusions carried by the thought that our own godly-appointed audience can make a change in our everyday realities.

Furthermore, the idea of the carnivalesque functions as a tool to drive home the bizarre, inexplicable, and overwhelming oscillation between life and death. In a period like the one we are treading through politically, environmentally, economically, and socially, where it feels like the world is spinning out of orbit with horrors beyond our comprehension being enacted at the hands of the powerful, the performance of living becomes the only way to become a part of the carnival. Yet, most people engaging in the carnivalesque act of performativity believe themselves to be a part of the circus and not the carnival: individualism leads to the notion that every person is the "main character" of their everyday, and the people they encounter function as an opinionated, judgmental audience for one's self-serving vanity. The circus is a mediated carnival, where roles are established and the audience vs the actors clearly divided and defined. But what happens when everyone wants to fit into the clown car? The carnivalesque: chaos, fights for protagonism, the elephant falls off its balancing ball, and voices pile up on top of each other to define what the appropriate "discourse" is. Words like "the culture" as something hegemonic, eulogized Sontag excerpts brought up during cigarette breaks, Joni Mitchell's blackface controversy, is drinking matcha ethical? Am I queer enough? What the fuck is a labubu?

That is all to say that none of us is the performer swinging from the trapeze on a sold-out night at the circus. At most, our performativity resembles that of medieval peasants on their one night off from feudal labor. This search for freedom, fun, and liberation comes at the cost of accepting the reality that maybe we are all being performative at all times. Even in the dark.

Works Cited:

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Midland Book, 1984.