Performativity

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The capacity of language and expressive actions to perform a type of being. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    The quality of being performative. countable, uncountable

    "Keeping both American theater and its double within the sight lines, I would like to look at MPD as a pathology in which both both performativity and social performance are outstripped by a mise-en-scène that veers past the merely performative and dangerously close to theater itself, threatening to erase the differences in its very misappearance."

Example

More examples

"Keeping both American theater and its double within the sight lines, I would like to look at MPD as a pathology in which both both performativity and social performance are outstripped by a mise-en-scène that veers past the merely performative and dangerously close to theater itself, threatening to erase the differences in its very misappearance."

Etymology

From performative + -ity.

More for "performativity"

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.