Austins Ditch: The Political Necessity and Impossibility of :: Austin Politics Essays

capital of Texass Ditch The Political Necessity and Impossibility of Non-Serious SpeechABSTRACT This essay seeks to show that there ar semipolitical implications in Jacques Derridas critique of J.L. Austins nonion of performative barbarism. If, as Derrida claims and Austin denies, performative utterances are necessarily contaminated by that which Austin refuses to consider (the speech of the poet and the actor in which literal force is never intended), then what are the implications for the speech acts of the state? Austin considers the speech acts of the poet and the actor to be parasites or workaday language, non-serious, and would relegate such speech to a region beyond his consideration, to a ditch outside the border of meaning for the performative. Derrida argues that the contamination Austin fears for language is needful for its very performativity. If Derrida is correct, then the performative utterances of the state (e.g. the decree of the judge, I sentence you...) from the biases of racial or sexual identity is also based upon an impossible go for, a desire that goes against the manner in which language functions. I argue that this desire for a just state cannot be satisfied unless racial and sexual identity is viewed not as parasitic and poetic, but as necessary to the performativity of the states liberal power. One will not be able to exclude, as Austin wishes, the non-serious, the oratio obliqua from ordinary language. Jacques Derrida (1)In his lectures included in How to Do Things With Words J.L. Austin seeks to exclude from his analysis of performative speech all utterances that do not fall under his pattern of ordinary speech.(2) Ordinary speech that is performative, according to Austin, effects a circumstance by means of the speaking, e.g. a sailor names a mail or a judge says, I sentence you to six months probation. Often, the desired effect is not produced because of what Austin calls extenuating circumstances. But Austins main bothe ration is for what he refers to as instances of relative purity in which there is less a chance of failure or infelicity (his term) to spoil the intentions of the speech. Also to be excluded from his considerations are instances of citations of performative speech, as in a play...a performative will be in a peculiar way hollow or void if said by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken in a soliloquy....Language in such circumstances is in special shipwayintelligiblyused not seriously, but in ways parasitic upon its normal useways which fall under the doctrine of the etiolations of language.