Performative and Constative in Culler

Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory (1997)

Chapter 7: Performative Language

Culler reviews J. L. Austin's distinction between constative language ("The cat is on the mat") and performative language ("I promise!"); "performative utterances do not describe but perform the action they designate." (152) But when we say "The cat is on the mat," we are saying "I hereby affirm: the cat is on the mat" and so every constative is also performative.

There is a notion that all literature is performative language -- Joyce describes Buck Mulligan, and thereby creates Buck Mulligan. Romance stories describe love, and so create love. Literature thus changes the world. But if literature is performative, then literary statements are never true or false, but, like promises, may be "felicitous" or "infelicitous." Having said to one person, "I promise not to do so," then saying "I promise to do so" to another person is not making a false statement, but rather an infelicitous one. What makes literary statements felicitous? This question is tantamount to asking what makes statements literary in the first place -- Culler: what is it "for a literary sequence to work." (side note: Culler clearly means by "sequence" any sequence of literary statements)

Derrida appeals for Austin to consider not just "serious" performative and constative utterances, but also a more comprehensive look at statements in all situations, for the criteria of "general iterability." Looking at political statements, for example, Derrida finds that a constative statement lurks behind the performative statement:

We therefore...do solemnly publish and declare that these United colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states.

The verb "are" contains the performative element; the "ought," constative.

So performative utterances are defended by constative utterances, and constative utterances all contain within them performative utterances; for Culler, this undecidable oscillation, this impasse, this aporia, is reflected in Robert Frost's poem "The Secret Sits:"

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.