Mercies and Infelicities

This short essay advocates recalibrating the theory of performativity to take into account popular usage of the term. Far from being inaccurate or imprecise, the contemporary practice of calling behavior “performative” reveals a great deal about the racialized disposition of power that underlies the making of political claims. Paying attention to the infelicities that mar performative speech and impede the realization of its perlocutionary demands reveals a gulf between those who are afforded mercy and those for whom mercy arrives too late or not at all. Consequently, performativity emerges as a critical site for the study of whiteness and white supremacy.