Performative Stylistics and the Question of Academic Prose

Abstract

This essay examines style as a vehicle for performance: Patterns of language are rituals of language that participate in broader social rituals and behaviors. It then turns to recent debates over academic prose, focusing on Judith Butler who claims that radical thought demands radical forms of expression. In the case of her own writing, however, her style isn't radical. Instead, it's conservative in form, a souped-up version of technobureaucratic writing. The essay ends with an analysis of Butler's "Burning Acts, Injurious Speech" and argues that while it does fulfill one of the aesthetic goals Butler has outlined elsewhere, the stylistic performance it delivers is like that of a shaman, hovering ambiguously between mysticism and trickery.