Performativity confounded: agency, resistance, and the history of politeness

This essay compares Judith Butler’s and Erving Goffman’s theoretical contributions to performance performativity with the goal of bridging their approaches, usually seen as mutually incompatible. Using eighteenth-century women’s politeness a case study, it argues that is practice essentially both performed performative; analysing such offers us valuable new information on subjectivities. The suggests combining can be used reconceptualize agency find way out Butlerian impasse impossibility resistance. Performance thus has potential confound paralyzing non-agency performativity.