Thinking of categories of identity as performative rather than either biological or ontological tends to qualify or modify my perception of the actor’s physical presence.  When the criteria by which I distinguish the identity of the actor are themselves fluid or transitive, capable of being enacted rather than merely being, I sense that within action, performing or acting, the actor or performer–the human agent beneath the mask of character–becomes an equivocal rather than an easily apprehended presence.  The problem with this recognition, or with this claim derives from the fact that those theorists, like Judith Butler, who develop the concept of the performative nature of human presence use the term performative as a metaphor that is drawn, at least in part, from the theater.

I do recognize the performative aspect of behavior, and I can make a clear distinction between my regular experience and aesthetic performance.  The Shakespearean metaphor, “All the World’s a Stage,” is, after all, a metaphor; and the comparison of actual experience to the theatrical representation of experience makes sense only if there is an understood difference.  The point that I make here is a kind of convolution of the metaphoric quality of the term performative.  I recognize the performative nature of human behavior, or, assuming the point of view of the beholder, I recognize that I base my identification of the other on differences that the other may enact rather than embody.  However, as Butler notes, even my conception of that embodiment is directed by the discursive; and I cannot deny the performativity of the materialization of something as purely `bodily’ as the sexual.

Yet, I do make a distinction in my experience between the intentionality of the performer in a theatrical situation and the less than conscious implementation of the performative in ordinary behavior.  I rely upon on speech, gesture, syntax, or distinct mannerisms that signify cultural categories of difference.  Even if the category I assign the other is not solely based upon a cultural system of differences, I recognize that, at the very least, I may find it difficult to distinguish between the ontological and performative, between the signs of a type of human presence and the actual embodiment of that presence, between what seems to be and what is.  Because of the difficulty, in ordinary experience, to differentiate between the real and the imitated, I often find others to be enigmatic and inaccessible, and I am vulnerable to deception.

The Shakespearean text makes frequent reference to the dichotomy between being and seeming.  Remember that the Duke, Vincentio, in Measure for Measure, discusses the possibility of testing the moral integrity of Angelo:  “…hence shall we see,/ If power change purpose, what our seemers be (I.2/53-4).”  And recall Hamlet’s response to Gertrude’s question about the apparent particularity of his grief for his father.

Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not “seems.”
‘Tis not along my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,                           1/2/80
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
(I.2.76-86)

The character of Hamlet makes the assumption that there is some essential center of being that can be represented in external signs but which has an existence that may surpass or exceed these signifiers.  The signifiers themselves may make false reference as in seeming or playing, while the identical signifiers may also function to manifest an authentic emotional state even if the intensity of that condition exceeds the signs that represent it.  Hamlet claims that his body suffers in excess of the signs that display that grief.  Butler’s sense of the ways in which culture regulates the materiality of the body, would erase or diminish the being component of Shakespeare’s dichotomy, and behavior manifesting physical presence would, therefore, become as much a seeming, a playing, as a manifestation of being–although that seeming would not be intentional but performative in Butler’s sense.  Seeming would not be playing in the sense of a deliberate intentional deceit but the display of signs would be an unconscious enactment of imposed systems of difference determined by the discipline and regulations of a culture.

For me, what is real is what is in question, as I play with theorists like Fredric Jameson whose ideas of postmodernism include the notion that the present moment deals primarily with the exchange and circulation of images.  Performance foregrounds this circulation of images and presents the live performer as theatricalized image on the same level as the technologically produced image.  To paraphrase Ms. Stein, an image is an image is an image.  The performance exposes the fact I read the body of the performer as constructed image in any case, because I have been trained, through the intensely mediatized nature of cultural experience, to respond to all stimuli as though I were receiving that data through a media event.  The boundaries between technologically experienced information and information received without that frame have become permeable and, to a strong degree, seamless because the mediatized operates as the real and I tend to process all information as if it were transmitted by the media.