In Defense of Being Performative
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Current Issue
Politics
/ March 17, 2026
In Defense of Being Performative
The critics of “performative politics” misunderstand something fundamental: Democracy survives only when citizens perform it.
Ned Resnikoff
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He’s probably reading Elena Ferrante—and that’s fine!
(Studio4 / Getty Images)
If you’ve spent any time online over the past one to two years, you’ve probably noticed the growing popularity of “performative”—or, especially in right-wing circles, “virtue signaling”—as a term of derision. Maybe you’ve read the trend pieces about performative males or seen people on social media poking fun at performative reading. You might have noticed that one of the more common knocks on the anti-Trump “No Kings” demonstrations, particularly from the left, is that they are performative.
It can sometimes be difficult to make sense of this genre of criticism; tagging a public demonstration as performative is less a cutting dismissal than a tautology. For that matter, it always struck me as a bit strange that a softboi with a preference for matcha and Clairo could be described as a “performative male” but not someone performing the more traditional markers of masculinity.
Attacks on performativity are usually taken as a demand for authenticity. If you are doing something performatively, that means your motives for doing it are suspect. Performative protest is intended to make protesters look righteous, not bring about meaningful change; a performative male is a pickup artist who manipulates women into sex by playacting a sort of feminist gentleness instead of engaging in manosphere-style peacocking. Anything deemed performative is taken to be unreal or inauthentic.
But before the emergence of “performative” as an insult, generations of US thinkers had considered performative actions as part of a democratic society’s foundation. They understood that citizenship—not as a legal status but as positive, active engagement with democratic life—is inherently performative and that abandoning the performance of democratic life means courting democratic collapse.
Current Issue
April 2026 Issue
Part of what’s striking about modern use of “performative” is how far it strays from past meanings of the word. The concept of a performative utterance originates in the work of the mid-century philosopher of language J.L. Austin. In How to Do Things With Words, which records a series of lectures he delivered at Harvard University in 1955, Austin said that describing a spoken utterance as performative “indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performance of an action—it is not normally thought of as just saying something.” One of the …
Every delay has consequences.
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In Defense of Being Performative
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Current Issue
Politics
/ March 17, 2026
In Defense of Being Performative
The critics of “performative politics” misunderstand something fundamental: Democracy survives only when citizens perform it.
Ned Resnikoff
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
He’s probably reading Elena Ferrante—and that’s fine!
(Studio4 / Getty Images)
If you’ve spent any time online over the past one to two years, you’ve probably noticed the growing popularity of “performative”—or, especially in right-wing circles, “virtue signaling”—as a term of derision. Maybe you’ve read the trend pieces about performative males or seen people on social media poking fun at performative reading. You might have noticed that one of the more common knocks on the anti-Trump “No Kings” demonstrations, particularly from the left, is that they are performative.
It can sometimes be difficult to make sense of this genre of criticism; tagging a public demonstration as performative is less a cutting dismissal than a tautology. For that matter, it always struck me as a bit strange that a softboi with a preference for matcha and Clairo could be described as a “performative male” but not someone performing the more traditional markers of masculinity.
Attacks on performativity are usually taken as a demand for authenticity. If you are doing something performatively, that means your motives for doing it are suspect. Performative protest is intended to make protesters look righteous, not bring about meaningful change; a performative male is a pickup artist who manipulates women into sex by playacting a sort of feminist gentleness instead of engaging in manosphere-style peacocking. Anything deemed performative is taken to be unreal or inauthentic.
But before the emergence of “performative” as an insult, generations of US thinkers had considered performative actions as part of a democratic society’s foundation. They understood that citizenship—not as a legal status but as positive, active engagement with democratic life—is inherently performative and that abandoning the performance of democratic life means courting democratic collapse.
Current Issue
April 2026 Issue
Part of what’s striking about modern use of “performative” is how far it strays from past meanings of the word. The concept of a performative utterance originates in the work of the mid-century philosopher of language J.L. Austin. In How to Do Things With Words, which records a series of lectures he delivered at Harvard University in 1955, Austin said that describing a spoken utterance as performative “indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performance of an action—it is not normally thought of as just saying something.” One of the …
In Defense of Being Performative
Every delay has consequences.
Log In
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Password *
Remember Me
Forgot Your Password?
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In Defense of Being Performative
Magazine
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Subscribe
Log In
Search
Subscribe
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Magazine
Latest
Archive
Podcasts
Newsletters
Sections
Politics
World
Economy
Culture
Books & the Arts
The Nation
About
Events
Contact Us
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Current Issue
Politics
/ March 17, 2026
In Defense of Being Performative
The critics of “performative politics” misunderstand something fundamental: Democracy survives only when citizens perform it.
Ned Resnikoff
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
He’s probably reading Elena Ferrante—and that’s fine!
(Studio4 / Getty Images)
If you’ve spent any time online over the past one to two years, you’ve probably noticed the growing popularity of “performative”—or, especially in right-wing circles, “virtue signaling”—as a term of derision. Maybe you’ve read the trend pieces about performative males or seen people on social media poking fun at performative reading. You might have noticed that one of the more common knocks on the anti-Trump “No Kings” demonstrations, particularly from the left, is that they are performative.
It can sometimes be difficult to make sense of this genre of criticism; tagging a public demonstration as performative is less a cutting dismissal than a tautology. For that matter, it always struck me as a bit strange that a softboi with a preference for matcha and Clairo could be described as a “performative male” but not someone performing the more traditional markers of masculinity.
Attacks on performativity are usually taken as a demand for authenticity. If you are doing something performatively, that means your motives for doing it are suspect. Performative protest is intended to make protesters look righteous, not bring about meaningful change; a performative male is a pickup artist who manipulates women into sex by playacting a sort of feminist gentleness instead of engaging in manosphere-style peacocking. Anything deemed performative is taken to be unreal or inauthentic.
But before the emergence of “performative” as an insult, generations of US thinkers had considered performative actions as part of a democratic society’s foundation. They understood that citizenship—not as a legal status but as positive, active engagement with democratic life—is inherently performative and that abandoning the performance of democratic life means courting democratic collapse.
Current Issue
April 2026 Issue
Part of what’s striking about modern use of “performative” is how far it strays from past meanings of the word. The concept of a performative utterance originates in the work of the mid-century philosopher of language J.L. Austin. In How to Do Things With Words, which records a series of lectures he delivered at Harvard University in 1955, Austin said that describing a spoken utterance as performative “indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performance of an action—it is not normally thought of as just saying something.” One of the …
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