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Word games with the meaning of “perform”
Critics of “performative politics” are obviously criticizing what they see as a theatrical performance, where people pretend to have positions they don’t really have or pretend to be more convicted then they actually are. These “performative” people waste time, energy and resources on their cargo cult dances and rituals instead of going after power or permanent change.
This author is changing the definition of “perform” here to mean “to do” instead of “to act as if”. Nobody thinks the problem with “performative” people is that they are actually too active and effective, they are doing TOO MUCH, which is the strawman that the author has set up
Exactly.
Half way through article I dipped out. It’s so fucking boring and waffles on.
For some insane reason I kept reading to the end. What pseudo-intellectual claptrap. Also - I noted this…
Later in The Darkened Light of Faith, Rogers highlights the power of Billie Holiday’s live renditions of the anti-lynching anthem “Strange Fruit”—both a literal series of musical performances in the colloquial sense and a performative act in the Austinian sense that, according to Rogers, “is not exclusively concerned with helping us understand lynching…but to help us feel what should be felt and to display the appropriate emotions to it through a mimetic display of the horrific.”
By dramatizing the horror of lynching, Holiday compelled otherwise dispassionate white listeners to feel a species of horror not conveyed by traditional news reports.
I find it offensive that the author used that song and Holiday in name drops to defend the his defense of performative politics. And I’m 100% certain the author has no idea who wrote the song or he would have never mentioned it. Abel Meeropol wrote the song.
Meeropol was a member of the American Communist Party from 1932 to 1947. He was sympathetic to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted and executed for espionage. Later, Meeropol and his wife, Anne, adopted the Rosenbergs’ two sons, Michael and Robert, who were orphaned after their parents’ executions. Both children took the surname “Meeropol”.
These people disgust me
The guy does urban policy.
Policy design, program evaluation, and editorial services from a leading urban policy analyst.
I wonder if somebody asked in to his face - “What can we do to solve homelessness?” what he would say. Performative activity sure as fuck will not improve things an iota.
it’s just liberal pablum word games. they love this shit. What idealism does to a motherfucker, you think by rearranging the words in your head you have actually accomplished something
The funny thing is most likely even the libs who agree with this because they like the vibes of the article just have elevator music playing in their heads while they ‘read’ the article
Same kind of people who read animorphs and think ‘people turn into animals cool, Trump is totally Visser 3’
I don’t even disagree with the premise on its face, but there’s no fucking way I’m reading that, shut the fuck up bro
I realized my version of “Everything is X except for actual X, which is okay” is performativity.
Everything is performative, except for actual theatrics and performance art, which are great.
perform it ‘til you norm it
The title made me think this is gonna be about Hamlet’s famous dilemma.
