Performative writing

Performative writing is a form of post-modernist or avant-garde academic writing, usually taking as its subject a work of visual art or performance art. It is often loosely semi-autobiographical, free-flowing in an ersatz stream-of-consciousness mode, and heavily informed by left-wing critical theory, but arises ultimately from linguistic ideas around performative utterances. It often weaves together a bricolage of other writing styles; since performative writing sees "the form as being as important as the content". In this it is claimed to be politically radical, because it thus 'defies' literary conventions and traditions.

It was first named by Bereiter in Possible stages in writing development (1980). It is often practiced by feminist writers. The most notable current writer in performative writing is the feminist theatre theorist Peggy Phelan. She describes the form as one which....

"enacts the death of the 'we' that we think we are before we begin to write. A statement of allegiance to the radicality of unknowing who we are becoming, this writing pushes against the ideology of knowledge as a progressive movement forever approaching a completed end-point." (Mourning Sex, 1997)
Such a writing form is claimed to be, in itself, a form of performance. It is said to more accurately reflect the fleeting and ephemeral nature of a performance, and the various tricks of memory and referentiality that happen in the mind of the viewer during and after the performance.