Working on the constitution of gender, Judith Butler has argued that identity is stylistically performed, but according to internalized norms that constitute common sense and propriety, naturalizing dominance, and subordination (1990; 1993). “Gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed,” Butler maintains; “rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time–an identity instituted through a stylized repetitions of acts” (1988: 519, her italics). The gendered self, rather than being substantial or prior to its acts, is a performative accomplishment of iterative corporeal acts, governed by punitive and regulatory social conventions. Performativity, then, is not an act or event but a process, “the formation of the subject in process–but never one that is finished or complete” (Moore 2007: 118).
Ethnicity, like gender, is both performed and performative. Individuals and groups might present themselves as ethnic but do so according to expectations shaped by the daily enactments constituting the ethnic boundary. Such iterative acts do not have to be conscious to be effective, as Joane Nagel observes: “Performativity is a powerful mechanism of social construction and social control, all the more so because it tends to go unnoticed, be invisible and operates at the level of intuition. Performatives just seem to feel right or wrong. They are difficult to identify or think about because they are so ingrained, presumed and seemingly natural” (2010: 197, her italics).
Sergio Miguel Huarcaya (2015) “Performativity, Performance, and Indigenous Activism in Ecuador and the Andes.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 53(3).