The Performative "I"

Although claims to revive the first person in scholarly writing remain compelling, efforts to fulfill them have been less so. Few have survived the problems of authenticity, authority, and advocacy identified by Joan Scott and Linda Kauffman, among others. Following the model of "stunting" offered by the feminist theorist, Mary Russo, this article proposes a view toward a "performative `I'" that invites error, disorder, and difference into the world of citationality or compulsive reiteration. The article builds its proposal on readings of two live performances and three short passages from selected texts. At their intersection, it imagines the displacement of a modernist "I" by a subjectivity defined by an ethics of sensuous coalition and a politics of errant possibility.