Expanding a performative perspective on sustainability communication

In this conceptual essay, we propose an expansion of a performative perspective on sustainability communication by applying Epstein’s (2015) concept of trans- and counterformatives as paradoxical speech acts. While established speech act theory ( Austin 1975 ; Searle 1975 ) has an analytic emphasis on how the performativity of communication is contingent upon iteration and compliance with contextual felicity conditions, Epstein, in his reflections on trans- and counterformatives, shifts the analytic focus on speech acts that subversively provoke contradictions to these conditions to enable their fundamental renegotiation. We point at sustainable economics, activism, and learning as promising discourses for future empirical inquiry of trans- and counterformatives in action. In doing so, we respond to recent criticism of a hegemonic “smooth”, i.e., incremental, progress-, and growth-oriented sustainability discourse of corporate capitalism, by expanding the conceptual repertoire toward speech acts capable of enacting unsettling communicative events for urgent and fundamental change.