Abstract: "Performative Utterance, the Word of God, and the Death of the Author" (1988)

• The divine utterance Fiat lux seems to be the paradigmatic performative, the quintessential declarative speech act, akin to the declarative words of institution in the Eucharist; yet the concept of performative discourse figures prominently in Barthes's "counter-theological" model of Ècriture. Barthes's appropriation of speech-act theory (as interpreted by Benveniste) is doubly unfortunate: it betrays his project and it betrays the theory. Derrida, too, errs in mystifying the theory. Performative discourse is not essentially mysterious.
  

Michael Hancher

Department of English, University of Minnesota

URL: http://umn.edu/home/mh/abspuwgd.html

Comments to: mh@umn.edu

Created February 1995

Last revised 17 September 1996