INTRODUCTION

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Abstract
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates the extraordinary productivity of the new refusal to take any aspect of performative relations as definitionally settled. It discusses the conjunction of performance with performativity from different beginning points. The stretch between theatrical and deconstructive meanings of "performative" seems to span the polarities of, at either extreme, the extroversion of the actor, the introversion of the signifier. A variety of critiques of agency, as well, have begun to put interpretive pressure on the relations between the individual and the group as those are embodied, negotiated, or even ruptured by potent acts of speech or silence. The fascinating and powerful class of negative performativesdisavowal, renunciation, repudiation, "count me out"is marked, in almost every instance, by the asymmetrical property of being much less prone to becoming conventional than the positive performatives. Negative performatives tend to have a high threshold.

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