The Nonperformativity of Antiracism

“As Sara Farris notes, while intersectionality has helped Marxist feminism see that it is not all about class, Marxist feminism can in turn help intersectionality explain why these intersections happen (2014).”

“…and not actively embedding race equity beyond mere statements of intent, is as Ahmed describes, illustrative of the non-performativity of anti-racism; whereby, “ declarations of commitment ” such as announcing a BAME Race Equality Strategy “ can block recognition of racism ” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 110).”

“This includes citational justice (Ahmed, 2006; Mott and Cockayne, 2017): if we write and teach about Indigenous peoples and their cultures, societies, or politics, we need to ensure we are referencing and putting in front of our students the voices and works of Indigenous authors, intellectuals,…”

“As Ahmed (2006, 2012) documented, while diversity and inclusion typically do the work of shielding institutions from claims of, in particular, racial injustice, intersectionality is about exposing those very claims—highlighting when and where the injury is happening while dominant frames obscure…”

“The literatures on decoupling (e.g., Meyer and Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Bromley and Powell, 2012), non-performative commitments (Ahmed, 2006, 2007, 2012), discretionary implementation (e.g., Munnell, Browne, and Mceneaney, 1996; Gupta, Briscoe, and Hambrick, 2018; Talesh and…”

“” We can further read the white guilt narratives of the -cenes as being spectacular performances (Daigle, 2019) that are nonperformative (Ahmed, 2007): that is, the spectacle of white scholarship accounting for global apocalypse actually maintains white theory as overdetermining both thought and…”

“doing,” therein lies the potential for harm in a speech act which aims to cure (10).”

“Anti-racialism is offered as the liberal alternative to racism, rendering anti-racism as “non-performative” (not achieving its goals) (Ahmed 2006, 105).”

“Without commitment, readiness, and willingness to confront racism, a mere acknowledgment will have little value as it leaves racism unaddressed and sometimes emboldened (Ahmed 2006; Nelson 2013).”

“Such performative elements of marketing theory and practice contrast with the non-performativity that scholars such as Sara Ahmed (2006) identify as being part of meaningful anti-racism.”

“Whiteness has been fundamental to the non-performativity of “antiracism” work within the pre-existing structures of action planning and resources allocation at the highest levels (senior administration and governance) (Ahmed, 2006).”

“Thus, the articulations of heterogeneity in the texts can be characterised as “non-performative” in nature (Ahmed, 2006, 2012) as the basic education measures and the reasoning behind them represent the Roma in an essentialising manner.”

“As Ahmed (2006) notes, the reproduction of the other (in this case the male couple) challenges an ideal that creates nations for future generations.”

“There is growing recognition among policy-makers and practitioners that a progressive policy framework for eradicating racial bias and inequalities represents the start of the process rather than being an end in itself (Ahmed, 2006).”

“To complement this, we also draw on interviews with SAF marketing, communication, and recruiting officials conducted within a larger research project on the branding of the SAF.8 In generating and analyzing our empirical material, we draw on Ahmed’s “ethnography of text” (Ahmed 2006, 105).”

“They were non-performative (Ahmed, 2006): they appeared to be tools to make claims of discrimination, but in practice they were much more effective at making claims of what was not discrimina tion.”

“This bad-faith innocence, or not-knowing – this racialized episteme – serves to center whiteness repeatedly (Ahmed 2006; Frankenberg 1997); we see similar dynamics of disorientation across our interviews and in the classroom discourse where whiteness is made natural in Norwegian space and made…”

“This movement is known as the affective turn (see Pratt 2023), which was further followed by Ahmed (2004a, 2004b) who introduced the idea of affective economies.”

“Here Mann recognises and applauds how the effectiveness of The FA over this incident through the implementation of their policy instilled a confidence that had been previously lacking in the competence of the NGB. Ahmed (2006) emphasises that sufficient conditions need to be in place for anti-racism to function; this…”

“Although Miranda was more racially cognizant than other white parents, Ahmed (2006) reminds us that antiracist speech acts may also function to reinforce inequality and contribute to nonperformativity: the failure to act in response to problems that antiracist speech acts attempt to name.”

“However, it was also found that such initiatives within various history and geography departments are very much a result of individual rather than institutional actions, which is a key challenge in instituting “decolonial” changes (Ahmed 2006).”

“This falls outside the bounds of our article, but for a more thorough excavation of this, see Butler (2015, 2020) for their discussion of nonviolence and Ahmed (2006) for their discussion of non-performativity.”

“This research is not merely performative equity work (Ahmed, 2006).”

“We need to ‘follow’ organisational commitments to diversity and anti-racism ‘around’ to ensure that such commitments ‘do’ what they say (Ahmed, 2006: 105).”

“We recognise that varied attempts to transform and decolonise have met with limited successes in part because institutions often engage in what Ahmed (2006) refers to as speech acts, wherein decoloniality is proclaimed without any sustained efforts at systems change.”

“According to Ahmed (2004; 2006), and recently echoed in Masoumi’s (2019) analysis of refugee application administration, documents can achieve socially reinforcing outcomes through the illusion of doing something while, in effect, achieving very little.”

“In the context of education, liberal antiracism (Kundnani 2023) has been addressed by Sara Ahmed (2006) who reflects on institutional speech acts on diversity, highlighting how these speech acts are non-performative, allowing institutions to not act against racism while they say otherwise.”

“The veneers of superficial institutional narrative—theorised by some scholars as ‘institutional speech acts’ (Ahmed, 2006, 2009; Chapman et al., 2015)—were divorced from the issues and impacts affecting staff throughout the university.”

“Since a concept does not always ‘ produce the e ff ects that it names ’ (Butler, 1993, p. 2), the gap between performativity and non-performativity must be acknowledged (Ahmed, 2006).”

“In this sense, ‘Non-performative institutional speech acts’ refer to policies or words made on behalf of an institution which have no impact; the rhetoric of diversity means the words do not perform (Ahmed, 2006, 2012).”

“However, sometimes what an institution espouses in relation to diversity, inclusion, and social justice is different than what campus educators enact (Ahmed, 2006; Kezar & Eckel, 2008; LePeau, 2015).”

“…we must be careful to ground the value of ethics in social and political theory in order to prevent our efforts from becoming “nonperformative speech acts” [2] — that is, the substitution of real action with depoliticized verbal commitments, often referred to in tech as ethics washing [126, 129].”

“They also show the non-performativity of inclusion, since seemingly inclusive language is mobilized without consideration for what true inclusion means for those whose needs and interests get left out (Ahmed, 2006).”

“This can be understood as a form of what Sara Ahmed theorises as the ‘nonperformativity’ of institutional claims about commitment to anti-racism, where the acknowledgement or ‘statement of commitment’ becomes the action (Ahmed, 2006, 2012).”

“According to Ahmed (2006), non-performativity is not a failure of intent, instead ‘we can see that such descriptions create fantasy images of the organizations they apparently represent.”

“These programs create the veneer that something is being done when in fact very little is being done and ironically, change is being blocked by discourses of action (Ahmed, 2007).”

“If practiced alone, without context, debriefing, or intersectional nuance, one educational experience risks invoking what Sara Ahmed calls non-performativity: that is, saying something in order to make it not so (Ahmed, 2004).”

“Using critical labels for superficial multiculturalism has become a common practice for misrepresenting attempts at uncovering and disrupting racism (Ahmed, 2007; Melamed, 2011). The issues with these forms of superficial multiculturalism are exacerbated when considering that there is little research on effective anti…”

“As Ahmed ( 2006) notes in her study of institutional commitments to racism, declarations acknowledging that racism exists are not enough to challenge it.”

“…populations are very conscious and skeptical of efforts to foster inclusion as they are continually transplanted in positions to become tokens for their identities and subjected to overt and systemic oppression, whether intentions are explicit or implicit (Ahmed, 2006; Blessett, 2018; hooks, 1990).”

“She further argues that in elite, predominantly White universities, diversity work ‘becomes about changing perceptions of whiteness rather than changing the whiteness of the organisation’ (Ahmed, 2006: 118).”

“…social arrangements and social structures, we argue, following other approaches of emotions such as the phenomenological account proposed by Sarah Ahmed (2006, 2014) or the cultural and historical account of affects based on race such as Gloria Wekker’s (2016) exploration of ‘white innocence’,…”

“This is a lazy and performative effort that yields little results unless one exposes those performative gaps and causes good trouble (Ahmed 2006).”

“These documents instead serve as an auditable trail to show that institutions are addressing diversity and inclusion instead of actually making institutions address diversity and inclusion (Ahmed, 2006).”

“Our experience serves to highlight the distinction Ahmed (2006) draws between institutional speech acts and anti-racism.”

“and found that many institutions include a general diversity and inclusion statement suggesting that EDI is very much perfunctory (Ahmed, 2006).”

“These “good white” attempts to absolve themselves of racism have been shown to entertain powerful fantasies of transcending white racism through enlisting black people in self-serving fantasies of racial harmony where they play the role of the good white (Hook 2011; Ahmed 2006; Straker 2004).”

“Rather than viewing the “all” of Science-for-All as an empty promise that is said but not done—or what Ahmed (2006) calls non-performative discourse—”

“The distinction between infelicitous (or ‘unhappy’) and felicitous (or ‘happy’) performatives is central to Sara Ahmed’s notion of non-performativity: that is, the conditions under which statements that should be performative act to prevent certain effects (Ahmed, 2006).”

“She examines institutional speech acts, words – written and spoken words and images – “the materials which give an institution interiority, as if it has a face, as well as feelings, thoughts, or judgements” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 104).”

“…to ‘ see ’ our own constructed gaze, because of the prevalence of uncritical EDI in HE that commonly facilitates ‘ non-performative ’ initiatives (Ahmed 2006b), in that they provide only the perception of change, with their successful action being to hold convention in place with little or no…”

“When marginalized groups fight for political power by challenging the oppressive power structures of capi-talism, the aims are to dismantle the systemic problems that produce and maintain that marginalization (Ahmed, 2006; Downs & Manion, 2004; Sweetman, 2013).”

“This reminded us of Sarah Ahmed’s (2014) note that “sayings are not always doings” (p. 107 ) when it comes to including historically marginalized people and content.”

“In this way, institutional policies become what Ahmed (2006) described as nonperformatives; that is, higher education institutions may adopt specific policies without fully committing to the organizational and operational changes necessary to meaningfully address sexual violence.”

“Settler scholar Patrick Wolfe (2006) states that, “Inva-sion is a structure not an event” (p. 389).”

“Creating policies does not mean that they are necessarily enacted (Ahmed, 2006).”

“…certain requisites yet keeping them opaque make these segments of the bylaws merely speech acts that do not do what they say; they are nonperformatives (Ahmed, 2006), implying qualification as if merely writing the requisites takes the place of actually having and objectively evaluating them.”

“This failure is not a failure of intent, Ahmed (2006) argues, but it works precisely because it fails to bring about what it names—in this case, a decentering of Western paradigms.”