kfitz

Anti-Performatives

DN points out in the comments down below that he called last night’s victory. This post is for DN:

Yeah, you totally did. I only felt safe enough to call it once Bérubé made the fatal mistake of dissing the Tigers in favor of the mysterious Iona (see link in previous post, and particularly comment number 6), at which point it seemed clear that spite was working in our favor. Before that, we were operating under my public-declaration curse, in which anything I pronounce out loud as being authoritatively so is immediately and resoundingly contravened.

Ask my pal Marcus about this; he can confirm.

The problem with this is that the curse only operates if I really and truly mean it, and thus any public statement I make about the outcome of Sunday’s game with Texas will be read through that lens; i.e., if I say that we’re absolutely going to get trampled, in the hopes that the curse produces another glorious victory, the purpose of the statement may perfectly well override its content. I can therefore say nothing, except that I have no clue what’s going to happen.

This is a complication of the performative that I think J. L. Austin may have missed.

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