“Appropriate Circumstances:” From Stefan Zweig’s Vienna to Xu Jinglei’s Beijing

In How to Do Things with Words, John L. Austin introduces a fresh approach to the study of language use: in “appropriate circumstances” (passim) utterings can be performative in that they produce the social outcome of which they speak. Within the same volume, Austin—and John R. Searle in later work—adjust and sideline this conceptual framework for the reductive paradigm of linguistics. However, in a broad range of cultural disciplines—from anthropology to theater studies—the groundbreaking notion of performativity has opened new vistas in research on social and cultural practices. A variety of discourses, each with its own history, methodology and object of inquiry, have in turn issued interpretive models that highlight distinct aspects of performativity. Judith Butler, for example, extends the concept to also include material dimensions: “the gendered body acts its part in a culturally restricted corporeal space” (Butler 410) and thereby produces its gender identity in “stylized repetition of acts through time” (Butler 402). Gender identity is thus not so much imposed as the outcome of immersion in a plasma of iterated conventions. For Erika Fischer-Lichte, the theater experience involves the interaction of the performers on stage and the spectators: “Theater wird hier demnach vor allem durch seine Performativität konstituiert und definiert” (Fischer-Lichte 2003, 13). I will explore Stefan Zweig’s novella Brief einer Unbekannten in terms of the performativities relating to social status, gender and theatricality, and then consider their representation in the culturally very different setting of Xu Jinglei’s film adaptation Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin of 2004.

Austin’s provisional template for explaining performative processes consists of three items—speaker, uttering and recipient—and an extensive list of conditions and constraints that would assure the “appropriate circumstances” necessary for the performative effect. Included in the controlled event is the requirement of “an accepted conventional procedure” (Austin 14) executed by a properly authorized person and conferred on a qualified recipient. Although non-verbal (Austin 19) and “certain other actions” (Austin 8) may be involved, the focus is on the uttering by a singular voice. His examples—rituals, ceremonies and controlled social transactions—suggest the performative qualities of such arrangements. The formulaic model at the heart of Austin’s process is linear, vectorial and directed at a largely passive target. In contrast, the variants of performativity developed in cultural studies give more scope to the exploration of Austin’s “appropriate circumstances.” By what social practices and constituencies does the speaker come to his position and how is the performative process initiated?

Performative acts for various reasons are intended to have a social effect. Rituals with full decorum, for example, may control and stabilize membership in closed groups such as some religious congregations, exclusive clubs, fraternities, masonic orders or university alumni associations. The speakers who perform the necessary revered utterings and symbolic acts are distinguished members holding high office; by the power of proxy they represent the legacy and values of the group. Such events are significant but rather rare. Much more part of modern reality and large-scale affiliations are what Benedict Anderson called “imagined communities,” contingent groupings that can be internally heterogeneous and fissured but are nonetheless identified with certain values, affinities or agendas. In this case, multiple voices—each individually modulated—are involved in performative acts that can take place in everyday encounters. The expression of gender or status difference, for example, sustains a sense of identity, but in this difference also holds the potential for prejudice, stereotyping and conflict. An important attribute of Austin’s “appropriate circumstances” thus relates to the speaker’s social ambience and to the nature of boundaries defining the community involved in the performative event.

Public spaces—and the mode of their organization, construction, and use—play an important role in the conception of “imagined communities” and their boundaries. Events of high culture celebrated in prestigious edifices, for example, bring together sectors of the population that may have little in common other than their real and cultural capital. Such events provide the context for the performance of social...