Body Citation/
Citationality
The term “citationality” was defined by Jaaques Derrida on his essay “Signature Event Context,” as the explicit or implicit invocation of preexisting conventions, norms, or sources of authority in which any performative act, as defined by J. L. Austin. Citationality refers then to the understandment of any performative act as a reenactment of a previous fact. Both performativity and citationality are key concepts in queer and gender theory, driving from the work of Judith Butler
The following text was written by another mayor figure in querr theory, Paul B. Preciado in the context of “The Ocaña We Deserve: Campceptualism, sexual insubordination, and performative politics”:
“It’s not possible to affirm whether a performative action is inherently subversive or mere repetition of the established order, since its subversive capacity depends strictly on the citation’s context. There are no revolutionary performances [...]; rather, there are contexts in which the performative intervention unleashes chains of signification that deconstruct the norm and open new possibilities for subjectivation. The political power of the performative action does not depend on either its form or its content, but on its relationality, its capacity to establish meanings that exceed the norm”.
The Ocaña We Deserve: Campceptualism, Subordination and Performative Politics”, in Ocaña, Institut de Cultura de Barcelona, Ediciones Polígrafa, Barcelona, 2011.
https://stedelijkstudies.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Stedelijk-Studies_The-Ocana-We-Deserve_PDF.pdf