How do we go beyond performativity?
How I’m learning to focus my energies on new ways of being together.
If you’ve been following my writing, you will have noticed that I keep coming back to “performativity.” I use the term performativity to describe:
the sense of needing to prove our worth to those around us, especially in professional or academic gatherings
the need to demonstrate that we “fit” within the systems that surround us and are able to play effectively by the spoken and unspoken rules of those systems
adjustment to invisible power dynamics that determine whose speech has greatest value, how conflict is handled, and how decisions are made
I’ve experienced performativity myself and heard it reflected back from others in academia, social change efforts, leadership, community development, philanthropy, peacebuilding, etc.
The themes are similar.
Sacrificing what we know to be right in order to tick the necessary boxes, secure the right support or funding, or move to the next level of power.
Abandoning what energizes our creative best in favor of the status quo.
Focusing on sustaining systems, organizations, or ideas at the expense of the people in those systems.
The inevitable use of “power over” others instead of “power with” them.
Trusting too much in our power, connections, knowledge, or achievements.
The gradual erosion of joy and peace and a growth of cynicism and fear.
A constant sense of anxiety.
This last point — anxiety — is crucial. Performativity leads to anxiety, and anxiety undermines our creative potential, holding us back from showing up as our best selves. It also leads to a subtle form of violence. This is violence toward ourselves in the suppression of our deepest creativity, imposter syndrome, and self-doubt. But it is also violence toward others when we feel we need to exert power over others in order to keep the system working or preserve our power or comfort.
I find myself asking how we might gather differently. How can we gather in ways that are aware of performativity and intentionally create spaces where performativity is recognized, where its power is diminished, and where we are able to show up more fully?
“That’s just how the system works.”
I’ve participated in the culture of performativity far more than I’d like to admit. I’ve also pushed against it. When I push, I’ve felt pushback, often hearing things like “that’s just how the system works,” or “those are the rules of the game.”
But what exactly is going on? What are the rules of the game? What is happening in these systems? Two things seem central: the preservation of power and a sense of scarcity.
First, the system protects the status quo and those with power. I’ve spent a lot of my life proximate to people of significant wealth. In the social sector, wealth is power, and philanthropic power is often a cloaked and unacknowledged power. It can lead to systems of governance, organization, and decision-making that center power on the funder, even when the funder doesn’t want it. I’ve seen donors do borderline absurd odes to humility, only to reveal in the true work of decision-making and organizational life that they feel responsible for every decision. I’ve often found language of humility, trust, and relationship when governance and organizational structures actually center power, control, and distance. This incoherence fuels a sense of performativity in those who lead in the non-profit sector, a constant balancing of dissonant tones, and never quite knowing what is true.
Navigating dissonance, especially in the face of power, saps our strength and ability to create.
Second, the systems around us tend to be built on scarcity. I see in the organizations I’ve worked in the constant need to prove concept, hold onto donors, develop new donors, and, above all, justify organizational overhead and existence. I saw this also as a funder, where I understood my work to include deepening relationships among those working in the field and fostering deeper collaboration rather than competition. But even as collaboration and relationships deepened within the field, I still encountered scarcity thinking when I engaged as a grant-maker, the subtle indications that one organization’s work was superior to another. Such a sense of scarcity breeds unhealthy responsibility – “only we are able to do the most important work.”
Few things fuel performativity and dysfunction more than a sense that failure is not an option.
Performativity as Privilege
I’m grateful for friends who have helped me to understand that the degree to which we feel the need to perform is deeply affected by how much privilege we carry.
Those closest to the dominant culture norms (white, English-as-native-language, male, heterosexual, etc.) intuit better the rules of the game and have to modulate their language and approach less than those who are at greater distance from dominant culture. I have a lot of privilege, but I’ve felt this in my own life in minor and major ways. In very minor ways, I had to learn to modulate my language to a certain academic register that was quite different from how I was raised in a rural area. This was a minimal adaptation compared to someone who came from greater linguistic or cultural distance. I’ve felt this in bigger ways, too. I am still counting the cost of performing as a straight man for decades, participating in ways of which I’m quite ashamed and that did great violence to myself and others.
While those closest to dominant culture perhaps need to perform less to fit in, they are by no means free from the challenges and wounds of performativity. It’s been my experience that few heap more expectation and unhealthy responsibility on themselves than dominant culture men. I’m still coming to terms with how much I feel the need to make a difference and to make sure something happens.
A few times in my life, I’ve experienced rare and beautiful spaces where people from diverse backgrounds feel free to show up as who they are and relax in others’ presence. It’s always imperfect, but it seems to me that these rare moments are what my grandma would have called a “little slice of heaven.”
Seeking new ways?
A friend seeking a job (I have many of those these days) recently said to me “I don’t think I can go back into the nonprofit sector.” I get it. My wounds itch even when I think about reentering that world. I find myself wondering if greater attention to how we gather to do our work might help to avoid some of the perils of performativity. I don’t claim a lot of answers, but I keep returning to similar questions:
How might greater attention to how our ways of organizing and decision making (our governance) align better with our values and humanity?
How might we gather in ways that focus on who we are and the stories we carry rather than just what we do and what assets we bring?
How might we better recognize the different ways and degrees to which different people are drawn to perform?
How might we approach others with a sense of abundance, rather than assuming scarcity?
Perhaps most importantly, how might we stop taking ourselves so seriously, slow down, and listen better?
I don’t claim that these ideas respond well to the problem. But I’m encouraged by a number of conversations and groups I’m part of and the number of people seeking to go about change-making work in new ways.
Let’s keep doing the work of gathering differently.
For Reflection
Have you experienced a different sort of gathering where you didn’t feel the need to perform? What made that experience special? I’d love to talk to you about that experience. Drop me a note at jason@jasonferenczi.com.
What I’m reading/engaging
I recently had the privilege of training in Sociocracy. Sociocracy is a tool to help us organize in a decentralized way with trust and transparency at the heart. It struck me that Sociocracy demands a brave space where we name what is on our hearts and minds. I also appreciated its focus on doing and trying, rather than discussing and perfecting. I loved how trust is at the heart.
I’ve been thinking all week about a presentation by Munther Isaac, pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem that I heard in Wheaton, Illinois on Monday. It was good to see such a supportive turnout at a bastion of evangelicalism. I was struck by many things he said, but one stood out. When asked how people could engage better, he encouraged the crowd to listen more to voices from the margins, especially theological voices from Africa, the Middle East, etc., and not to see these as contextual theologies, but to recognize that your western understanding is probably the most contextual of all. I can’t recommend Munther’s Christ in the Rubble enough.