Abstract

Performativity is the salient feature of each practice. This account helps to explain seeing as an act not of arbitrary construction but of constitution that retains receptive and mediating features. I borrow the term by J. L. Austin to show that seeing is a specifically executed act that cannot be properly explained without taking into consideration the way in which it is performed. The how is not a contingent, external form for the what, but rather determines what it specifically is. Seeing cannot be reduced to the thing seen any more than speech to the thing spoken. If we conceive of acts of perception as analogous to speech acts, it becomes clear that they constitute far more than a means of obtaining knowledge.