To the future

Judith Butler leads a discussion on gender and sexual precarity, on how some of us, based on our performativity and performative acts, are in lack of protection from the government and authorities, how we are exposed to violence, cruelty or being discredited. She examines performativity of a gender - that is given at birth, and compares it with performative acts - actions that we conduct opposed to what society expects us to do based on our external looks. I would like to examine the same patterns in Kazakh families among women, who are expected to behave in a specific way or to follow explicit performative acts in order to be accepted in their societal environment.  Traditional Kazakh families are divided into three different classes, which are called “ zhuz ”: senior, middle and junior. Based on their ancestry, women are required to marry a man from the same zhuz. If a woman chooses a man from another class or another race, she will become a disgrace to her family and will nev...

Performance  can be viewed from many different angles. It could be a quality of functioning as in any program for the computer or an equipment at the factory; a teaching explanation of different actions (walking, singing, playing piano, etc.); a ritual that has been repeating for years or centuries as well as by one or many different people; an event taking place in a specific location with such goals as entertainment or making change, creating beauty, anything else or all together combined. It can also be just a state of “being”, divided into categories of “active being” or “static being”, physical or spiritual. For instance, a painting could be observed as a static and physical  performance , which also has an audience and a specific influence on it. Or  performance  could be a spiritual prayer that is aimed on emerging various emotions or altering someone’s’ behavior, thoughts.  Performance  doesn’t have specific borders, in fact, they are being vanishe...