Till Derrida do us part

[stilltrucking]

Posted on Thursday, August 25, 2005. The following transcript is from the June 1 wedding of Cary Wolfe and Allison Hunter. Wolfe teaches critical theory at SUNY Albany; Hunter is an artist. Originally from August 2002.

JUDGE SILVERMAN: Friends and relatives, we are gathered here today to witness the marriage of Allison and Cary. To do so, we must perform these vows in an act of ceremony.
But what are these things: to wed, to marry, to take a wedding vow? They are what the philosopher J. L. Austin, in his study How to Do Things With Words, calls “speech acts,” of which there are two different kinds: constative speech acts, whose primary attribute is that they say something; and performative speech acts (of which this ceremony is an example), whose primary attribute is that they do something. A performative speech act, as Austin puts it, doesn't describe a state of affairs; it possesses the crucial feature of accomplishing the very act to which it refers. The very act of saying it makes it so.

http://harpers.org/2002-08-TillDerridaDoUsPart.html