Performative States

Abstract

Weber's analysis of an advertisement featuring the cross-dressed American cultural icon RuPaul introduces perfomativity into international relations discussions in a way that emphasises sex. gender, and sexuality. She builds upon the now familiar argument that sovereign nation-states-like all subjects-are best understood performativity, as subjects in process that are the ontological effects elf practices which are performatively enacted. Reclaiming the intellectual context in which Judith Butler introduced the notion of performativity. Weber returns to Butler's work as a way of reconsidering the sovereign nation-state not only as a performative body, but also as a sex and gendered body.