ANÁLISIS INTEGRAL DE LOS RESULTADOS

In Chapter One, I outlined the makings of an ‘ordinary’ image of debt politics in IPE. In this chapter, I add depth to this image by proposing a broad methodology based on the ordinary language philosophy of J. L. Austin. As I noted in the previous chapter, scholars in IPE and related fields have used Austinian accounts of performativity to explore the contingent enactment of economic subjects, markets, and ‘the economy’ more broadly (see, for example, MacKenzie, 2005, 2006; Clarke, 2012; Brassett and Clarke, 2012). Building on these foundational Austinian analyses, IPE scholars have proposed further bifurcations of the concept of performativity, using a range of scholars other than Austin. This increasing conceptual sophistication in financial performativity studies is valuable, although it is not my intention to review performativity debates here. Instead, I wish to return to Austin to highlight an element of his work that remains under-examined in IPE and in performativity studies: its ordinary ethics. It is only by understanding the ethical dimensions of ordinary language

philosophy that the full stakes of understanding economic life in performative terms can be adequately grasped. To understand ordinary ethics in turn requires a brief survey of Austin’s arguments about speech acts.

Writing in the middle third of the twentieth century, Austin famously challenged the assumption that the primary way in which we use language is to state something and hence to describe or reflect reality. In How to Do Things with

Words, Austin (1962a) directs philosophy’s attention away from language’s

semantics (the discrete meanings of words) and toward its pragmatics (the use and effects of words in context). Specifically, Austin shifted linguistic philosophy away from the concern with what is meant in saying something (what is stated) to an interest in what is done in and by saying something (what is enacted or performed). Austin tentatively used the concept of the ‘performative utterance’ to capture the way in which to say something is also to do something. He further proposed not truth and falsity but ‘felicity’ (happiness or success) and ‘infelicity’ (unhappiness or lack of success) as the means to evaluate the utterance: that is, to describe the conditions in which a ‘performative’ takes effect or fails to (if the speech act does not come off this is a ‘misfire’; if it is performed in a less than exemplary fashion this is an ‘abuse’) (Austin, 1962a: 15–24; Crary, 2002: 63).

To use a celebrated example, the concept of performativity suggests that to utter ‘I do’ is not to state or describe the fact of my becoming married to you, but rather to perform the act of marriage: it is to marry you. When I say ‘I do’, Austin (1962a: 6) observes, ‘I am not reporting on a marriage: I am indulging in it.’ Austin soon realised that his initial binary distinction between performative

utterances that do things, on the one hand, and constative statements that describe things (and hence are either true or false), on the other hand, did not hold. As a result, he revised this distinction into a multi-dimensional concept of ‘speech acts’, proposing that an utterance has locutionary meaning (it says

something, such as referring to the concept and practice of marriage), illocutionary force (it does something in saying something, such as enacting marriage), and perlocutionary effects (it does something by saying something, such as, one would hope, making the people at the marriage ceremony happy) (Austin, 1962a: 120).

Austin’s work on speech acts has sparked much debate in the humanities and social sciences, the rehearsing of which is not required for my purpose here. Suffice to say that Austin’s arguments have been read, misread, extended, and refuted to productive ends in philosophy, literary theory, and political thought (see, for example, Searle, 1969; Derrida, 1977; Fish, 1982; Felman, 1983; Butler, 1993, 1997; Skinner, 2002), if often at the expense of Austin’s original claims and intentions (Crary, 2002, 2007: ch. 2; Laugier, 2013: ch. 9). Something similar can be said of the way in which IPE scholars have used Austin’s ideas about performativity, although I do not propose to offer a corrective to the reception of the Austinian concept of performativity in IPE here (see Clarke, 2012). In essence, I do not argue that the existing use of Austin within IPE is incorrect but rather that it is importantly incomplete. I seek to offer a picture of the significance of Austin’s work in IPE that broadens the interest in performativity to encompass ordinary ethics.

For Austin, who held a chair in moral philosophy at Oxford, studying ‘how to do things with words’ entailed a necessary sensitivity to the ethical implications and effects of this ‘doing.’ Austin’s profound interest in ethics is evidenced by his nuanced explorations of excuses and the phrases we use to attribute responsibility (Austin, 1970a, 1970b). In ‘A Plea for Excuses’, Austin (1970a) explores the effects of the various ways in which we justify and excuse our actions. Consider the difference, for instance, between describing oneself as having done something ‘by accident’ versus claiming to having done it ‘by mistake.’ At first glance, this distinction appears trivial and inconsequential. But Austin uses examples of when and how we would use these two words (or of ‘what we should say when’ [Austin, 1970a: 182]) to draw out the ethical significance of this distinction.

To borrow one of Austin’s examples, if I shoot your donkey by accident (for instance, one day I take a dislike to my own donkey, decide to shoot him, and train my gun on him, but just before I pull the trigger your donkey unexpectedly moves into the way, with the result that I accidentally shoot your donkey instead of my own), this is not the same thing as me shooting your donkey by mistake

(when, for instance, I see that there are two donkeys in the paddock but fail to take sufficient care to ensure that the one I am aiming at, and end up shooting, is mine) (Austin, 1970a: 185, n.1). My responsibility is lessened when I claim to have shot your donkey by accident (provided you accept this claim), whereas I may be expected to assume (or, more accurately, I am assuming) greater responsibility if I assert that I made a mistake in failing to be sure that I was aiming at my donkey rather than at yours.

This example demonstrates that ethics is at stake in our use of language precisely because language is not simply a reflection of meaning (semantics) but something that produces effects (pragmatics), such as those of responsibility. If Austin (1970a: 175) delights, as he says, ‘in hounding down the minutiae’ of language, his detailed discussion of examples of everyday usage is not linguistic pedantry. Instead, Austin uses these explorations to show that the fine-grained distinctions we make in language are of ethical import and that ordinary language acts as a resource for thinking about ethics. For Austin (1970a: 182), ‘our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marking.’ Given this practical stock of distinctions and connections, Austin sees no need to escape into hypothetical discussion or to construct abstract moral frameworks. Instead, the task of ordinary language philosophy is, in Wittgenstein’s ([1953] 1999: pt. 1, § 116) phrasing, ‘to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use’ by attending to the ways and the contexts (the ‘language-games’) in which words are used. Austin’s ‘plea for excuses’ is therefore both a plea to attend to the ethical work that we do with language and a plea to take ordinary language seriously as a source of ethical insight.

At the heart of Austin’s ordinary language philosophy is an appreciation of how the performative or illocutionary force of language gives rise to ethical dilemmas of responsiveness and responsibility. Take a promise to repay some money, such as that performed, given the appropriate conditions, in the utterance ‘I owe you twenty pounds.’ Say we are in a pet shop. I am particularly taken by the bright plumage of a goldfinch, but I have forgotten my purse. You are kind enough to buy me the bird. I respond to this act by saying ‘I owe you twenty pounds’, thus

promising and committing to repay you. As students of performativity will readily acknowledge, my utterance here does not reflect my owing and my obligation to repay you; instead, it brings these states into being.

This pragmatic emphasis on what an utterance does leads Austin to refute the idea of a separation between an inner and outer self (and between intention and effect) that would allow me to nullify my promise to you by saying that although I had outwardly promised to repay you for the goldfinch, my inner self—my heart or head—wasn’t in it (Austin, 1962a: 9–10). In this sense, we have no

choice but to mean what we say, to take responsibility for our words, even if

what we do in saying something often outstrips what we intended to do; meaning is not a matter of choice (Cavell, 1976a). In saying ‘I owe you twenty pounds’, I am neither stating that I owe you, nor stating that I promise to repay you; rather,

I am promising. In this manner, Austin (1962a: 10, emphasis in original)

concludes, ‘[a]ccuracy and morality alike are on the side of the plain saying that

our word is our bond.’

But what are we to make of this invocation of ‘morality’? Austin’s argument that our word is our bond might be interpreted, at worst, as the antithesis of ethical responsibility (suggesting that our language binds us in ways that we cannot help but obey) or, at best, as an abstract, moralising claim (we must always keep our promises because keeping promises is good, right, just, virtuous, and so forth) (see discussion in Loxley, 2007: 39–41). However, in observing that ‘our word is our bond’, Austin is not claiming that promises ought to be kept. He is instead reflecting on the ethical implications of the pragmatics of speech: Austin is showing what it is I am doing when I utter a formulation like ‘I owe you’, but

equally what I am doing when I claim to have a private inner world that could protect me from the consequences of my speech acts.

Read against this backdrop, Austin’s focus on excuses and justifications (or what Cavell (1999: 310–2) would later call ‘elaboratives’) is precisely a corrective to a

moralising reading of the idea that our word is our bond. Because our words

have illocutionary force (in pragmatic terms, because they do things and thus commit us to courses of action), we must attend to ethical questions regarding the justification, defence, excuse, and mitigation of our actions. Such questions include when and how we will follow through on our commitments, and whether being held to our word (or holding ourselves to it) is appropriate in a particular situation. These are not questions that can be answered apart from context or with reference to the conventions of felicity conditions alone (Austin, 1963: 31). To speak as a human (rather than to sing as a goldfinch) is to mean what one says and to take responsibility for one’s words, but also to engage in conversation with others about one’s commitments and the effects of one’s actions, and how these are to be borne. Austin’s account of ordinary ethics is therefore not an invocation of moral laws or frameworks. Instead, this account is an invitation to conversation about the appropriateness of an action in a specific context.