The performativity of personhood

In debates on infanticide, including the recent defence of so-called ‘after-birth abortion’, philosophers generally treat the term ‘the person’ as descriptive, such that statements claiming that something is a person (or not) can be considered true or false, depending on the characteristics of that...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Mills, Catherine (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: BMJ Publ. 2013
Dans: Journal of medical ethics
Année: 2013, Volume: 39, Numéro: 5, Pages: 325
Accès en ligne: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Résumé:In debates on infanticide, including the recent defence of so-called ‘after-birth abortion’, philosophers generally treat the term ‘the person’ as descriptive, such that statements claiming that something is a person (or not) can be considered true or false, depending on the characteristics of that thing. This obscures important aspects of its usage. J L Austen identified a subset of speech acts as performative, in that they do things in their very declaration or utterance. They do not simply describe states of affairs or things, but perform the act they ostensibly describe. ‘I promise’ or ‘I apologise’ may be taken as paradigmatic. Performative speech acts are not judged according to their truth-value, but their …
ISSN:1473-4257
Contient:Enthalten in: Journal of medical ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1136/medethics-2012-101164f