Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

autonomous entity (Foucault, 1966), Mead is held responsible for a Copernican revolution
in social psychology by articulating a pragmatist and processual view of reality
with a radically social conception of the self (Carreira da Silva, 2007). From that perspective
it is explained that what as an action evolves, evolves out of a continuous
interplay between two or more people. “The self is not something that exists first and
then enters into relationship with others but it is, so to speak, an eddy in the social
current and so still a part of the current. It is a process in which the individual is continually
adjusting himself in advance to the situation to which he belongs, and reacting
back on it.” (Mead, 1934: 182). According to Mead we are what we say or do at the very
moment we say or do something and we never say or do anything in a void. Who we
think we are is a subsequent experience because “the response to that situation as it
appears in his immediate experience is uncertain, and it is that which constitutes the
"I." (Mead, 1934: 175). By that Mead even connects to present-day neurobiological
discussions in which the self is seen as a temporarily condition in a human body,
amongst others an effect of the many tides in the organism (Damasio, 1999).
Autopilot: social contagion
A radical social conception like Mead’s of the self helps to explain what indeed may
have happened in the discussions of the coordination team. A conception like Mead’s
exemplifies that in the course of conversations agreement arises step by step in such a
way that the people involved only afterwards realize what they agreed to. In Mead’s
conception there is room for conflicts, for different opinions and negotiations. Differences
are settled in an ongoing process of responding and adjusting to each other’s
gestures. In this process meaning is produced. According to recent research this responding
evolves rather in a contagious way. People have "… the tendency to automatically
mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements
with those of another person and, consequently, to converge emotionally.”
(Hatfield et al., 1994: 5). Emotional contagion might be an effective but unconscious
way influencing each other, because "it is these stimuli, not accessible to conversant
awareness, that are often the most fascinating by virtue of the subtlety with which
they affect behavior." (Hatfield et al., 1994: 11).
The concept of social contagion helps to understand what happened in the four
months of working together in the coordination team. In a broad sense the members
of coordination team seemed to be subject to a process of social contagion in which
the members spread and adopted affects, attitudes or behaviour among themselves. I
prefer to stress the social and general nature of contagion, contrary to the use of
contagion as a process in which one initiator or one model plays a pivotal part in the
beginning of a process in a large group and in a process that deviates from the normal
(Ginneken, 1999; Levy and Nail, 1993). Although the evaluation report of the internal
branding programme more or less caused a focussed action of the coordination team,
I see no reason to assume that this evaluation report was the initiator of a contagious
process in which we tended to act in the same way. On the contrary, the evaluation
report initiated a process in which differences surfaced and had to be dealt with. In my
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