The recent vogue for performativity, par ticularly in gender and postcolonial studies, suggests that the desire for political potency has displaced the demand for critical rigor. 1 Because Judith Butler bears the primary responsibility for investing per formativity with its present critical cachet, her work furnishes a convenient site for exposing the flawed theoretical formulations and the hollow political claims advanced under the banner of performativity. We have undertaken this critique not solely in the interests of clari fying performativity's theoretical stakes: in our view, the appropriation of performativity for purposes to which it is completely unsuit ed has misdirected crucial activist energies, not only squandering resources but even endangering those naive enough to act on per formativity's (false) political promise. It is reasonable to expect any practical political discourse to essay an analysis which links its proposed actions with their supposed effects, appraising the fruits of specific politi cal labors before their seeds are sown. Only by means of such an assessment can any political program persuade us to undertake some tasks and forgo others. Butler proceeds accordingly:" The task is not whether to repeat, but how to repeat or, indeed to repeat, and through a rad ical proliferation of gender, to displace the very gender norms that enable repetition itself'(Gender Trouble 148). Here, at the con