Most formal research on the imperative sentence type has focused on canonical imperatives, forms like Leave!, which are often characterized across languages by properties such as bare verbal morphology and omission of the subject. Noncanonical imperatives therefore offer an opportunity to investigate imperative properties from a different perspective. This article argues that negation-licensed commands, forms like No smoking!, first introduced in Iatridou 2021, contain an unusual combination of properties that offer a unique insight into the nature of canonical imperatives. This article has two main findings: (i) negation-licensed commands have a morphosyntax similar to that of existential declaratives, but a speech-act update similar to that of canonical imperatives, and (ii) their speech-act update is subtly different from canonical imperatives in a way that motivates a reevaluation of the speech-act operator in canonical imperatives. This article therefore demonstrates that noncanonical constructions are worth studying not only because of their interesting properties, but also because they offer insights into canonical constructions that could not be gathered otherwise.

There are multiple intersecting crises afflicting society, from environmental devastation to the collapse of democracy, from economic exploitation to gratuitous violence, in the so-called “metacrisis.” Universities have both contributed to these crises in various ways, but have also tried to prevent them In this paper, we consider our responses to the metacrisis from our various disciplinary perspectives as four university educators from different scholarly traditions in one institution in Aotearoa New Zealand, We draw from our teaching experiences and our theoretical perspectives to engage in a reflective conversation with each other about how we may address the challenges of the metacrisis. Our conversation illustrates the potential benefits that such reflections, amongst colleagues who are intimately connected to a range of crises, may have to elucidate knowledge, power and performativity, and considers how humility, in a variety of forms, may be important to navigate the metacrisis.

Social innovation (SI) is a promising concept that has been developed and mobilized in academia, government policies, philanthropic programs, entrepreneurial projects. Scholars propose multiple conceptions and categorization of what is SI (trajectories, approaches, theoretical strands, paradigms, streams). Some recent work has also addressed the question of who is doing SI. In both cases, the what and the who remain the key characteristic of SI. Two approaches are confronted: one where SI is more presented as a concept that reproduces the neoliberal–capitalist societies; a second that conceives SI as a transformative and emancipatory pathway. With this article, I contribute to the possibilities to conceive SI as performative concept. My proposition is to analyze SI as a discourse with precise performative practices and apparatus. By doing so, it allows scholars and practitioners to better reflect and identify the effects, tensions and ambivalence and possibilities of SI. Moreover, it gives us few key aspects of what might constitute an emancipatory social innovation.

Norm contestation has become a defining characteristic of our time and a major interest in International Relations (IR) scholarship. However, researchers often view contestation as a repudiation of norm socialization and thus overlook the ways in which contestation occurs within socialization. This article advances an interpretive account based on performativity to capture the role of cultural translation and appropriation as practices of contestation within processes of norm socialization. It makes three key interventions. First, it redefines norm socialization as a process of cultural translation rather than straightforward transition. Second, it investigates various strategies through which actors appropriate norms by disjointing a norm’s normative appeal from its normalizing power – its prevalent interpretation. Third, it underscores how such contestations destabilize the relationships of authority and hierarchy in normative engagements. To illustrate the analytical purchase of this framework, the paper analyses the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s discourses of ‘Islamic democracy’ and the ‘Islamic civil state’ as examples of their performative socialization into the norm of democracy. The paper concludes by reflecting on the democratic promise as well as the precariousness of performative socialization in world politics.

This article theorizes China’s Charity Law as a staged legal architecture that institutionalizes symbolic governance through sequenced design: from normative logic, to operational mechanism, to statutory codification. Based on comparative ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai and Chongqing (2021–2023), this article develops a three-part model of interface legality. First, it conceptualizes legality as a symbolic infrastructure of legitimacy budgeting—the institutional logic through which symbolic control is organized without procedural closure. Second, it analyzes triadic discretion as the operational logic of this system, where codified law, bureaucratic modulation, and organizational alignment interact as a choreography of relational governance. Third, it traces how this discretionary system, developed in practice after the 2016 enactment, was codified into law as structured unfulfillability—embedding impossibility into legal form to sustain reputational suspense. These mechanisms are not pathologies of implementation but institutional features of symbolic governance. By connecting the Charity Law’s expressive design to its affective operations and strategic incompletion, this article contributes to sociolegal scholarship on staged legality by revealing how institutional logic, operational rhythm, and statutory design interlock to codify symbolic governance in contemporary lawmaking.

The semiotic construction of corporate persons in law is key to the contemporary organization of global capitalism. The economic capacities enjoyed by corporations stem significantly from how the semiotics of corporate personhood work within domestic and international legal orders fundamentally designed for human persons. Signs (especially in documents—laws, incorporation papers, tax filings, etc.) construct corporations as legal persons—entities modeled on human persons yet differently bound to human embodiment. Corporations multiply themselves through the creation of legally independent corporate persons (“subsidiaries”), while unifying themselves through their control over these persons. Unlike human offspring, corporations’ corporate offspring are easily created, may take up residence in almost any jurisdiction, and always obey their parents. The paper will discuss the implications of these features of corporations with respect to tort liability, international trade, property, taxation, and private militaries.

How do authoritarian actors navigate the liberal international order, adopting democratic facades without committing to democratic principles? And why is it so difficult for the international normative system to debunk their pretence when it comes to the use of democratic values? This paper explores this question by introducing ‘profilicity’ and ‘performativity’ as key concepts to understand how autocratic regimes build powerful profiles within a liberal system that values authenticity. Unlike conventional theories, which assume that engagement with liberal norms requires genuine commitment, profilicity reveals that strategic image-building can be just as effective. Through this lens, we see how autocracies exploit liberalism’s own ideals, using performative adaptation to secure status and reshape norms. This paper suggests that the liberal order’s emphasis on sincerity may itself be a strategic weakness, one that autocratic actors skilfully navigate in a world increasingly driven by profiles over principles.

Over the past 25 years, performativity has emerged as a salient focus in social sciences, yet its meta-theoretical analysis remains limited. What is performativity? How is it located empirically and treated theoretically across disciplines? Analyzing 6,741 published articles and books deploying the term performativity, this paper proposes a framework to explore performativity and reviews the transdisciplinary literature that employs the term in academic practice. Drawing on an updated version of Actor-Network Theory and studying performativity in terms of its impact on the constituents of an agencement, i.e., devices (D), actors (A), representations (R), and networks (N), we outline the term’s theoretical landscape and summarize the general threads of performativity research. The paper defines performativity as a representational intervention involving a material act of describing devices, actors, representations, or networks that affects one or more of them. The literature demonstrates that such interventions can manifest as discourses, embodied engagements, speech acts, or scientific models, among other forms.

In research literature and works of art, the textual gap of Mary’s bodily action, implicit in Jesus’ phrase μή μου ἅπτου (John 20.17b), is frequently filled either with a proskynesis or a standing embrace. Against the background of Judith Butler’s theory of gesture, this article analyses attempts at filling in the gaps in the text. The notion of gesture as bodily quotation helps to interpret Mary and Jesus not as counterparts, but as a performative unit enacting continuity and difference after Jesus’ death. The reading offered in this article focuses on the interaction between bodies, and it undermines the dichotomy between speech and body, man and woman, heaven and earth. This article examines exegetical interpretations of Mary’s gesture, alongside artistic interpretations, to show that the way the textual gap is filled is significant because gestures are significant.

Archaeological excavations conducted during the construction of the Museum of the Acropolis in Athens exposed an urban neighbourhood dated from the classical to the Byzantine periods. This discovery induced a modification of the original architectural plan: museum and excavation were combined into a unique exhibition ensemble. Its visitors further created another, peculiar and makeshift, spatial innovation in the excavation quarters. This study focuses upon multiple enacted receptions of historical spaces on the site, diachronically. Byzantine dwellers perceived and used the ancient site; the Museum creators integrated the Byzantine neighbourhood; contemporary visitors spontaneously signified the entire complex with new symbolic meaning.