The concepts of “performative”, “performativity” and “performance” have been interpreted in different ways in a wide set of theories inspired by each other. Austin first characterized the notion of performative utterance and thus opens the way for the study of speech acts. After Austin, Searle proposes to consider the performative in a more contextual way while Derrida reinterprets the idea of performative in terms of iterability, which renews the notion of performative. If Bourdieu aims to analyse performativity in terms of “ritual”, Lyotard tries to understand it as a game where “players” are involved in a complex calculation of interactions. Unavoidable with Butler and then with all the Gender Studies, performativity must not be reduced to a theatrical performance of gender nor be totally excluded from that field either. In Excitable Speech, Butler argues that his idea of performativity lies somewhere between Bourdieu and Derrida and, according to Anne Emmanuelle Berger, in a chiasmus between “linguistic interpretation” and “theatrical performance”. Moreover, Parker and Sedgwick propose a new way of thinking together performative and performance that need to be compared with some recent considerations on the active role of spectator.