Barnesian performativity means practice sustaining knowledge creates confirmation of that knowledge.

Evidence

If my conjecture is correct (and though it is plausible, the available evidence does not permit certainty), it would constitute a form of performativity that is, in the terminology of chapter 1, Barnesian. There, I quoted Barry Barnes’s succinct summary of his viewpoint: “I have conceived of a society as a distribution of self-referring knowledge substantially confirmed by the practice it sustains” (Barnes 1988, p. 166). The Black-Scholes-Merton model was used in the practice of arbitrage especially, but not exclusively, in “spreading” and the effects of that arbitrage seem to have been to move patterns of prices toward the postulates of the model, in particular on Rubinstein’s test. The “practice” that the Black-Scholes-Merton model sustained helped to create a reality in which the model was indeed “substantially confirmed.” — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 738

Categorization

• DEFINE: Recaps Barnes’s definition of performativity as a self-referring, practice-sustained loop.
• XREF: connects to: Value is constituted by knowledge and practice, not merely hype. — Kean Birch, Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy:…, 95; Barnesian performativity means models create the price patterns they describe — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 148; Knowledge created from a position of strength produces the object it claims to describe (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Barnesian performativity means models create the price patterns they describe #exemplifies (0.95) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 148
• Knowledge created from a position of strength produces the object it claims to describe #corroborates (0.90)
• Knowledge’s transformative power arises retrospectively from achieved substance-subject. #expands (0.78)