Certain pragmatic approaches block an investigation of aesthetics, and as an ethics, while other approaches enable such an investigation. This chapter considers the category of the performative in relation to pragmatics and rethinks the performative in order to theorize the literary function in ways pragmatic approaches belonging to the postmodern-cultural-critical turn are unable to do. It is only by rethinking the performative that we can arrive at a pragmatics for the literary function that enable an exploration into the ethics of aesthetics. By considering the performative in relation to pragmatics we can eventually look at the storytelling situation, the production of singularity and subjectification, and the production of community. In other words, the performative helps us understand the literary function in terms of affect and not in terms of representation.