A performative contradiction (German: performativer Widerspruch) arises when the making of an utterance rests on necessary presuppositions that contradict the proposition asserted in the utterance.
[1] The term was coined by Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, who attribute the first elaboration of the concept to Jaakko Hintikka, in his analysis of Descartes' cogito ergo sum argument.
[1][2] Hintikka concluding that cogito ergo sum relies on performance rather than logical inference.
[3] Habermas claims that post-modernism's epistemological relativism suffers from a performative contradiction.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe claims in his theory of discourse ethics that arguing against self-ownership results in a performative contradiction.