Exploring Cultural Imaginary: Understanding Performative Identities

1. approaches • a literary approach – reading into the work (author, genre, style, character, motivation plot …) • anthropology and cultural location • historical and social context • intellectual context (eg philosophy, conceptions of what it is to be human …) • archaeology and a sensitivity to materiality • a comparative perspective – • not (necessarily) the assertion of identity • but frictions generating insight • and one that uses the work as a resource in exploring the cultural imaginary- where does the work take us?

2. located bodies – fivethe performing/performed body

3. the performance of everyday life • the metaphor of performance

4. performance – some concepts • staging and mis-en-scène • props and costume • gesture • posture • habitus – habit, custom, acquired abilities and faculties • techniques of the body • proxemics • scale • reach • haptics

5. the performing body • what is its location, its place? • – a designed and dynamic ‘staging’, saturated with significances • – a continuity through architecture, environment, material goods and physical bodies

6. performativity and identity • the way you say something and the act of saying may mean as much as what is said • identity (for example gender) is not something inherent or intrinsic to a person • identity is what emerges from reiterated action • with action conceived as the performance of selfhood • a notion of performativity and gender associated with Judith Butler