Although the “body” has been key to critical discourses since the 1980s, the impact of such discourses on understandings of the performing body has been limited. While “the performative” has become a key metaphor for examinations of bodies in the social domain, the specificity of performance and its frames, the ways these impact on the actions of and reactions to the soma, have received far less critical attention. This working group therefore recognises that there is still substantial research to be undertaken, especially in relation to interrogating cultural form(s). Areas for consideration include: historically based readings of the body (including the gendered, racial, sexualised and politically radical body); group or ensemble collections of the body in performance; the individual body as testament; the virtual body; and, the disciplined (rehearsed) body.
Embodied Languages
‘Texting’ the Body and Corporeal Writing
The Performance & the Body Working Group invites proposals for papers and performance presentations for TaPRA 2011 exploring the theme of bodies and their relationships with text.
Bodies and texts are interwoven throughout all performance: contemporary or historical, technological, physical, archival, material. Text may form the basis of performance events; it may be quoted, translated, projected or overlaid. Textual engagements engender our historical and archival memories of bodies through a variety of written accounts, notation, publicity, and analysis. How do we understand bodies through these encounters? In what ways are bodies (re-)shaped by texts, and texts (re-)framed by bodies? How is the body interpreted as ‘text’ in performance? In what ways do bodies and text intersect, overlap and perform? How might text be understood as body or body as text?
We welcome expressions of interest that might consider the following:
— How bodies might serve as texts of transmission
— How texts regulate, map, or shape bodies in performance
— Analyses of bodies as palimpsestic, archival, or historical texts
— The impact of technologies that mediate text upon performed/performing bodies
— The body as textual, text-ured, texted
— Text as bodied, embodied, dis-embodied
We welcome alternative, practice-as-research or performative proposals that engage thematically and rigorously with the working group theme, but these must be achievable with limited resources and within a 20-30 minute time period.
Proposals, if accepted, may be directed into a range of presentational formats: traditional panels (with 20 minute papers); pre-circulated papers that form the basis for discussion and a short presentation; or if appropriate, performance-based panels. While we welcome statements of preference, final decisions will be made by the working group convenors and will be indicated at the time of acceptance.
The Performance & the Body working group also warmly welcomes participants who do not wish to present a paper this year.
Please send a brief (250 word) proposal, a short biographical statement, and an outline of technical requirements by 3rd May 2011 to the working group convenors: Jennifer Parker Starbuck ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and Lib Taylor ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Previous convenors of the Performance & the Body Working Group include Colin Counsell, Roberta Mock and Joshua Sofaer.
