Challenging desire : performing whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa

The central argument of this thesis asserts that in the process of challenging dominant subject positions, such as whiteness, performance creates the possibilities for new or alternative arrangements of desire. It examines how the creative process of desire is forestalled (reified) by habitual representations of whiteness as a privileged position, and proposes that performance can be a valid form of resistance to static conceptions of race and subjectivity. The discussion takes into account how the privilege of whiteness finds representation through forms of neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism in the post apartheid context. The analysis focuses on the work of white South African artists whose work offers a critique from within the privileged “centre” of whiteness. The research is situated within the inter-disciplinary field of performance studies entailing a reading and application of critical texts to the analysis. Alongside this qualitative methodology surfaces a subjective dialogue with the information presented on whiteness. Part Two includes an analysis of Steven Cohen’s The Cradle of Humankind (2011), Brett Bailey’s Exhibit A (2011) and Michael MacGarry’s LHR-JNB (2010). Each section examines the way in which the respective works engage in a questioning of whiteness through performance. Part Three investigates South African rap-rave duo, Die Antwoord and how their appropriation of Zef interrogates desires for an essential authenticity. Part Four focuses on my own performance practice and the proposed value of engaging with a form of practice-led research. This is particularly relevant in relation to critical race studies that require a level of self-reflexivity from the researcher. It presents an analysis of the work entitled Villain (2012) as a disturbance of theatrical desire through a process of ‘becoming’. This notion of meaning and identity as ‘becoming’ is argued as a strategy to challenge prevailing modes of perception which can possibly restore the production of desire to the viewer. The thesis concludes with the notion that performance can offer a mode of immanent ethics which is significant in creating both vulnerable and critical forms of whiteness

Czernowitz to Chernivtsi by Cernăuți. A multicultural townscape as heritage of a plural society

Czernowitz, former capital city of the Duchy of Bucovina in the Hapsburg Empire, changed “location” twice: from Austria to Romania in 1918, becoming Cernauți, then from Romania to Ukraine in 1945 (until today), becoming Chernivtsi. Today Chernivtsi is mainly an Ukrainian city, but its architecture shows this historical process thanks to a series of urban landmarks. This paper aims to focus on the interplay among architecture and nationalities, so evident and strong in this case-study. The multicultural society before 1918 is reflected in many heterogeneous religious e public buildings, the effort of “Romanization” after 1918 is mainly reflected – on the contrary - in the “ethnic” Romanian qualities of new buildings. From the second half of the nineteenth century the townscape was progressively enriched by temples of different religions (Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Armenian…) and by the specific building types: the “national houses”, seat of the cultural life of each community (German, Jewish, Ruthenian, Polish, Romanian…) , all with their specific architectural features. In this architectural “melting pot” some buildings played a role of super-national, unifying and modern (Art Nouveau) landmarks: the railway station, the Postal Savings Bank and the theatre. The “Romanization” of the city was operated after 1920 building many new Orthodox churches and emphasizing the ethnic decorative details of new buildings (window frames, arches, roofs), related to the Brancoveanu style. The spread of Modernism, in the 30’s stopped this way of shaping a new face to the city, but the huge new Romanian Culture Palace “landed” in the theatre square speaking clearly of Bucovina as a part of Greater Romania. After 1945 the multicultural society vanished, and the Soviet power promoted homologation against the richness of the past. The independence of Ukraine from the former USSR allowed social groups and politicians to rethink about the national and local identity, mainly intended as ukrainian: as usual monuments changed, but the new ones, despite new people to celebrate, followed old ways in representing heroes. On the other hand, but more recently, architectural heritage is considered by Municipality as an ADN of Czernowitz and a value to be restored and protected, both on the Austrian and Romanian side. The website launched in 2008 for celebrating the 600 years of the town, speaks about Chernivtsi city of tolerance

Sharing Witness Along the Way: Engaging the Lived Theology of an Urban Congregation in Evangelical, Public, and Missional Strands

This ethnographic phenomenology explores the lived theology of an urban congregation as it engages with civil society. Drawing methodological considerations from Jen-Luc Marion, Paul Ricoeur, and James Clifford, the research journey attends theologically to the sociality embodied both within the congregation and with its neighborhood for the sake of participating with this congregation in bringing to discourse its lived evangelical, public, and missional theological strands. Drawing upon Charles Taylor\u27s use of moral frameworks in relationship to narratives, practices, and goods, the evangelical strand explores intimacy as a strongly valued good. Theologically, such a good makes possible James McClendon\u27s vision of a community of watch-care that bodies-forth a politics of forgiveness rooted in the Gospel. The evangelical narrative names intimate, authentic, and face-to-face relationships as participating in the Gospel of reconciled relationships. But such a narrative also excludes, for it understands Christian identity in relationship to firm boundaries. The public strand narrates the congregation\u27s perduring presence in and with the public life at its margins. Drawing upon McClendon and Miroslav Volf, the researcher shows how the congregation innovates with the theme of embodied witness to demonstrate generative reciprocality in the congregation\u27s public life. Its public life at the margins both bears witness-to and bears witness-with its neighbors in the generation of a common life Innovating with David Tracy\u27s \u27mutually critical correlation,\u27 the congregation\u27s embodied witness is a \u27mutually critical participation\u27 in and with public life. But such reciprocal witnessing is experienced by the congregation as a loss of its evangelical-intimacy narratives and thus its public life is often considered non-theologically. The missional strand disclosed to the congregation both this lack of theological attention and an emergent metaphor of \u27sowing\u27 by which the congregation articulated its trust in God\u27s faithfulness in its present liminality created by the public strand. As such, the missional strand demonstrates the possibility of genuine theological innovation on the part of the congregation to recognizing the gift of the \u27other\u27 and stranger in its midst, the gift of a public life on the way to God\u27s future in Christ

Sounds in the empty spaces of history : re-placing Canadian and Scottish literatures

Following Margaret Atwood's exhortation that "the study of Canadian literature ought to be comparative" (Survival 17), and in response to what post-colonial theorists Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin have perceived as the surprising dearth of "cross-cultural comparative studies" in Canadian literary criticism (The Empire Writes Back 36), this thesis engages in a study of Canadian and Scottish narratives from a cross-cultural perspective that foregrounds colonization, and both countries' responses to cultural imperialism. Canadian and Scottish writers wrestle with what Neil Gunn's Highland River refers to as the "sounds in the empty spaces of history": the various and barely audible vibrations of narrative that are suppressed by the monolithic din of a hegemonic historiography (62). Starting with the Highland Clearances, a dynamic and intersecting moment for both Canadian and Scottish literatures, a continuing cross-cultural dialogue between Canada and Scotland is examined as this is inscribed in their literatures. Canada shares with Scotland not only the Gaelic and Lowland literary traditions she has embraced and adapted through Scottish emigration, but also the decolonizing response both have developed to American and English cultural incursions into their respective countries.The paradoxical role the Scot and the Canadian descendent of white European settler culture play as both an agent and victim of British imperialism—the colonizer and the colonized—is discussed with reference to the work of Neil Gunn, Alistair MacLeod, Alice Munro, Naomi Mitchison, Margaret Laurence, Alasdair Gray, Susan Swan, Margaret Atwood and Sheila Watson.The thesis examines how the discursive strategies of irony, parody, metafiction and allegory feed into Canadian and Scottish writing as ways of circumventing and subverting hierarchical patterns of writing

HISTORY URBANISM RESILIENCE VOLUME 04:

The 17th conference (2016, Delft) of the International Planning History Society (IPHS) and its proceedings place presentations from different continents and on varied topics side by side, providing insight into state-of-the art research in the field of planning history and offering a glimpse of new approaches, themes, papers and books to come. VOLUME 04: Planning and Heritag

Sacred Space: Spatial Communications Patterns in an Irish American and Slovak American Roman Catholic Parish

This ethnographic study provides contextual definitions of religious-centered frames for communication in an Irish-American and a Slovak-American parish. Spatial behavior patterns which appear incident to ethnic traditions and patterns associated with Roman Catholicism which do not appear to vary significantly across ethnic parishes are both described. The context control methodology employed is adapted from the microanalytic study of multimodal communication behavior. A detailed explication of the evolving methodological process reveals relevant cultural contrasts in interview negotiations and hospitality patterns. Data analyses include informant interviews and observations made in analogously controlled conditions in a variety of comparable locations in each church and in the dwelling space of both clergy and laity. Historical depth to empirical observations is provided by a through-time description of the two cultural groups and their migration and settlement patterns. Church doctrine and architectural history provides technical insights regarding the liturgical significance of ritual behaviors patterns

Camp Studies, and Queer Theory, and drag queens, oh my! camping the academy, queer methods, and the potentiality of camp

In all seriousness, camp is not dead. But since Susan Sontag's Notes of 'Camp', academic attention to, and interest in the often recognisable (but painfully ineffable) Camp/camp has never been sustained. Each moment marked by a camp death. The focus of this dissertation is returning to these dead-ends and cul-de-sacs of thought, to map camp's enduring potential in straightie-time. Recuperating Sontag's capping of camp as apolitical, unserious, and unintentional, to recognise its affective world-making and technologies of survival by alternative existence. Not a 'revolutionary' full circle returning to where we started, or a 'cultural turn' that's turning, turning, turning towards progress. More like camp has turned/curdled, and in true camp fashion we're throwing some cheap perfume and glitter over it so we can keep partying on and performing. In mapping camp's deaths and reconfigurations, I offer camp's doubleness, resourcefulness, and its unburdening of liveness. Theorising what camp is, can be, and does. In doing so, this thesis unpacks camp's critical utility, while demonstrating its utility as method and critical lens. Researching camp, while doing camp research. Drawing on interviews with draggers (drag artists), not as empirical data to be analysed, but as a vanguard community of camp and street professionals; on Cultural, Performance, Art, and Queer Studies literature, materials, and mediums; and other silly texts, like children's animated programme Pinky Malinky, drag competition RuPaul's Drag Race, and les-bi-trans-queer BDSM practices. This thesis, as a generative and recuperative reconfiguration of camp, is an interdisciplinary pitching of tents across camp sites that demonstrates camp's potential to be and do social, political, and pedagogical work in Camp Studies