Identifying (with) performance: Representations and Constructions of Cultural Identity in Contemporary Theatre Practice - Three Case Studies discusses ways in which contemporary live performance affirms, challenges or constructs collective models of cultural identity by addressing the performative relationship through which identity is joined to the process of identification. The thesis argues that cultural identity is constructed within the process of identification, and that this process is articulated through performance. It examines strategies of intervening in this process by theatricalizing those cultural practices that establish and confirm our collective attachments. The thesis explores these strategies through an -in-depth case study of three exemplary artistic practices: Welsh theatre company Brith Gof; Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco, a Mexican and a Cuban-American performance artist based in the U. S.; and the Israeli Acco Theater Center. Using techniques of reiteration, reframing, decontextualization, emphasis, or exaggeration, these artists defamiliarize established patterns of cultural performance in order both to affirm and question the way in which these performances attach us to a collective identity. They utilize forms of interacting and counter-acting the processes of 'seeing' and 'feeling in the identification of and with others in performance. The thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One outlines recent theoretical debates on cultural identity and its relationship with identification, focusing in particular on anthropological and ethnographical approaches to performative cultural practices and on sociological and philosophical approaches to performative practices in the constitution of identity. Chapter Two scrutinizes three theatre historical models for a study of identity, and complement these with an account of the current debate on performance theatre, performativity and theatricality. Chapter Three analyses Brith Gof’s theatrical oeuvre in reference to its articulation of spatial concerns. Chapter Four discusses Gómez-Peña’s and Fusco’s performance work in relation to its corporeal strategies. Chapter Five focuses on a discussion of the Acco Theater Center’s seminal performance Arbeit macht frei vom Toitland Europa, in an investigation of its address to the temporal orders of biography, memory and history. Chapter Six concludes the thesis with a general look at the constitution of identification in theatre and performance.

This thesis provides a genealogical account of ‘Taiwanese’ as a national identity. Genealogy is a way of writing a history of the present that de-familiarises us from what we now take for granted by revealing in detail how things were otherwise. As argued in this thesis, Taiwanese identity, in ontological terms, exists only in discourse. It is a way of talking and doing things relative to what sort of people the Taiwanese are; every word and action contributes to the idea that there is such a thing as ‘Taiwanese-ness’ and helps to substantialise the qualities/features attached to it. This thesis conceptualises Taiwanese identity as having no fixed, essential, or permanent identity; rather, it is formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways people talk and act. This thesis investigates various social practices/events in post-authoritarian Taiwan that incited people to talk about Taiwanese-ness. Certain things, with different positions, forms and organisations, were said and done, while other alternatives disappeared or were omitted and repressed. With various power relations, different discourses mutually intersected, interacted and competed. The social practices/events selected in this thesis include the production of knowledge, the publication of a comic book, an election campaign, and a political demonstration. It is crucially noted that the social practices/events analysed in this thesis are just a few of the numerous events that occur periodically or repeatedly. This thesis, in sum, is an attempt to understand how various social practices/events enable or disable certain ways through which people make sense of their past and their political lives, thereby coming to terms with their belongings, their allegiances, and their situated-ness. Taiwanese-ness is spoken of, not only literally but also symbolically, and it is this process of being ‘spoken of’ that constitutes the Taiwanese-ness – the birth of the ‘Taiwanese’.

A central concern of much of the emergent literature of Asian American women is the question of how identity is defined. Living in, and writing from, what has been called the 'between worlds' condition engenders an often contradictory and frequently shifting sense of identity in Asian American women's texts. The 'hyphenated identity' is further destabilised and complicated by gender. This precarious female subjectivity is often reflected textually through shifting narrative voices and fractured narratives. A self-consciousness can be detected in the relation between the structures of narrative and the construction of self. Conventional genre distinctions are often traversed so that in particular the demarcations between fiction and autobiography are challenged. I refract current theoretical discussions of identity and the processes of identity formation through a series of texts by Asian American women which are preoccupied to varying degrees with the question 'Who am I?’ Several possible answers are suggested to the question of where identity actually originates. They are: the maternal, language; physiognomy; 'home' and the prominent cultural marker of national identity. It is around these locations of cultural identity that I organise my analysis. Chapters One and Two introduce a discussion of the ways in which identity is negotiated in this group of texts, and analyse the ways that genre is used and abused by these writers to suit their purposes. Chapter Three addresses the prevalence of mother/daughter writing in this body of work, suggesting that in their depiction of alternative maternal-daughterly arrangements, several Asian American women writers actually challenge dominant analyses of the mother/daughter dyad. As I discuss in Chapter Four, linguistic identity is also a focus of extended interest for many writers, for whom bilingualism is an uneasy condition. In Chapter Five, I address the Asian American feminist re-writing of the body as signifier. The body is often a battleground of identity. Asian American women's texts repeatedly address the practice of reconstructing the body to project less racially marked identities, as part of a wider project of recovering a positive sense of self-identity. This emphasises the corporeality of identity as well as the connections between the internal and external body. Chapter Six stresses the roles of culture and the polity in defining and creating identities, through the culturally and legislatively defined identity afforded by citizenship. I argue that particular texts by Asian American women may be read as challenges to dominant constructions of national identity, constructions which sought to exclude certain Asian American groups at critical moments in American history. Chapter Seven addresses the dynamics of space and home, a preoccupation with the idea of return as fundamental to the negotiation of identity. The search for 'home', both as psychological construction and real location, is a recurrent preoccupation in many texts.

This thesis argues that a thorough understanding of Methodism must attend to the lived experience of Methodist people, expressed within Methodist church communities. I use narrative research methods to show the nature of local Methodist identity. This research was conducted using group interviews with participants from three Methodist churches in West Yorkshire. In analysis of these interviews, a 'narrative of place' is revealed: this is how participants talk about the experience of their church's 'space' and make sense of their belonging. It communicates a shared sense of identity in each context. Through the narrative of place, I identify the shared experience of 'lived Methodism' that reflects my participants' belonging within a Methodist church and within that tradition. In 1932, three independent Methodist church groups, each with their own practical and theological emphases, united to form The Methodist Church of Great Britain. The contemporary Methodist Church claims and cherishes its place as a 'wide' church, accepts a diversity of practice. Therefore, attempting to define Methodist identity can be problematic. This thesis argues that Methodist identity is not merely given to the church by the Methodist Connexion, or as a function of meeting in a Methodist building, instead it is appropriated and lived locally. A series of two group interviews in three Methodist communities generates the data recorded in the form of transcripts. Using a narrative research methodology to interrogate this data, I expose the narrative of place and its three core emphases, these show how lived Methodism is revealed in my work. Initially, place and community demonstrates how community is formed locally. Using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus, I argue that the language of place and community functions in setting the boundaries of that particular group in both conscious and unconscious ways. The community thus governs its practice and ecclesial identity. Secondly, place and memory is outlined. In the three church narratives, memory is used to claim validity for the current expression of the community, and to articulate the values the community wishes to highlight. These two areas highlight how the local churches own and understand their identity, leading finally to an analysis of place and tradition. This demonstrates an understanding of what it means to be a Methodist church. There exists a local tradition focussed on 'being the church here and now', which is fed by a received tradition mediated by those who are part of a broader Methodist narrative. The interface of these two modes of tradition creates a contextual Methodist tradition in each setting. I argue that it is here that a rich understanding of Methodism exists. Methodism is not a gift offered to a community, but a lived reality, claimed and valued by those who tell its story. The local narrative of place allows the lived experience of Methodism, in local church communities, to be heard and understood.

This thesis focuses on three different empirical questions related to the economic incentives to the formation of identity. The first chapter examines the dynamics of occupational segregation of self-identified homosexual workers, specifically accounting for the fact that part of their observed distribution may come from selective disclosure of sexual identity. We present a simple labour supply model where individuals choose both an occupation and their revealed sexual identity. Using confidential data from the UK, we show that selfreported homosexuals are concentrated in opposite gender typical occupations. As tolerance increases, a greater fraction of homosexuals reports their homosexual identity, particularly in marginal homosexual occupations, hence occupational segregation falls. The finding suggests that part of the observed segregation of homosexuals in opposite sex occupations is due to selective disclosure rather tastes or comparative advantage. The second chapter uses an original dataset covering the universe of local elections in England spanning over 40 years to investigate whether the electoral success of women and ethnic minorities leads to increases in these groups' representation as political candidates in subsequent elections. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we find that both groups enjoy a personal incumbency advantage. One direct consequence is an increase in the fraction of women and ethnic minority candidates contesting a seat previously held by someone from the same group. In the case of women, this increase is also driven by an inflow of new women candidates. The third chapter focuses on the impact of television on religious identity. We use detailed survey data on individuals' self-reported religious sentiment, behaviours and attitudes from Indonesia. We use the variation in signal reception due to geographic topography at the sub-district level to estimate the causal effect of media exposure. Individuals exposed to a higher number of television channels are less likely to report being religious and following religious practices. Furthermore, they also display lower interfaith hostility. At the village level, higher exposure to television increases the supply of religiously forbidden activities. However, higher exposure to television seems to have no effect on political preferences.

In the professional formation of pharmacists, participation in real-life professional practice occurs mostly in pre-registration training, in the year after completion of the four-year undergraduate MPharm course. As such, development of professional identity and practice are likely to happen predominantly in the pre-registration year. The study is conducted against a background of a sparsity of knowledge about professional formation in pharmacy, particularly in the pre-registration year. The aim of this study is to investigate the professional formation of pharmacy graduates in the pre-registration year. The research questions address what professional practice the graduate engages in during the pre-registration year, how they perceive their own identity and the reasons for this. Understanding professional formation requires a focus on the interplay between agency and structure. As such, Bourdieu's conceptual tools are deployed to explore individual agency and relationships between key players, in a process named becoming a pharmacist. This process is further conceptualised as achieving a feel for the game in which recognising and repositioning in regard to hysteresis is central to success. Via this conceptualisation, Bourdieu's thinking tools are used to describe and understand becoming a pharmacist, shaping the study through their use to inform data collection, analysis and interpretation. Four community pharmacy pre-registration trainees working in the north-west of England were recruited to take part. A case study methodology was chosen to retain the holistic characteristics of real-life events, with qualitative methods used to collect data. Portraiture was chosen as a method of presenting and describing the study's findings. Interview transcripts, observational data, self-selected records from trainee portfolios and researcher field notes were used to construct the portraits. Each portrait was subjected to a critical analysis to understand each trainee's unique experience using the lens of Bourdieu's conceptual thinking tools. A cross portrait analysis was then additionally carried out using key theories of identity and professional practice as well as Bourdieu's conceptual tools. Key findings included that identity and practice were strongly influenced by cultural capital and the existence of a dyadic relationship with the pharmacist tutor. Legal and corporate restrictions on practice constrained the development of professional expertise, which contributed to a period of acute stress experienced immediately upon qualification. The identification of practices of assertion and practices of deference as a way to describe trainee practice and identity was proposed and explored. Conclusions include that practices of assertion and deference can be useful in allowing researchers to unpack the bundles of influences on identity and practice. Through its findings, the study therefore makes a contribution to what is known about professional formation in pharmacy but also more broadly through the use of Bourdieu's conceptual tools to reveal complex relationships between structure and agency.

Within rehabilitation research recovery from a stroke has been defined by health professionals as the improvement in the physical ability and task-related skills of an individual. The negative psychological consequences of a stroke for both individuals and their families have been recognised for several years, but are poorly understood. Within this thesis an alternative approach has been used to explore psychological consequences following a stroke. The focus of study has been the change in identity of individuals and their spouses, rather than the ability of an individual to carry out tasks. Ten consecutive couples were included following one partner's admission to hospital following a stroke. Separate narrative life history interviews were carried out with the stroke respondent and their spouse in hospital, and at six months and at one year after hospital discharge. Data collection and analysis was based on an interpretative phenomenological approach. A second concurrent study was carried out including 38 stroke respondents who were admitted to hospital following a stroke. While in hospital they were asked to complete a questionnaire including indices of physical ability, task-orientated ability, mood and self-concept. The questionnaire was administered again at six months and one year following discharge. Multivariate statistical procedures were carried out to describe the associations between the variables assessed. All respondents reported that they had experienced a fundamental change in their lives. They continued to report this fundamental change up to the final interview at one year, apart from one couple, where the stroke partner had made a complete physical recovery. The issue which appeared to dominate the stroke respondent's first year post-stroke was a split between their body and their physical and social self They could not maintain their prior identity within the capabilities of their new body. The spouses reported that they became totally responsible for not only their own lives but also the life of their partner. The issues of body-self split and total responsibility appeared to be hidden from others,making the situation of the respondents more challenging. Younger spouses reported more difficulty than older spouses in integrating the stroke into their life situation. Issues facing the respondents also varied depending on their own life histories and life goals. Within the quantitative analysis the mood of the stroke respondents was not highly correlated with physical ability or task-oriented improvement. Perceived difference between past and present self-concept was correlated to anxiety and depression at all assessment times even when the other indictors were taken into account. Exploration of identity change appears to be a useful framework for exploring the psychological consequences of a stroke.

The given thesis examines the question of identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The country devastated by the war from the beginning of 90s, went through major social changes, which deeply affected contemporary situation in the country. Although, BiH has long history of being quite specific in its characteristics, contemporary state is more complicated than it was imagined by peace creators, volunteers and scholars of international community. Identity within the country is defined by the entity. Every out of three peoples, almost two decades from the war, strongly holds on their ethnic appurtenance. The thesis portrays pre-war cohabitation of three ethnic groups by so called "neighborhood phenomenology" , and by providing certain theoretical insight attempts to depict joined similarities and differences in one society. Public, namely media discourse is highly affected with hatred and discrimination among ethnic groups. Aiming to prove that, at least present it, the author used media discourse analysis of the central news programs of two public broadcasters. Results not only demonstrated discrimination, but provided closer insight in professionalism, or lack of it, and clearly portrayed politically infected program. Media create and shape public opinions and attitudes, in case of BiH, it is marked by...

Abstract This research paper examines the ways in which the autobiographical impulse is constructed in selected artworks of Tracey Emin (b1963-) and Claudette Schreuders (b1973-). It is situated within contemporary discourses around notions of the self, namely postmodernist, feminist and post colonialist frameworks. This critical discussion of notions of the self, as evidenced in these selected artworks, leads into discourses of Authenticity, of Histories, personal and collective and of the role Identity formation plays in the performing self. In conducting this research I have drawn on a wide range of theoretical frameworks including philosophy, psychoanalysis and literary theory, including magical realism. The first part of my study presents the theoretical frameworks of Authenticity, History and Identity regarding the autobiographical impulse. The second section of this paper examines the selected works of Emin and Schreuders. I chose these two artists because of their different strategies in performing themselves rather than their similarities, which allows for an interrogation of a broader framework of contemporary artistic practices. The concluding chapter examines my practical artwork during the period of my Masters degree. My work comes from an autobiographical base and I create a ‘self-portrait’ through my accumulation, production and display of objects. My exhibition took the form of an installation whereby I created an uncomfortable atmosphere through various methods including stimulating the olfactory sense in a predominant way.

Madame de Motteville et la duchesse de Montpensier sont deux aristocrates contemporaines. La première est dame de compagnie d’Anne d’Autriche ; la seconde est cousine germaine de Louis XIV. Témoins des bouleversements liés à la Régence et à la Fronde, elles sont conduites à des questionnements parallèles. Si elles se sont passionnément intéressées à l’histoire de leur époque, elles ont fait des choix de vie individuelle qui les distinguent du commun des femmes. Chacune a adopté une forme de célibat. Ces choix de vie ont forgé en elles le désir de liberté. Ce qui crée le plus intensément leur sororité littéraire reste l’écriture de Mémoires. L’histoire les a invitées à s’interroger sur l’identité nobiliaire. La Fronde va être l’occasion historique pour la Grande Mademoiselle de revendiquer les valeurs menacées par les évolutions politiques. En cela, elle ne partage pas les idées politiques de Madame de Motteville qui va s’employer à soutenir le pouvoir légitime dans ses Mémoires. Simultanément se pose aux deux auteures la question de leur identité féminine. Madame de Motteville et Mademoiselle mettent en scène, dans leurs Mémoires, l’oppression dont les femmes sont victimes et qui tient au fonctionnement patriarcal de la société. Une fois Louis XIV au pouvoir de manière effective, les rêves de libération féminine s’évanouissent. D’où la tendance des deux mémorialistes à formuler une expérience individuée de la liberté. Le statut de femme libre peine à exister sur le plan public. Mais il demeure possible de l’inventer dans le cadre de la sphère privée. Elles vont se frayer un chemin vers la liberté en réinventant à leur manière le destin féminin, sans pour autant déboucher sur un véritable féminisme, leurs valeurs demeurant sous certains angles empreintes de traditionalisme. À l’intérieur de cette sphère privée, l’écriture mémorialiste circonscrit un deuxième espace dans lequel leur quête de liberté prend corps et s’épanouit. / Madame de Motteville and the Duchess of Montpensier were two contemporary aristocrats. The former was a lady-in-waiting to Anne of Austria; the latter was a first cousin of Louis XIV. They witnessed the upheavals caused by the Regency and the Fronde and shared a passionate interest in the history of their times. It led them to explore similar issues. They each chose a form of spinsterhood and made life choices which distinguished them from the common run of women and contributed to their desire for liberty. The main reason why they can be regarded as litterary 'sisters' is the writing of Memoirs. History made them both question their aristocratic identity, though in different ways: La Grande Mademoiselle took the opportunity of the Fronde to fight for values threatened by political changes while Madame de Motteville supported the legitimate power of the Regency through her Memoirs. They also both questioned their feminine identity. Theydealt with the oppression women suffered as a result of a patriachal society. After Louis XIV took power in 1660, hopes of feminine liberation were dashed. Hence both memorialists' tendency to seek and write about a personal experience of freedom. They could not achieve the status of 'liberated' women in the public sphere but they could try to do so in the private one. They fought their way to freedom by reinventing women's destiny in their own ways, but without defending feminist views as such, as their values remained tinged withtraditionalism. The writing of Memoirs allowed them to define within the private sphere a space in which their quest for freedom couldflourish.