Performative Analysis

Abstract

In Chap. 3, we explore how discourses are performed and produce effects. We examine the relationships between the performances of discourses, identities and contexts, and we analyse a story to illustrate this. In this chapter, we also draw out the relational nature of enacted subjectivities. We make a case around the importance of attending to the stories of those positioned as other, of those positioned as same and to the broader cultural stories within which those positioned as same and other are located.

Troubling Invitation 3: Knowing Two Ways

In the second troubling invitation, we asked readers to reflect on and become conscious about the place from where they have known a particular narrative . In this troubling invitation we ask readers to identify their knowing frame and then to go to two other places from where sense could be made of a particular narrative .

As you read Brian’s narrative , we invite you to recognize the place you are reading his story from. We invite readers to consider whether this is a usual or normative place of engagement. Readers might jot down some thoughts and represent this place of knowing in a symbolic form.

We now ask readers to imagine two other places from where they might engage with Brian’s narrative . Readers might jot down some thoughts and represent these places of knowing in a symbolic form. Readers might also consider where they might know the narratives of queerly identifying tertiary students from generally. Finally we ask that readers do these tasks individually.

Michael: I quite like this section. It reads very simple but is actually quite complex—clear and complex are held together.

Mic: Yes, when I think about Brian’s story , for example, one way of thinking about it is that on the one hand, I can know Brian through his story as a gay 29-year-old tertiary student who is encountering homophobia and he tells a coherent story about this that all ties together, and then another way I can know his story is by thinking about all the different ways that he enacts his gayness which are not neat.

Michael: Yes, just as aspects of identity are complex so too is my reader identity. When I read or engage with a story , I do so from multiple places—I am more than one reader—and I think this is important to think about, because when we read from places that are usual for us, the implications of what we’ve engaged with may become usual as well.

Queer thing on a table under the Microscope Rotation 4 (Crowhurst & Emslie, 2017)