Flexibly global? Performing culture and identity in an age of uncertainty

Abstract

Presented as a symbolic interactive messy performance text, Michael Giardina sutures himself into and through the landscape of global social relations, including his own interpretive interactions of disconnection and reconnection with place, home, and nation. In so doing, and in these collages of lived textuality, he examines the complex, conflictual, and continually shifting identity performances revealed in and through our fleeting experiences with one another. Whether brushing up against the hyphenated spatial histories of British colonialism and Asian diaspora in London and Manchester or witnessing the rampant expressions of xenophobic nationalism pervading the US popular public sphere in sites ranging from Yankee Stadium in New York to a fast food restaurant in Champaign, Illinois, each narrative turn brings us into head-on collisions with each 'Other'.