Spacing, performing, and becoming: Tangles in the mundane

Abstract

The main concern of my paper is to consider and interpret ways in which space is performatively encountered. I critically compare ideas of performativity with those of embodied practice and their combined contributions, oriented to an exploration of spacing, with particular regard to the means to adjust, reconstitute, and reimagine one's life through encounters with space. The argument seeks to bring space into discussions of performativity, through a consideration of empirical narratives and observed encounters with surroundings, from ethnographies of the apparently mundane activities of allotment holding and caravanning. Through this discussion I examine the significance of spacing in performativity. Particular themes, worked in terms of spacing, are the emerging tensions between, for example: being and becoming; routine activities and everyday creativity; the desire to experience change or to 'go further' and to 'hold on'; and, in relation contexts and flows, time and identity processes. Through the discussion the encounters and imagination of the research are reflexively considered in terms of the accessibility of performance to research investigation.