Creation of Identity in Proust and Genet

由于朱迪思·巴特勒在性别方面的工作，近年来在身份和表演方面取得了很大进展。但是，如果身份是被执行的，而不是与生俱来的，那么这种行为的某些部分就是故意的。然而，巴特勒没有解释我们在创造自己方面有多大的作用，也没有根据当今对性别和性行为的激烈讨论来解决意向性的影响。我的研究重点是比较马塞尔·普鲁斯特和让·热内的作品，以讨论共同阅读这两位20世纪法国文学巨匠可能揭示的这种意向性。吉尔斯·德勒兹在《普鲁斯特与符号》一书中写道：“事实上，差异和声誉是本质的两种创造力量，密不可分，相互关联。”在巴特勒之前的几十年里，他认为差异和重复是身份建构的关键力量。我的重点是两位作者如何在他们角色的多元化和有时相互矛盾的表演中暗示某种程度的代理。令人惊讶的是，到目前为止，很少有人对这两位作者进行持续的比较。我的项目不仅在这方面是独一无二的，还因为我将纳入Vanessa Ewan的工作，她是英国最重要的运动教练之一，我在中环与她一起培训，讨论在绩效背景下刻意培养性格。这种实践和理论的结合将导致对普鲁斯特对戏剧的描述和热奈对戏剧表演(以及他的实际戏剧)的描述的新评估，以及这对我们在非戏剧背景下有意识(或半有意识)构建身份认同的暗示

Thanks to Judith Butler's work on gender, much has been made in recent years of identityas performance. But if identity is performed rather than innate, it follows that some partof that performance is intentional. Yet Butler does not explain how much agency we havein the creation of our 'selves' or address the implications of intentionality in light of today'scaustic discussion of gender and sexuality. My research focuses on comparing the workof Marcel Proust and Jean Genet to discuss what reading these two giants of 20thcentury French literature together might reveal about this very intentionality. GillesDeleuze writes in Proust and Signs, "In reality, difference and reputation are the twocreative forces of essence, inseparable and interrelated," positing difference andrepetition as key forces of identity construction decades before Butler. I focus on howboth authors suggest a certain level of agency in their characters' plural and sometimescontradictory performances. Surprisingly, there have been few sustained comparisons ofthe two authors to date. My project is unique not only in this respect, but also in that I willbe incorporating the work of Vanessa Ewan, one of the foremost movement instructors inthe UK, with whom I trained at Central to discuss intentional construction of character in aperformance context. This practical and theoretical combination will lead to a newassessment of Proust's descriptions of the theatre and Genet's description of dragperformance (as well as his actual plays) and what this suggests about our conscious (orsemi-conscious) construction of identity in a non-theatrical context