Creation of Identity in Proust and Genet

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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