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Presentation
Performativity as Documentary Evidence in The Skin I'm In
Visible Evidence XIX (2012)
  • Broderick Fox, Occidental College
Abstract
Feminist, queer, and postcolonial theory have also done much to dismantle the Western myth of a singular, knowable self. We in fact have as many performances of self as we have distinct groups of individuals with whom we interact. In the global and digital culture that we presently inhabit, the idea of hybridity, reflexivity, and trans-identity have become daily realities. Since my own start as an autobiographical video maker, the Internet has become a medium and a distribution platform. Transmedia platforms have transformed not only film and video practice but notions of writing as well. Now we’re all autobiographers and media makers of sorts. Ranting, confessing, and exposing have become daily rituals and normalized practices. As digital acts of autobiography abound, my own work particularly seeks to revisit and redefine the performative impulses of early feminist and queer documentary. In this paper I make discursive distinctions between the often-conflated autobiographical and performative modes of documentary and use my latest autobiographical documentary THE SKIN I'M IN (2012) to make a case for the performative as a particular mode of documentary evidence.
Keywords
  • documentary,
  • performativity,
  • autobiography,
  • queer,
  • feminist,
  • Broderick Fox,
  • documentary modes,
  • visible evidence
Publication Date
December, 2012
Citation Information
Broderick Fox. "Performativity as Documentary Evidence in The Skin I'm In" Visible Evidence XIX (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/bfox/38/