Cripping the Dis§abled Body: Doing the Posthuman Tango in, through and around Sport

In this article we elucidate our understanding of the utility of a particular posthumanist lens to expose the fragility of compulsory ablebodiedness. Compulsory ablebodiedness is a central tool of crip theory that shows us how society reproduces disability as an expression of an ableist ideology. This positions those perceived as having ‘less-than-able’ bodies and minds as subaltern. Adopting our methodological position from crip theory, we explore how dis§abled bodies are co-produced along with the environments in which they pursue sport. Interpreting ethnographic data with, in, and around dis§abled bodies, we examine their lived realities and performed identities as biopolitical assemblages that are, at one and the same time, both subject and object in a state of what we term complex dis§able embodiment. The article begins by acknowledging the existence of disablism while also exploring the ideology of ableism, which leads to the social marginalisation of nonnormative bodies. We then articulate dis§ability as a choregraphed tango in which bodies and their environments are co-constituted, before cripping ableism in and through three manifestations of dis§abled sporting bodies. The end goal is to facilitate the celebration of nonnormativity as a positive expression of the plurality of human existence.

Mother of Three and Widow of the Nation: The Hungarian Mrs Vachott (1828–96) as Protégé-Editor

This article focuses on the editorial undertakings of the Hungarian Mária Csapó (1828–96), better known as Mrs Vachott. Using her personal correspondence, memoirs, and the magazines she edited, the article traces the particularities of Mrs Vachott’s career as an author and periodical editor. It does so by examining her performed identities in real life and as editor of various magazines. Furthermore, it intends to demonstrate that Mrs Vachott’s professional endeavours were defined and shaped by a personal loss that eventually became her strongest symbolic capital in building up a literary career. Finally, the article suggests that Mrs Vachott’s case offers valuable insights into the types of editorial roles that women inhabited during the nineteenth century.

Memories from the future: constative and performed identities in ideologized spaces

Although communism was a Western creation its last consequences were implemented in southeastern Europe. In addition to the imposed aspects, there were local enthusiasms and excesses of zeal (euphemistically speaking), which attest to the existence of an identity matrix and a common mentality. Countries with an authoritarian tradition have absorbed this ideology of simultaneous denationalization and supra-nationalization to the deepest. And after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the Southeast European space preserved mass nostalgia: Stalin, Tito and Ceausescu are still guardianship figures for many of various social categories. Imperialist stability and/or glory are two of the most important reasons for forgetting communist terror. The research tries to identify and analyze the sources of historical instability that has an impact on the post-communist present - the communist heritage still looming large-, as well as to demystify certain stigmas unconditionally applied to Southeast European civilizations: corruption, laziness, negative Balkanization, frivolity and lack of consistency. This is a selective overview which aims to decant common mentalities of synchrony in relation to diachrony.

Performed Identities

Through their performances, professional performance artists construct self-identities. They put themselves into their work, for example in autobiographical songs or through developing a distinctive style, and over time they become known for the content and tone of their performances. In addition, private aspects of who they are can become part of their public persona and audiences relate both to the art that is produced and the story of the person producing it. This chapter examines the nature of artistic performers’ identity construction through a dramaturgical lens, the construction of artistic biographies and the precarious nature of identity and performance as audiences and co-performers change. The authors consider some implications of this analysis for potential areas of focus for identity research and for modes of undertaking such research.

Challenges to masculinity in a feminized digital space

Purpose This study aims to explore the perceptions and reactions of men, who participate in a female-dominated online consumption space. It looked at the process of men, (re)negotiating their digital gendered identity on Pinterest. Design/methodology/approach A grounded theory-light approach was taken. Data were collected through 21 one-on-one semi-structured interviews with male Pinterest users. Subsequently, data were extensively coded and analyzed for the key themes and patterns. Findings Three core categories emerged, which speak to the ways men account for their practices on Pinterest as autonomous online agents. These categories were: awareness of Pinterest as a feminized digital space; limited sociality due to the solitary use of Pinterest (the exception being when collaborating with an intimate partner); and performed identities (k = 4) serving to justify the men’s activities on a female-dominated social networking site. Research limitations/implications The findings establish a firm theoretical basis for understanding male Pinterest users as autonomous online agents. However, reflective of this relatively small, exploratory qualitative project, the process-based interview questions did not render, particularly, long or rich narratives. Future qualitative research might endeavor to ask deeper, more open-ended questions. Originality/value This is an original study of men’s use of Pinterest. Research on the identity projects of men entering fields traditionally occupied by women and coded as feminine is established, there is a lack of understanding of how gender identity is (re)constructed digitally, especially on social media.

The rise of a Muslim middle class in Britain: Ethnicity, music and the performance of Muslimness

This paper uses original fieldwork data to examine the role of class and ethnicity in shaping performed identities for Muslim musicians. It claims that the emergence of a Muslim public sphere in Britain – which includes music as one important cultural component – is implicated by dominant notions of Muslimness that are developed in a field of power relations structured by class and ethnicity. The central claim of this paper is that an assertion of middle-class values and tastes can inform notions of Muslimness and that these are interwoven with the differential experiences of diverse Muslim ethnic groups in Britain. As evidence for this, the paper examines the ways in which this relationship between class and ethnicity is manifested in the Muslim public sphere through the performed identities of Muslim musicians. This includes a consideration of the influence of a broadly defined Middle Eastern/middle-class consumer culture on an ‘Islamic pop’ music scene in Britain, as well as the strategic responses – including acquiescence, navigation and resistance – from South Asian and Black Muslim musicians to the dominance of this cultural context. Overall, the paper concludes that the intersectional nature of Muslimness, with particular reference to class and ethnicity, must be examined further to fully understand the developing dynamics of an emergent Muslim public sphere in Britain.

Poe

This chapter approaches Poe’s life through his letters with reference to historical contexts that shaped letter writing in antebellum America, Poe’s interests in handwriting and “Autography,” the relationship between letter writing and antebellum authorship and celebrity, and shifts in Poe’s voice across multiple letters and recipients. In his letters, Poe performed identities ranging from the wronged son, the victim, the lover, and the literary genius. Poe’s epistolary “rhetoric of dread” may be linked to his lyric poetry. As scholars of letter writing in the nineteenth-century United States attest, letters were not “private documents.” Rather, they were “self-conscious” artifacts “circulating between friends and strangers.” Poe’s letters were written when the distinctions between privately circulated manuscripts and public cultures of print were destabilized. His letters to women are studied in this chapter as is the issue of poverty haunting his letters. Finally, Poe’s letters also document his desire for editorship of a magazine and his participation in the business of publishing in antebellum America.