Yvonne Watson

Beyond Hybridity

The experience of double consciousness

Plurality and syncrecity as part of the migrant narrative

Identities constructed against the back drop of the post-colonial experience, notion of the constructed self. New forms of dialogue and articulation around theories of hybridity, cultural borders, re-locations, re-negotiations, performativity and context dependant identities, the nature of shared cultural codes, and the discourse which surround them. Theorists such as Fanon have written about the colonial experience of the 'divided self', double consciousness, and the ambivalent positions adopted. I am interested in the notion of the 'Schizophrenic Imagination' (Nayantra Shagal) the concept of 'internal migrations' which typify the multiple identified diasporic experiences, split cultures, and separate selves. Ontology of self, the concept of separation, loss, attachment, abandonment and trauma, re-negotiation of space, time & locality, the dialectical relationship of inside and outside, internal and external, articulated through visual, textual, musical and linguistic methods.

Fragmentations and decentred identifications, typified by the strategies employed by diasporic peoples to find and develop a voice (speaking from the margin to the centre - linguistic frameworks) not burdened by the tropes of colonisation and domination, re-memberings, encoded, and decoded, linear & non-linear narratives. Processes of integration and assimilation syncretic blending, liminal, marginal, performative spaces Bakhtins, carnivalesque (Bhabba' s 'third space') route/roots, mapping new territories, spaces where the liminal/marginal encounters have occurred, contact zones and overlaps, exploration of "post-modern black expressions" interpretative spaces and dialogic relations.

 

In the presentation, Yvonne Watson will show examples of migratory/diasporic performance with a particular eye on popular street dancing, krumping, and body codes in carribean-british hip hop communities

 

 

Research areas:

o contemporary black visual art, visual analysis

o dance & musical forms

o textual & linguistic forms

o Ethnographic/Oral history