Looking for Laura: The generational transmission of sexuality

Walkerdine, Valerie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2982-8114 2024. Looking for Laura: The generational transmission of sexuality. Aughterton, Kate and Moriarty, Jess, eds. Performing Maternities: Political, Social and Feminist Enquiry, Intellect, pp. 237-249. (10.1386/9781835950166_18)

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Abstract

This performative paper is about the never entirely dead predecessor. It explores what this means in terms of the transmission of affective relations across generations and explores this by discussing an art-based research practice in which the author explored this aspect of the undead through its barely surfacing haunting of her present. The paper explores the usefulness of artistic and performance practices for investigating an embodied transmission that could not easily be reached by other methods. Laura was the author's maternal grandmother. The project began by searching on-line genealogical records, revealing a Laura entirely different from the one that she had known as a child. This woman had what would have been considered a scandalous past, carefully concealed until these records were unearthed. The project explored how disturbances in the present, especially in relation to sexuality, made themselves felt and how the exploration of this history via artwork and performance practice allowed connections to be felt and thus to surface that could not otherwise be known. The author performed Laura using a variety of media and methods, while also exploring her own sexuality using the same methods. In this way, the haunting through two subsequent generations began to reveal itself. A father's tragic early death, an alcoholic mother, a scandalous affair, an illegitimate baby. These are all classic elements of melodramas, redemption novels and family sagas. In such narratives a past can haunt the present, the characters can, in that sense, be the undead. This chapter engages with the faint echoes of a personal haunting as revealed through artistic research. What if the elements of the story as set out above were not consciously known? What does an artistic practice which begins by exploring a disturbance in the present allow us to understand when playing artistically with revealed facts, fantasy scenarios and dramatic re-enactments? This paper explores the role that artistic and performative research can have in engaging with the issues of mothering and personal haunting.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Cardiff Law & Politics
Publisher:	Intellect
ISBN:	9781835950166
ISSN:	2755-9440
Last Modified:	04 Nov 2024 09:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/173624

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