Lannen, Maud. 2025. Performing Touch: The Politics and Economics of Kin and Transmission in Somatics and Beyond. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

Postmodern dance and somatics have foregrounded the sense of touch via the skin as a subject of inquiry and a catalyst for change, nowhere more so than in Paxton’s Contact Improvisation (CI). Touch continues to be explored choreographically, beyond CI, in contemporary dance, staging increasingly more daring, excessive sensuality and erotics between performers and performers/audience in mainstream theatre. Such tactile strategies and displays coexist, not without tension, with widespread issues of consent and exclusion. The fact that this remains largely understudied within the field raises timely questions about the performance of touch: what does touch constitute? Specifically, what are the latent politics, economics and hierarchies that structure it and might account for the power relation reported by leading anti-racist performance scholar Royona Mitra? My research examines these questions, taking inspiration from one of Paxton’s lesser-known theoretical influences that spurred the development of CI: his research into mother-child touch communication. Here, however, I turn to forms of Othermothering, that is, non-normative maternal embodiments, to look for alternative performances of touch. For this, I recruit three collaborators with unconventional maternal touch practices, with whom I enter into dialogue – into contact (touch): Amaia, a nanny; Jae, at the time of completion, a non-binary cis gay man who longs to gestate; and Chloe, a trans woman with a maternal practice towards her trans community. For my analysis, I take the lead from the distinct science-inflected tradition of somatics, understood to inform movement, in which CI is grounded, drawing from a range of disciplines including feminist and queer theory, social sciences, neurosciences, anthropology, phenomenology, psychoanalysis and the history of reproductive medicine. Through my collaborators’ creative writing and our sustained interaction over six months, I work to weave new and provocative narratives about touch and what touch communicates when located in the alternatively defined maternal, in a bid to nourish somatics/my own performance of touch and, it is hoped, move the discipline towards more inclusive and consensual tactile practices. Little did I suspect that the question of touch would have huge implications for the performance of the body, not least my own identity and sense of kinship, that is, my sense of connection to people and the world.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Keywords:	performance, contact improvisation, movement research, somatics, touch, maternal, kin, body, identity, belonging, communication, transmission, politics, economics, queer, trans, narrative, phenomenology, senses, nanny, surrogacy, gestation, cyborg, feminism, radical, anti-racism, consent, exclusion, homophobia, transphobia, desire, erotic, sensuality, language, technology, reproduction, decolonisation, dialogue, collaboration, participation, struggle, creative writing, performance writing, deconstruction, ethnography
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Theatre and Performance (TAP)
Date:	31 March 2025
Item ID:	38696
Date Deposited:	10 Apr 2025 11:09
Last Modified:	10 Apr 2025 11:09
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/38696

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