Keffie Weiss

For my final paper I will be examining practices of inscription within the context of the Warwick Amusement Park. Following from Paul Connerton’s (1989) use of the term ‘inscription’ to indicate the ways in which social practices (and memories) are inscribed on the body and bodily practices, I define the term to refer to ways in which people mark the landscape through their bodily practices. These processes of inscription can include either adding or subtracting—the central concern is the ways in which people change the space through their agency and bodily practices. Therefore, included in this activity could be the production of graffiti, vandalism, the removal, displacement, or accretion of materials, and evidence of movement through the space by means of pathways. In examining the ways in which people continue to engage with the space through the evidence of these engagements I hope that I will be able to explore the ways in which this ‘abandoned’ space may still hold meaning for those people who continue to engage with it.

From a theoretical perspective, with this topic I will engage with questions both of bodily practices and place making (which I think about as being co-constitutive). I will draw primarily on the work or Edward Casey in thinking about place making as an interaction between the body and place. I will also be looking at material specifically related to the body and bodily practices, focusing on the work of Judith Butler and Rosemary Joyce. Following from Forbes’ (2007) model for examining place, I may also decide to engage in a sort of ethnographic analysis.

Preliminary Bibliography:

Adams, Paul C., Steven Hoelscher, and Karen E. Till (eds.). 2001. Textures of place : exploring humanist geographies. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.

Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter : on the discursive limits of "sex". New York : Routledge.

Casey, Edward. 1993. Getting back into place : toward a renewed understanding of the place-world. Bloomington : Indiana University Press.

Connerton, Paul. 1989. How societies remember. Cambridge; New York : Cambridge University Press

Counsell, Colin and Laurie Wolf (eds.) 2001. Performance analysis : an introductory coursebook. London ; New York : Routledge.

Edensor, Tim. 2005. Industrial ruins : spaces, aesthetics, and materiality. Oxford ; New York : Berg.

Joyce, Rosemary; 2004. “Embodied subjectivity: gender, femininity, masculinty, sexuality,” in A companion to social archaeology. L Meskell and R W. Preucel (eds.). Malden, MA: Blackwell

Welton, Donn. 1999. The body : classic and contemporary readings. Malden, Mass. : Blackwell

Multi-Media:

“Echoes of forgotten places”. Scribble Media present ; written & produced by Robert Fantinatto & Leesa Beales ; directed & edited by Robert Fantinatto. Toronto, Ontario : Scribble Media, 2005. Explores abandoned industrial buildings and structures. Includes decaying factories, decommissioned power stations, storm drains, and other places of interest to urban explorers and industrial archaeologists.