Reconsidering Tableau as a Methodological Text: On the Luxury of Repeated Communal Interpretation

• In Event: 29.090 - Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: 29.090-19 - Methodological Considerations in Ethnographic Practice

Abstract

Performance ethnographers use a rich array of signs—written text, choreography, music, spoken word, visual images—to tell stories, purposefully designing embodied, aesthetic moments to reveal layers of meaning. From a critical perspective, performance ethnographers provide opportunities for participant liberation and transformation (Boal, 1979, p. ix). When the lens is turned on the ethnographer, however, the process can serve as a conduit for researcher reflexivity.

In this session, I examine the aesthetic elements inherent in performance methodologies while simultaneously exploring the ways in which the aesthetic engages, disengages, or circumvents disciplined and systematic inquiry. Specifically, I examine instantiations of tableau as opportunity for researchers’ provocation of additional meaning through examinations from various semiotic perspectives during the analysis of visual and embodied data.

Author

• Jenifer J. Schneider, University of South Florida