Objectified Culture, Gender, and Meaning in a Midwestern Fire Community

• In Event: 512 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Gendered Interactions and Gendered Spaces

Abstract

Flow arts are a kind of dance or theater that involves the manipulation of props and objects, or flow toys. These objects may include, but are not limited to, fans, poi, rope dart, hula hoops, staffs, wands, and swords. Within flow practice and performance, many practitioners add fire to the objects they dance with and manipulate. This paper explores the meaning of flow and fire arts to their practitioners, specifically the patterns of emergent gendered meaning and expression in flow and fire related to adoption of particular kinds of equipment and styles of performance. Individual fire performers’ experience gendered expression through the material context, both equipment and styles, of their art. However, while there is a systematic set of gendered meanings attached to and objectified through equipment and performance practices, individual practitioners engage with them in flexible ways that do not necessarily reflect either the expectations from the gender literature of a stricter set of gender expectations and accountabilities or the expectation of reduced reflexivity from the literature on “flow”. Instead, practitioners describe their self-conscious consumption of different equipment and performance styles as expressions of parts of their true self that do not necessarily reflect a consistent, eternally true gender identity. Further research on fire and flow arts as well as inquiry into similar phenomena requires the inclusion of gender and possibly flexible systems of gender expression, but also a view of practice and material culture as more complex loci of individuals’ personal experiences and consumptive patterns of expression.

Author

• Kathryn A. Hendricks, University of Chicago