Hudson (Final Copy with Images)
Performance Paradigm 5.2 (October 2009) Embodied Spaces of Nation: Performing the National Trauma at Hellfire Pass Chris Hudson Figure 1. Memorial with Flanders Poppies at Hellfire Pass Introduction In recent years, much theoretical attention has been paid to the question of mobilities and the creation of identities in a world characterised by global flows of cultures, commodities, signs, images and ideologies. Sheller and Urry (2006) and Urry (2007) have examined the growing volume of people in constant movement. For them, “mobilities” is the new paradigm, encompassing both the increasing movement of social actors and a concomitant expansion in interconnections and new forms of proximity. Bauman’s (1996) work engages with the problem of establishing identity in a world of mobilities. Along with the flâneur, the vagabond and the player, he identifies the tourist as the postmodern successor to the pilgrim. These characters provide the metaphor for the ‘postmodern strategy moved by the horror of being bound and fixed’ (Bauman, 1996: 26). The postmodern horror of fixity is, however, confounded by the simultaneous desire for “home.” While tourists want to immerse Performance Paradigm 5.2 (October 2009) themselves in the strange and the bizarre, part of the pleasure of the journey is the knowledge that the safety and predictability of home is waiting (Bauman, 1996: 29- 30); the desire for the exotic and unpredictable coexist with the desire for the familiar and the stable. “Home,” however, is itself a shifting and mutable category, less and less clearly defined and bounded. For the tourist ‘homesickness means a dream of belonging; to be, for once, of the place, not merely in’ (Bauman, 1996: 30).
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