Performing Kiwi cultural identity in/through American Rugby.

摘要

This is a study of the of Kiwi cultural identity as performed in and through American rugby. Drawing on the theories of Stuart Hall, Judith Butler and Sara Ahmed I look at how my New Zealand cultural identity and rugby playing body was (re)produced by myself and my teammates and coaches at the South City "Raiders" Rugby Football Club (SCRFC). The data for this study comes from my participant observation in SCRFC as a player for six months, during which I kept autoethnograpic field notes and conducted semi-structured conversational interviews. I discuss how my cultural identity project in this rugby space was primarily embodied and performed and that this resulted in pain playing a central part in my experiences. In this respect, what began as a study of cultural identity became a study of pain in the service of cultural identity. This leads me to theoretically explore pain as an empirical construct, arguing that pain must be considered both as a product and producer of cultural identities. As such I move to question Hall's predominantly discursive understanding of identity arguing that we need to move beyond textual reductionism to study cultural identities as subject to biological, affective and material (re)production, (re)constitution, and negotiation.