The masks we wear: performative identities across literary, cultural, and historical landscapes

Abstract

This dissertation analyses masks as multivalent interfaces that allow for identities to be concealed and revealed within the contexts of literary, socio-cultural, and theatrical avenues. A transdisciplinary approach to understanding the liminal capacities of both tangible and metaphorical masks has been central to addressing the notion of authenticity versus performativity, or if the two even differ in terms of identity construction, transformation and at times reconfiguration. Richard Schechner’s Performance Theory head starts the investigation by encompassing human performance in a spectrum of sociocultural, ritual, and theatrical aspects, along with Claude Lévi-Strauss's more structural anthropological framework in The Way of the Mask to understand masks as material fragments of culture. The intricate dynamic between concealment and revelation is allowed to function because of the liminal capacities that the mask wields. Threshold experiences are used to understand and highlight a more psychological dimension of masking, where identity construction occurs, albeit not necessarily always by one’s will.