Performance Art and Agential Realism: Producing Material-Discursive Knowledge about Class and the Body.

Abstract: Using new materialist approaches to intersectional theories of gender/sex –particularly Karen Barad’s ethico-onto-epistemological framework, agential realism– this thesis examines how knowledge about class is produced, through feminist performance art practices. Through this lens I will examine how two pieces of performance art by U.K. based artists, Sophie Lisa Beresford and Catherine Hoffmann, can express novel ways in which class is not simply a system acting upon bodies, but inextricably entwined with, and produced through, bodily matter. Furthermore, this essay discusses the ways in which performance art is uniquely positioned to examine this intra-action between discourse and matter; providing a way to bridge the gaps in the current theoretical discourses and creative practices. Keywords: Feminist performance art, agential realism, intersectionality, class, new materialism, class-drag, performativity, class-passing, intra-activity.