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Inner lines: exploring a diasporic trajectory through dance performance
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Date
2025-10
Abstract
This PhD research enquires into the puzzle of my identity towards the development of what I term ‘inner lines’. I define ‘inner lines’ as an autoethnographic method through choreographic process. This creative concept is a tool that facilitates a re-building of selfhood and can be seen as a medium to explore conditions for elucidating critical traumatic aspects of identity. As part of the inquiry into ‘inner lines’, I address a postcolonial perspective, through which I explore choreographic process to document my self-examination (Dunham 1947, 1969, 2005) of body memory trauma (Levine 1998, 2010, 2023; Fuchs 2008, 2012, 2017, 2018; Van der Kolk 2014) as my inheritance of French colonial trauma (Fanon 1963,1967; Cesaire 2000; Verges 2010). In doing so, I contribute to a contrasting academic contemplation of the French Africana diaspora experience (Condé 1982, 1995; Diome 2006; Glissant 1997, 2002; Zang 2006; Joseph-Gabriel 2020, 2021; Montlouis-Gabriel 2018).
This thesis is rooted in practice as research (Nelson 2019). The form of reflection that I expound addresses a participative and collaborative qualitative research based on a narrative inquiry (Clandinin 2002, 2006). The research embraces a transdisciplinary methodology that interweaves various fields of studies and illuminates the rhizomatic aspect of ‘inner lines’, through the choreography and performance of two ensemble pieces: The Big Sea…Ashé! and Channelling.
I consider 'inner lines' as the deployment of the silenced voices through the moving body. For this method, I employ ‘inner vision’ (Zeki 1999, 2001, 2011; Haymore 2015) through creativity, imagination and spontaneity. I perceive the spine as a historical archive that facilitates a knowledge sharing between past and present (Dunham 2005; Paxton 2008). The research demonstrates the significance of ‘inner lines’ in activating the potency of memory trauma to make possible both ancestral reconnection (Condé 1995; Gottschilds 2003; Ife 2021) and the transformation of trauma (Etherington 2003; Fuchs 2012). It also provides a foundation to anticipate a collective healing agenda towards key aspects of nationalism and citizenship in contemporary Black France (Diome 2006; Keaton et al. 2012; Mabankou 2012), including ‘the Hexagon’ (Smith 1969) and its ex-former colonies. While encouraging innovative ways of reappropriating French Africana foundational histories somatically, ‘inner lines’ yields new knowledge that can advance dance ethnography and trauma therapy.
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University of Limerick
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Sustainable Development Goals
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Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International