The method of a persona has led me to develop a method of performative acts. Judith Butler’s ‘Performative acts and Gender Constitution’[1] informs this method. According to Butler:

‘The formulation of the body as a mode of dramatizing or enacting possibilities offers a way to understand how a cultural convention is embodied and enacted.’[2]

This research aims at revealing cultural conventions and the way the identity of the mother is constructed through them. The idea of embodiment has led me to consider the body as a tool of investigation. If the maternal body embodies cultural conventions, than it can be turned into a tool that investigates itself and the conventions which are imposed on this body. Motherhood can be understood as a social action in which already established meanings are re-enacted and re-experienced. I take, for example, the act of dish washing. By simultaneously doing this act and reflecting on it, a cultural convention has been revealed. I became aware that I occupy two roles at the same time: the nurse (me-ta-pe-let) who looked after the children at the kibbutz (during my childhood) and the mother (at present). A documenting tool, such as a pen and paper, was added to the body as an extension of this investigating tool. In employing the method of performative act, ima enables both knowing-in-action and a reflection-in-action. Performative act enables also a reflection on action, which takes place subsequent to the action. In Diary of washing dishes (2001), the reflection-on-action has led to a second action in which some pages of the diary were translated to Hebrew and Arabic. This has ‘opened’ a space to consider the role of the mother as a social agent.   

[1] J. Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’ in Michael Huxley and Noel Witts (ed.), The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, Routledge, London and New York, 2005, pp. 120 - 134.

[2] Ibid, p. 126.

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