Barefoot and Brave An Autoethnography exploring Performativity in St Andrews

Abstract

In this paper, second year student, Tara Phillips explores embodied vulnerability by taking a barefoot walk through St Andrews to expose prejudice and explore daily, unnoticed, social hierarchies. Inspired by William Pope L.’s 1979 Times Square crawl and Judith’s Butlers theory of performativity, Phillips frames her action as symbolic and disruptive. The project, using the self as both researcher and subject, invited public reaction which revealed implicit biases inherited in everyday life.