Defiant Embodiments: Casey Kaleba
Channel: Dynamic Tensions
Date: 2017-05-08

Defiant Embodiments in Theatre, Sport, and Performance: An Interdisciplinary Symposium. Brunel University London, 29 April 2017. www.dynamictensions.com

Casey Kaleba (University of Mary Washington) 
“The White Arm in the Smoke: Performances of Masculinity and Violence in Victorian London”

Violence - and its symbolic objects - has been a feature of theatre since before Achilles’ armor, but Victorian theatre marks the emergence of the fight director as specialist. This paper will examine the ways in which Victorian martial performance provided a unique shift in visual culture and the semiotics of gender, history, and empire. 

At the core of my research is the Kernoozers gentlemen’s club. Founded in 1881 among collectors and connoisseurs (“kernoozers”) of arms and armor among artists and art historians, this socially elite group would attract the eminent Victorians Richard Burton, editor Walter Pollock, artist Seymour Lucas, novelist Egerton Castle, and even actor Sir Henry Irving. The Kernoozers helped introduce historicism and specificity to staged violence and the public depiction of combat. 

The Kernoozers were the first generation to come of age in an England without dueling: the role of the body is site for ability and identity had been taken over by the panopticon of the legal system. They were also a generation influenced by the crisis of masculine bodies that followed the Crimean War, and the increased government and social interest in martially able bodies as political and cultural identifiers even as warfare itself mechanized. 

The semiotic meaning of the sword – metaphorically embodied as the “white arm” by Richard Burton - was up for renegotiation. Martial arts in Victorian London were conspicuous physical demonstrations of gender and empire, ideological illustrations of the social body. 

I will discuss the range of performances the Kernoozers employed, including appraisals, novels, illustrations, essays and lectures, demonstrations, military exhibitions, theatrical fight direction: through these I will examine the ways in which the Kernoozers were active participants in the discourse and embodiment of masculine identity.