Overview

A transdisciplinary exploration of English punctuation's power and limits, this book invites readers and performers to reimagine and transform the rules that shape language and identity. Performing Punctuation is a transdisciplinary collaboration that challenges the colonial legacy embedded in the English language's use of punctuation. Gathering a diverse group of writers and performers—including both Māori and Pākehā voices—the book combines essays, performances, and experimental texts that converse across disciplines, creating space to rethink how language functions and whom it serves. Tracing the strident and rigid punctuation practices of the English language, laced with cultural and linguistic hierarchies, this book exposes the colonial roots of punctuation. Together, the contributors recast punctuation as responsive, playful, generous, and inclusive—opening space for a wider diversity of readers, listeners, performers, writers, and practices. Spanning literature, poetry, visual and performance art, cultural studies, language education, postcolonial studies, language studies, film, and sound, Performing Punctuation offers insights for academics, practitioners, and students across the arts and humanities who seek to explore how language can be decolonized, reimagined, and performed.

Full Product Details

Author:   Julieanna Preston (Massey University.) ,  Anna Brown (Massey University College of Creative Arts Toi Rauwhārangi)
Publisher:   Intellect
Imprint:   Intellect Books
Weight:   0.780kg
ISBN:  

9781835952207

ISBN 10:   1835952208
Pages:   296
Publication Date:   20 March 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Available To Order  
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

Table of Contents

Welcome chain / / / link / / / throat To Listen Poetry Between the Words Shell on Sure, Graphic Shaming and / as Gender Slamming Wetness — a sensuous politics of punctuation A Short Line with a Long Shadow WE ARE THE VĀ / NOW Dots on a Page Yes O Do Please Stop Encountering One’s Footprints in Snow or: On Paragraphs Steppes acut inside the questions that are due to our souths attempting to write outside a limit Bridging Portmanteau beginning ........Same as it ever was........ PUNCT-ing Holding Together Briefly: I begin with ‘ and end with ? Interrobanging Girlspeak The Meaning of This: Performing Asemic Writing 23 Deluge ..--- ...-- / -.. . .-.. ..- --. . Liberated from Language: Punctuation’s Performativity in the Absence of Words A holding practice semicolon comma shift return Homogenised, Pasteurised and Recognisable: Empowering Children to Decentre the Dominance of Standard English Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar A Meaningful Site: Space (bar) and Weak Rays Exploded House (Philomena) A conversation with Beatriz Ferreyra, with her Echo(e)s, in her Absence, without Time Signatures Slashing and Asterisking Noctalgia

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Author Information

Julieanna Preston’s transdisciplinary creative practice research is concerned with the agency and ethics of materiality, its relation to place, ecology and ways of being in the world. Her practice engages place-responsive live art performance, vocalisation, and performance writing. She currently teaches and supervises postgraduate students across art, design and architecture in Aotearoa NZ.  Anna Brown is New Zealand-based designer, researcher and educator. She is Professor of Design and Public Good at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts. She works with visual artists and curators to investigate through form, materials and typography how the vehicle of the book can amplify the content it contains. 

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