Increasingly, a new generation of health communication scholars are drawing our attention to the performative nature of health communication. In our experiences of health and illness; in our interactions with our loved ones in a variety of health contexts; in our interactions with healers and health care providers; in our sharing of our stories of health, illness, healing, and dying with others in our communities; in our participation in social and political processes that seek to address issues of healthcare, we continually perform ourselves. Performance in this sense is both public and private. We perform our selves in health communication interactions; and perform often for others, for the purposes of understanding, sharing, creating community and bringing about change. It is through our performances that we co-construct stories of health that articulate the violence inflicted by oppressive social structures, and suggest avenues for social change.
March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University. Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute