ABSTRACT
Playing Kate brings together three threads of critical and creative enquiry; the maternal, class politics, and the performance of persona. Playing Kate borrows the idea of “repli-Kation,” a cultural phenomenon specific to the internet, to foreground how normalisation narratives that shape the maternal performances of Kate Middleton perpetuate the myth of working-class escape and obscure class division. Through the author's own performative repli-Kation process, Playing Kate attempts to disrupt the ideological performance of Kate, which obscures economic and ecological catastrophe, whilst seeking to ensure the survival of the royal institution. Playing Kate identifies how the maternal performances of Kate enact a paradoxical narrative of transformation, at once an embodiment of the myth of working-class escape and a foregrounding of a liberal middle class ideal that justifies austerity politics and that entrenches class division. Placing herself between Kate (the commoner done good), the maternal performance artist (Hawkes) and her mother (still a commoner), Hawkes examines Kate through the lens of performance, as she positions Kate as performer of class ideology, unpacking the un-classy question, “who does she think she is? Kate Middleton?!”
