In 1955, American artist Dorothea Tanning abandoned her figurative Surrealist renderings of dream-like scenarios in favor of a complexly abstract and fragmented style of painting. With few exceptions, the ways in which Tanning’s later works function independently of her earlier paintings tends to be downplayed in the scholarship on her oeuvre. Equally sparse is the scholarship on Tanning’s dog imagery, which pervades her oeuvre but becomes most apparent in her later phase. This thesis seeks to shift attention toward Tanning’s later abstract paintings; it also seeks to fill the gap in scholarship on Tanning’s dogs. Specifically, through the study of five Tanning paintings from the late 1950s and 1960s, with the theoretical aid of Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of the becoming-animal, this thesis will investigate how Tanning’s post-1955 paintings create and promote new ways for viewers to think about the relations between humans and animals in the human-dominated modern world.

This study investigates the multiple occurrence of violent sacrificial imagery associated with animalistic and hunted bodies in the work of selected South African female artists as an articulation of the society in which the art was created. The theoretical framework of corporeal feminism is applied with reference to the postulations of George Bataille (1962), René Girard (1972) as well as Deleuze and Guattari (1984,1987), specifically with regard to the notion of becoming animal. This study shows how such imagery is used to act as a catalyst for social change by challenging Cartesian dualisms and forefronts certain issues applicable to women in a society that is patriarchal and violent. A comparison is made with the art of a selected group of Australian female artists who deal with similar themes and imagery from more or less the same timeframe. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / tm2015 / Visual Arts / MA / Unrestricted

英國女劇作家渥坦貝克(Timeberlake Wertenbaker) 筆下著名的《夜鶯之愛》 (The Love of the Nightingale) 在近年來獲得多方批評家的討論。大多數的批評家總以政治及性別的角度探討這部劇作中呈現女性如何成為男性暴力下的受害者。然而，本論文將採用德勒茲 (Gilles Deleuze) 和瓜塔里 (Félix Guattari) 的去疆域化 (deterritorialization)、生成動物 (becoming-animal)、再疆域化 (reterritorialization)、及少數文學 (the minor literature) 的理論概念，重新剖析渥坦貝克如何透過翻譯 (translation)、互文性 (intertextuality)、變形 (transformation) 書寫等寫作策略，彰顯普洛克涅 (Procne) 及菲勒美拉 (Philomele) 如何在受盡錯置及語言喪失的苦痛後，找到越界的可能性。在德勒茲和瓜塔里的理論架構之下，本論文的第一章節將先詮釋普洛克涅及菲勒美拉如何離開父系體制，並藉由逃逸路線 (lines of flight) 展開去疆域化的旅程，並在去疆域化的過程中面臨到未知的危險及機會。再者，論文中也探討普洛克涅及菲勒美拉的動物變形可以被視為她們僭越傳統意識型態束縛的証據。在經歷過生成動物 (becoming-animal) 的過程之後，普洛克涅及菲勒美拉改變了她們對於原生社會及世界的態度及看法。最後，普洛克涅及菲勒美拉的再疆域化帶領她們到另一個新的疆界，釋放女性內心的忿怒及慾望。在新的疆域中，女性們發現到另一個新的出口，重新探索流動性主體的存在，挑戰有機體式的國家體制。 / Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale (1989) is the preeminent play of translation which calls many critics’s attention. Based on the myth of Procne and Philomele, The Love of the Nightingale is always discussed by critics from the political and sexual perspectives to show how women become the powerless victims under the male violence. However, in this thesis, I would like to use Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of deterritorializaion, becoming-animal, and reterritorialization to analyze how Procne and Philomele find out the possibility of transgression from the suffering dislocation and dispossession of language through Wertenbaker’s dramaturgy of translation, intertextuality, and transformation. Applying Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theories to analyze The Love of the Nightingale, I would first show how Procne and Philomele obtain the chances to leave the patriarchical territory, beginning their deterritorialization to encounter unknown risks and chances via lines of flight. After the deterritorialization, Procne’s and Philomele’s physical metamorphosis could be regarded as the evidence of how they traverse the presupposed ideological system. In the process of becoming-animal, Procne and Philomele change their attitudes and perspectives toward their cultures and the world. Later, they are reterritorialized to another territory, releasing their desire and anger. In the new territory, they could find another way to search fluid identities and to challenge the state apparatus.