In this study I explore narrative resistance in three Canadian novels: Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman , Adele Wiseman's Crackpot and La Rivière sans repos by Gabrielle Roy. I argue that the first two novels counter the dominant constructions of the virgin as the thin, acquiescing body and the whore as the out of bounds, devouring body respectively. I also reflect on whether these texts recognize the importance of a common narrative that speaks to the specificities of female experience, helping us move beyond the dominant constructions that continue to frame our day-to-day lives. La Rivière sans repos is a postcolonial narrative, but it is also a text about mothers. It exposes the containment Western consumerism has placed on the role of mother, the subsequent devaluing of that role and consequently a devaluing of the women who fill that role. Throughout this study I draw from recent theorists who combine feminist perspectives with theories on the body including Susan Bordo and Elizabeth Grosz along with feminist literary critics such as Linda Hutcheon and Patricia Smart. By incorporating feminist theory and theory on the body along with literary criticism I approach the texts with an interdisciplinary analysis that offers a new reading of these narratives. Feminist thought was only just emerging into our cultural consciousness, and theory on the body was little known when Wiseman, Atwood and Roy were writing these novels in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Classical texts reflect and create the construction of women as objects of beauty, who are selfless, inherently weak and needy or they condemn us as "bitchie", manipulative and threatening if expressive of our desires. I seek alternatives to such cultural constructions by exploring how the three novels present and represent the body in relation to female subjectivity and agency by writing against classical representations. In my reading of The Edible Woman I suggest that Atwood's protagonist deviates from the virgin stereotype by following the knowledge of her body rather than that of her intellect. In Crackpot I argue that the fat, sexual body of Wiseman's Hoda asks the reader to question assumptions about normative beauty, female sexuality and marginalization. In La Rivière sans repos I explore how Roy places mother at the centre of the text, which allows for an exploration of the contrast between mothering as experience and motherhood as institution. Each novel proposes a complexity to our experience that has generally been limited to virgin, whore and mother and, consequently, I argue that each offers a discourse of resistance and the possibility of social, cultural and political change.

Thesis--Madras University. / Bibliography: p. 155-158.

Thesis--Madras University. / Bibliography: p. 155-158.

This dissertation models the relationship between symptoms of heart rhythm fluctuations and cardiac measurements in order to better identify the probabilities of either a primarily organic or psychosomatic cause, and to better understand cognition of the internal body. The medical system needs to distinguish patients with actual cardiac problems from those who are misperceiving benign heart rhythms due to psychosomatic conditions. Cognitive neuroscience needs models showing how the brain processes sensations of palpitations. Psychologists and philosophers want data and analyses that address longstanding controversies about the validity of introspective methods. I therefore undertake a series of measurements to model how well patient descriptions of heartbeat fluctuations correspond to cardiac arrhythmias. First, I employ a formula for Bayesian inference and an initial probability for disease. The presence of particular phrases in symptom reports is shown to modify the probability that a patient has a clinically significant heart rhythm disorder. A second measure of body knowledge accuracy uses a corpus of one hundred symptom reports to estimate the positive predictive value for arrhythmias contained in language about palpitations. This produces a metric representing average predictivity for cardiac arrhythmias in a population. A third effort investigates the percentage of patients with palpitations report actually diagnosed with arrhythmias by examining data from a series of studies. The major finding suggests that phenomenological reports about heartbeats are as or are more predictive of clinically significant arrhythmias than non-introspection-based data sources. This calculation can help clinicians who must diagnose an organic or psychosomatic etiology. Secondly, examining a corpus of reports for how well they predict the presence of cardiac rhythm disorders yielded a mean positive predictive value of 0.491. Thirdly, I reviewed studies of palpitations reporters, half of which showed between 15% and 26% of patients had significant or serious arrhythmias. In addition, evidence is presented that psychosomatic-based palpitation reports are likely due to cognitive filtering and processing of cardiac afferents by brainstem, thalamic, and cortical neurons. A framework is proposed to model these results, integrating neurophysiological, cognitive, and clinical levels of explanation. Strategies for developing therapies for patients suffering from identifiably psychosomatic-based palpitations are outlined. / text

付記する学位プログラム名: 霊長類学・ワイルドライフサイエンス・リーディング大学院 / 京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第22721号 / 理博第4630号 / 新制||理||1665(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科生物科学専攻 / (主査)准教授 足立 幾磨, 准教授 後藤 幸織, 教授 高田 昌彦 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

[pt] Esta dissertação discute as possíveis relações entre a maneira de sambar e o saber corporal contido na performance de mulheres negras intituladas como Mulatas no samba do Rio de Janeiro. O estudo investiga por meio de depoimentos das próprias, os motivos pelos quais percebem o seu sambar, ou o samba no pé, como um dom. Articulando as percepções sobre as corporeidades e as possíveis origens do dom de sambar são examinadas as possibilidades deste dom atuar como um arquivo gestual configurando-se como um saber corporal possivelmente herdado de gerações anteriores e manifestado através do Ser Mulata. Desta maneira, a conscientização do Ser Mulata iria além dos aprendizados formais e informais e do reconhecimento dos pares, podendo absorver um arquivo de gestos compartilhados por experiências entre mulheres negras cariocas participantes do mundo do samba tornando-as personalidades dentro e fora do carnaval. / [en] This dissertation discusses the possible relations between the way of sambar and the corporal knowledge contained in the performance of black women titled as Mulatas in the samba of Rio de Janeiro. The study investigates through their own testimonies, the reasons why they perceive their sambar, or the samba in the foot, as a gift. Articulating the perceptions about the corporeities and the possible origins of the gift of sambar are examined the possibilities of this gift to act like a gestural file configuring like a corporal knowledge possibly inherited of previous generations and manifested through the Mulata Being. In this way, the awareness of the Mulata Being would go beyond formal and informal learning and peer recognition, and could absorb a file of gestures shared by experiences among black women from the samba world, making them personalities inside and outside the carnival.

Research suggests that infants progress from discrimination to recognition of emotions in faces during the first half year of life. It is whether the perception of emotions from bodies develops in a similar manner. In the current study, when presented with happy and angry body videos and voices, 5-month-olds looked longer at the matching video when they were presented upright but not when they were inverted. In contrast, 3.5-month-olds failed to match even with upright videos. Thus, 5-month-olds but not 3.5-month-olds exhibited evidence of recognition of emotions from bodies by demonstrating intermodal matching. In a subsequent experiment, younger infants did discriminate between body emotion videos but failed to exhibit an inversion effect, suggesting that discrimination may be based on low-level stimulus features. These results document a developmental change from discrimination based on non-emotional information at 3.5 months to recognition of body emotions at 5 months. This pattern of development is similar to face emotion knowledge development and suggests that both the face and body emotion perception systems develop rapidly during the first half year of life.

Donna J. Haraway ist eine US-amerikanische Biologin, Wissenschaftsphilosophin und Literaturwissenschaftlerin, die an den Departments History of Consciousness und Feminist Studies der University of California lehrte. In dieser Position hatte sie die erste explizit der Feministischen Theorie gewidmete Professur in den USA inne. Haraways Arbeiten bewegen sich in einem thematischen Schnittfeld von feministischer Erkenntniskritik, Cultural Studies, politischer Theorie und Biowissenschaften.