The wheelchair is an unmistakeable sign of bodily damage. It is the universal symbol of disability. How then do wheelchair users feel about themselves? How do they manage their relationship with others? How do people maintain a satisfactory self-image in the face of the highly visible chair and its associated symbolism? Some people will always see the wheelchair as a tool, just like any other piece of equipment that they may use to get a job done. However, for other people, wheelchair is more than just a tool; it becomes embodied, it becomes a part of them.

This study explores women’s experiences of sex with men. It is based on qualitative data collected from eighteen life history interviews. Such an approach provides means for examining women’s sexual experiences over time. The study finds that women give meaning to their sexual experiences through two main discursive representations: the passive, “proper” and sexually obliging girlfriend or wife, and the active and “sexually equal” woman. However, these representations do not capture the entirety of women’s sexual experiences. The life history analysis demonstrates that women are not simply inscribed by discourse. Rather, they are embodied beings actively engaged in pursuing sexual identities. Central to the process is a relationship between the practice of sex and self-reflexivity over time. Finally, the study demonstrates how the process of gaining sexual subjectivity is shaped by the material conditions of women’s lives. For instance, the praxeological circumstances of women’s class or race are powerful in recasting discourses of feminine sexuality, the meanings women ascribe to them, their access to broader sexual experiences, and the kinds of relationships they have with their male partners.

This dissertation takes a deep look at a first-person narrative from a man who develops complete impotence following androgen-deprivation treatment for prostate cancer. After feeling depressed for some time about what he imagined to be the permanent loss of his sexual life, the man, pseudonymously called Michael in this dissertation, tried using a strap-on dildo. Michael was surprised and pleased to find that using the dildo for sex brings him sexual satisfaction including orgasm. The dildo transforms "from object to organ" as Michael gradually comes to experience the dildo as a part of his own body. He also experiences a shift in his gendered and sexual identity, discovering that the dildo is neither a prosthetic penis nor a medical device, but a post-gendered object subject to playful interpretation. This dissertation aims to elaborate how the phenomenon presented in the case study narrative takes place, to discuss the implications this phenomenon has in a number of theoretical domains, and to apply these findings to clinical practice. It uses phenomenological elaboration and hermeneutic narrative analysis to explore the case study phenomenon. Then, the case study phenomenon is interrogated from various theoretical approaches in order to elaborate the implications of this phenomenon regarding the relationships between physical body morphology, lived embodied experience, and gender identity, the relationship between the body and sensorium-expanding technology, and the breadth and range of human sexuality. The case study narrative serves as a locus for dialogue between feminist phenomenological and feminist poststructural thought on the question of the relationship between the material body and identity, and also includes discussions of transsexuality and male lesbian identities in terms of how the case study phenomenon is related to the embodied experiences of people in these groups. The dissertation also explores how Michael's partner contributes to Michael's change in embodied experience and identity and contributes to the creation of an imaginative and playful space for sexuality to emerge, suggesting that sexuality is created in an interpersonal context rather than being located in a single person or having a particular aim or trajectory. Dissertation findings suggest that conceptual and technical playfulness, including the creation of an imaginative and playful space, may be beneficial in the clinical treatment of sexual "dysfunctions," persons with non-binary or flexible gender identities, transsexual persons, and for clinical conceptualization of sexuality and embodiment in general. Dissertation findings imply that there exists great complexity and variability in embodied experience, that the body is deeply significant for developing identity and that bodily changes may alter identity, and that sexuality is an event that emerges with others. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts / Clinical Psychology / PhD / Dissertation

The phenomenological approaches to embodiment presented by Levinas and Merleau-Ponty cannot provide an adequate account of bodily identity because their methodological commitments forbid them from admitting the central role that sensation plays in the constitution of experience. This neglect is symptomatic of their tradition's suspicion toward sensation as an explanatory concept, a suspicion stemming from Kant's critique of empiricist metaphysics and Husserl's critique of psychologism and objectivism. By contrast, I suggest that only with a robust theory of sensation can the integrity of the body and its relations be fully captured. I therefore develop--contra Kant and Husserl's idealism--a realist conception of sensation that is at once materialist and phenomenological. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Philosophy / PhD; / Dissertation;

Departing from a technofeminist perspective, Becoming Image, places the digital image in a broader context of modern and postmodern technological discourses and fashion. In four articles, the compilation dissertation expands a contemporary and imagistic tech discourse by questioning the ideology of ”masculinity”―specifically the idea of it as a historically male domain. Through interviews, discourse analysis and feminist critique, as well as an interdisciplinary focus on digital media, the project investigates how everyday image practices open up for new embodied experiences. Focusing on women and social media, the articles examines the way material and immaterial aspects of images overlap in everyday life. Rather than artistic intention, emotions and basic human interaction often lie at heart of becoming image. Fashion is, however, highly present in this critical transformation. Not only as collaborative projects emerge out of combining new technologies and dress―such as using your smartphone to elevate your clothing―but also how fashion is a technology itself. Fashion highlights the body as medium, but fashion is also always (mostly) image.  Previous research around the digital image and its meaning has often stressed the banality of everyday image practices as taking selfies. However, these debates represent deeper cultural values and norms, which the dissertation reaches beyond. As women, and also queer and trans-people increasingly innovate and interfere with normative technological usage, it becomes evident that such groups have been excluded from communities organized around technological power and skill. As with language, technology and digital imagery are not neutral media. Women have hence been excluded―and been forced to use instruments and apps seemingly made for strict masculine purposes. Arguably, image practices such as selfies or image micro-blogging encourage women to “write” themselves out of a world they have not constructed themselves. Thus, Becoming Image simultaneously illuminates the structural and fundamental levels of technology and gender―while also suggesting new methodological and theoretical ways of studying and approaching digital media. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Accepted.</p><p> </p>

Through comparing the repertoires, presentational characteristics, and rehearsal procedures of Surinamese Maroon culture-based performance groups within Paramaribo, I outline the concept of personalizing tradition. This is based on the premise that differing social and performative practices lead to different understandings of the same performance genre, and that culture-based collectives, like those discussed here, mobilize tradition in order to fulfill a variety of social needs and aspirations. Their personalizing practices lead to embodied understandings of a variety of concepts, among them tradition, culture, professionalism, and cosmopolitanism. Through learning and presenting this composite of physical significations, performers generate visual and sonic representations of Maroon cosmopolitanism, thereby articulating aspects of the lived realities of Maroons whose life experiences diverge from the most commonly circulated characterizations of Maroon society—namely a population isolated from (or even incapable of comprehending) cosmopolitan and national technologies, aesthetic forms, and knowledge systems. Borrowing from jazz discourse, I posit that satisfaction and social poetic proficiencies arise from performers’ adeptness at playing the changes, in other words their capacities to understand the changing social circumstances in which they are acting and selecting expressive gestures that compliment those circumstances. The concept of playing the changes helps initiate a turn away from assessments of right or wrong ("real" or "made up") and focus instead on the ability to portray oneself to one’s best advantage, come what may. Finally, I demonstrate the advantages of pursuing an integrated approach to performance analysis, in which the study of musical and choreographic elements of performance are examined in combination. / Music

This dissertation is about the circus, but it is also about how we think through a range of possibilities for individual and social change in the contemporary post-Fordist or neoliberal moment. In the last 40 years geographers, along side other scholars, have documented an increasingly close relationship between social, political, and economic aspects of life in western countries. These shifts have raised concerns over shrinking spaces of resistance and loss of counter hegemonic voices, and increased interest in transgressive or ‘outside’ spaces and bodies as sites of resistance, escape, and social change. Two contested sites that seem to offer promise for resistance, yet are simultaneously critiqued for their participation in dominant discourses, are art (or creative labour) and the body. Despite prolific literatures on these topics in geography in the last decade, links between creative labour, theories of embodiment, and the living practices of cultural workers are still far too rare. To address this I examine the intersection of theories of research, labour, art, discipline, embodiment and politics, understood through the daily practices of circus performers doing highly physical and embodied work. I focus in particular on clowns and aerialists, performance forms to which I have outstanding access as a performer in these genres. I addition to extensive participant observation over several years of performance work, my research is based on 26 elite interviews with key performers in the Canadian circus community, and an ephemeral archive of visual and textual materials. The resonance of questions about the nature of social research, art and work, and disciplined and fluid subjectivities, opens up new space for thinking across often-disconnected spheres. I believe the presence of circus performers’ lived experiences and my own embodied knowledge throughout this analysis deepens our understanding of political possibilities across many different spaces.

This thesis explores how law is performed in daily life through physical acts. I propose that the body expresses, generates and is intertwined with an understanding of legal normativity. That is to say that law is developed through embodied acts of communication. The thesis, which takes the form of a website, provides a lens through which to see how corporeality shapes our legal landscape. I use text, video and live performance to propose ways to engage with this landscape. I demonstrate that in even the most banal gestures there is a microcosm of norm generation and reproduction processes that can be highlighted by paying closer attention to our daily life practices.

This dissertation is about the circus, but it is also about how we think through a range of possibilities for individual and social change in the contemporary post-Fordist or neoliberal moment. In the last 40 years geographers, along side other scholars, have documented an increasingly close relationship between social, political, and economic aspects of life in western countries. These shifts have raised concerns over shrinking spaces of resistance and loss of counter hegemonic voices, and increased interest in transgressive or ‘outside’ spaces and bodies as sites of resistance, escape, and social change. Two contested sites that seem to offer promise for resistance, yet are simultaneously critiqued for their participation in dominant discourses, are art (or creative labour) and the body. Despite prolific literatures on these topics in geography in the last decade, links between creative labour, theories of embodiment, and the living practices of cultural workers are still far too rare. To address this I examine the intersection of theories of research, labour, art, discipline, embodiment and politics, understood through the daily practices of circus performers doing highly physical and embodied work. I focus in particular on clowns and aerialists, performance forms to which I have outstanding access as a performer in these genres. I addition to extensive participant observation over several years of performance work, my research is based on 26 elite interviews with key performers in the Canadian circus community, and an ephemeral archive of visual and textual materials. The resonance of questions about the nature of social research, art and work, and disciplined and fluid subjectivities, opens up new space for thinking across often-disconnected spheres. I believe the presence of circus performers’ lived experiences and my own embodied knowledge throughout this analysis deepens our understanding of political possibilities across many different spaces.

Past research associated relative left frontal cortical activity with approach motivation, or the inclination to move toward a stimulus, as well as positive affect. Work with anger, a negative emotion often high in approach, helped clarify the role of relative left frontal cortical activity. Less work, however, examined positive emotional states varying in approach motivation and relative left frontal cortical activity. In the present research, it was predicted that positive facial expressions varying in degrees of approach motivation would influence relative left frontal cortical activity measured with electroencephalography (EEG) alpha power and task persistence measured with time working on insolvable geometric puzzles. Furthermore, relative left frontal cortical activity should positively relate to task persistence. In support of these predictions, determination compared to satisfaction facial expressions caused greater relative left frontal activity measured with EEG alpha power, a neural correlate of approach motivation. This effect remained when accounting for the contribution of muscle activity in the EEG signal, subjective task difficulty, and the extent to which participants made facial expressions. Determination compared to neutral facial expressions also caused greater self-reported interest following the puzzle task. Facial expressions did not directly influence task persistence. However, relative left frontal cortical activity was positively correlated with total time working on insolvable puzzles in the determination condition only. These results extend embodiment theories and motivational models of asymmetric frontal cortical activity.