Lesbianism has received unprecedented screen time in the cinema in the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century. This marks a significant shift away from a prior invisibility, historically interrupted only by invocations of pathologisation, isolation and tragedy. At the same time, critical discourses have increasingly replaced identity categories such as “the lesbian” with the more fluid notions of “queer” sexuality. In this paradoxical context, this thesis identifies and theorises the kinds of cinematic language through which the figure of “the lesbian” has continued to be made legible on the screen. If the cultural invisibility of lesbianism is arguably a thing of the past, the invisibility of lesbianism in academic scholarship is an increasingly notable feature of the current critical landscape. The majority of anthologies on “queer” or “gay” cinema exclude lesbians both as contributors and as objects of study, rendering insecure the equation of political progress with screen visibility. Identifying a shift away from defining lesbian cinema as “about lesbians”, this project offers a series of close readings of narrative feature films released between 2001 and 2013 that put lesbianism in motion. The thesis discusses a range of recent films to consider how the cinematic language of lesbianism has moved beyond the twin burdens the term has historically carried, as deplorably singular and threateningly doubled. In dialogue with debates in psychoanalytic feminist film criticism about the woman in cinema, the first two chapters consider the relationship between lesbianism, narrative and genre in Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001), Nathalie (Fontaine, 2003) and Chloe (Egoyan, 2009). My argument explores how these films expose the contradictory relationship between absence and presence in cinema’s production of lesbianism, troubling the ease with which sex can be read as the visual evidence of sexuality. The subsequent two chapters move from psychoanalytically informed studies of the cinematic coding of lesbian fantasy to an investigation of the affective, spatial and temporal registers of desire and eroticism that have provoked recent debates in feminist theory. These chapters consider the ways in which the in-between and expectant modes of subjectivity and sensation that characterise adolescent sexuality coincide with, and accent, lesbian desires in Water Lilies (Sciamma, 2007), She Monkeys (Aschan, 2011) and Circumstance (Keshavarz, 2011). Moving from transactions of power to those of pleasure, the final chapter offers a close reading of Blue is the Warmest Colour (Kechiche, 2013) and of the discursive constructions of explicit lesbian sex surrounding it. My reading of the film argues that it formally queers desire in a way that unsettles the over-privileging of sex in the characterisation of lesbian sexuality. Across these five chapters, this thesis explores the relationship between the figuration of the singular lesbian and the multiple registers of her desire and sexuality. In conclusion, the thesis argues that a new field of figurations, emerging from the influences of queer theory, has pushed at the limits of lesbian legibility and generated nuanced and sensitive renderings of debates about sexuality on the screen.

This thesis examines the evolving gender relationships exposed by and contested through the Senegalese art of seduction, mokk pooj. The Wolof expression encompasses a set of feminine attitudes and actions (culinary prowess, docility, eroticism) that reflect values such as teraanga (hospitality), sutura (discretion), and muñ (patience, endurance). These beliefs and the discursive practices that perpetuate them are central to the reproduction of a gendered, normative, patriarchal, polygamous Senegalese sexual imaginary, but are framed within the playful and pleasurable realm of seduction and sexuality. Indeed, mokk pooj implies a satisfying sexual life based on a religiously-­‐informed sexual ethics: in a country where 95% of people identify as Muslim, marriage and procreation are divine recommendations, and sexual pleasure is said to make a married couple feel closer to Allah. In consequence, objects and strategies that enhance sexual satisfaction are an integral part of the Senegalese seduction toolkit. Each chapter pays attention to a specific element of the material culture of seduction and explores how it exposes larger gender dynamics. By taking potions and amulets, money, aphrodisiacs, food, and lingerie as the starting point of each chapter, I explore how these objects relate to concepts of social conformity and normativity, love, anxiety, complementarity and agency. In doing so, I analyse the gendered labour – the art/work of seduction – that goes into mokk pooj. David Graeber (2012) suggests that within hierarchical relationships, individuals in an inferior position (women) have to constantly imagine, understand, manage and care about the egos, perspectives and points of view of those on the top (men) while the latter rarely reciprocate. While Graeber contends that this ‘interpretive labor’ or ‘imaginative identification’ reproduces an internalised structural violence, I analyse mokk pooj as an affective economy in which women’s emotional, interpretive labour, becomes an agentive, albeit conservative, tool of negotiation and power (Mahmood 2005). In imagining and interpreting men’s needs and desires, Senegalese women uphold the Senegalese sexual imaginary that portray them as docile and submissive. However, it is through the apparent conformity and subdued demeanour that mokk pooj requires of them that Senegalese women manage to portray themselves as good women and consequently enhance their agentive power of negotiation.

This collection of personal essays explores the use of symmetry as a metaphor of normality in contemporary American culture. These essays use formalistic exploration to enter into a conversation with the reader regarding the body, sexuality, gender, and mental illness. Each piece aims to dismantle and explode the metaphorical significations of symmetry through the use of interdisciplinary research combined with memoir.

Masculinity is an increasingly prominent and important issue in debates within feminism, literary studies and visual theory. This study intervenes in and contributes to such debates by analysing an emerging group of Australian women’s fictions (published between 1998 and 2002) which focus on male characters and, in particular, on the description and narrative potential of their bodies. The majority of these texts, and the ones that are explored in this thesis – namely, Jillian Watkinson’s The Architect, Georgia Blain’s The Blind Eye, Mireille Juchau’s Machines for Feeling, Fiona Capp’s Last of the Sane Days, Sarah Myles’s Transplanted and Wendy Scarfe’s Miranda – share two preoccupations. Firstly, male characters bodies’ are almost always damaged or suffering in some way; secondly, the ability (or inability) of female characters to look at these bodies is repeatedly foregrounded. I argue that the interactions between male characters’ bodies and female characters’ gazes function in complex ways both to confirm and to challenge patriarchal constructions of masculinity and male corporeality. Specifically, this occurs in relation to the engagement of each text with popular discourses of feminism and masculinity crisis, discourses that emerge and interact in complex and often contradictory ways in depictions of male visibility and exposure. While my approach is generally feminist, it is also fiction-centred. Thus, I draw on a variety of theoretical perspectives, including literary theory, masculinity studies, visual theory, history, sociology and philosophy, in order to unpack and engage with these contemporary Australian women’s fictions. Paradoxically, one of the main consequences of this fiction-centred approach is a reengagement with and a rethinking of theoretical concepts emerging from psychoanalytic feminist film theory. In a remarkably consistent and explicitly pedagogical way, these fictions explore notions of objectification and dichotomisation, especially as they are elucidated in Laura Mulvey’s analysis of Hollywood narrative cinema. Objectification is overwhelmingly aligned with oppressive power structures and identified as problematic, and the first half of this thesis explores the novels’ critiques of this mode of visual interaction. The second half investigates the alternatives to objectification imagined in these fictions. While, upon closer consideration, some of these alternatives recapture male and female characters within traditional patriarchal power relations, others enable a rethinking of both women’s vision and desire, and men’s subjectivity, visibility and desirability.

Masculinity is an increasingly prominent and important issue in debates within feminism, literary studies and visual theory. This study intervenes in and contributes to such debates by analysing an emerging group of Australian women’s fictions (published between 1998 and 2002) which focus on male characters and, in particular, on the description and narrative potential of their bodies. The majority of these texts, and the ones that are explored in this thesis – namely, Jillian Watkinson’s The Architect, Georgia Blain’s The Blind Eye, Mireille Juchau’s Machines for Feeling, Fiona Capp’s Last of the Sane Days, Sarah Myles’s Transplanted and Wendy Scarfe’s Miranda – share two preoccupations. Firstly, male characters bodies’ are almost always damaged or suffering in some way; secondly, the ability (or inability) of female characters to look at these bodies is repeatedly foregrounded. I argue that the interactions between male characters’ bodies and female characters’ gazes function in complex ways both to confirm and to challenge patriarchal constructions of masculinity and male corporeality. Specifically, this occurs in relation to the engagement of each text with popular discourses of feminism and masculinity crisis, discourses that emerge and interact in complex and often contradictory ways in depictions of male visibility and exposure. While my approach is generally feminist, it is also fiction-centred. Thus, I draw on a variety of theoretical perspectives, including literary theory, masculinity studies, visual theory, history, sociology and philosophy, in order to unpack and engage with these contemporary Australian women’s fictions. Paradoxically, one of the main consequences of this fiction-centred approach is a reengagement with and a rethinking of theoretical concepts emerging from psychoanalytic feminist film theory. In a remarkably consistent and explicitly pedagogical way, these fictions explore notions of objectification and dichotomisation, especially as they are elucidated in Laura Mulvey’s analysis of Hollywood narrative cinema. Objectification is overwhelmingly aligned with oppressive power structures and identified as problematic, and the first half of this thesis explores the novels’ critiques of this mode of visual interaction. The second half investigates the alternatives to objectification imagined in these fictions. While, upon closer consideration, some of these alternatives recapture male and female characters within traditional patriarchal power relations, others enable a rethinking of both women’s vision and desire, and men’s subjectivity, visibility and desirability.

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Masculinity is an increasingly prominent and important issue in debates within feminism, literary studies and visual theory. This study intervenes in and contributes to such debates by analysing an emerging group of Australian women’s fictions (published between 1998 and 2002) which focus on male characters and, in particular, on the description and narrative potential of their bodies. The majority of these texts, and the ones that are explored in this thesis – namely, Jillian Watkinson’s The Architect, Georgia Blain’s The Blind Eye, Mireille Juchau’s Machines for Feeling, Fiona Capp’s Last of the Sane Days, Sarah Myles’s Transplanted and Wendy Scarfe’s Miranda – share two preoccupations. Firstly, male characters bodies’ are almost always damaged or suffering in some way; secondly, the ability (or inability) of female characters to look at these bodies is repeatedly foregrounded. I argue that the interactions between male characters’ bodies and female characters’ gazes function in complex ways both to confirm and to challenge patriarchal constructions of masculinity and male corporeality. Specifically, this occurs in relation to the engagement of each text with popular discourses of feminism and masculinity crisis, discourses that emerge and interact in complex and often contradictory ways in depictions of male visibility and exposure. While my approach is generally feminist, it is also fiction-centred. Thus, I draw on a variety of theoretical perspectives, including literary theory, masculinity studies, visual theory, history, sociology and philosophy, in order to unpack and engage with these contemporary Australian women’s fictions. Paradoxically, one of the main consequences of this fiction-centred approach is a reengagement with and a rethinking of theoretical concepts emerging from psychoanalytic feminist film theory. In a remarkably consistent and explicitly pedagogical way, these fictions explore notions of objectification and dichotomisation, especially as they are elucidated in Laura Mulvey’s analysis of Hollywood narrative cinema. Objectification is overwhelmingly aligned with oppressive power structures and identified as problematic, and the first half of this thesis explores the novels’ critiques of this mode of visual interaction. The second half investigates the alternatives to objectification imagined in these fictions. While, upon closer consideration, some of these alternatives recapture male and female characters within traditional patriarchal power relations, others enable a rethinking of both women’s vision and desire, and men’s subjectivity, visibility and desirability.

This research conducts a feminist poststructuralist examination of the vocabularies of heterosex: it investigates those terms, modes of talking, and meanings relating to sex which are associated with discourses such as scientific and popular sexology, medicine and psychiatry, public health, philosophy, and some feminist critique. The analysis of these various representations of heterosex involves the deconstruction of binaries such as presence/absence, mind/body, inside/outside and masculine/feminine, that are endemic to Western notions of sex. It is argued that such dualisms (re)produce and perpetuate differential power relations between men and women, and jeopardize the negotiation of mutually pleasurable and safer heterosex. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which sexological discourse deploys such dualisms as normal/abnormal, natural/unnatural, and healthy/unhealthy sex, and produces specifically gendered 'experiences' of sexual corporeality. The thesis examines a variety of written texts and excerpts from film and television; it also analyzes transcript material from individual and group interviews conducted by the researcher with heterosexual women and men, as well as sexual health and mental health professionals, in order to identify cultural pressures influencing participation in risky heterosexual behaviours, and also to identify alternative and safer pleasurable practices. Some of these alternative practices are suggested to rely on a radical reformulation of sexual relations which derives from the disruption of particular dualistic ways of understanding and enacting sex. The overall objective of the thesis is to deconstruct cultural imperatives of heterosex and promote the generation and acceptance of other modes of erotic pleasure. It is hoped that this research will be of use in the future planning and implementation of sex education and safer sex campaigns in Aotearoa/New Zealand which aim to be non-phallocentric and non-heterosexist, and which might recognize a feminist poststructuralist politics of sexual difference. / Note: Thesis now published. Potts, Annie (2002). The Science/Fiction of sex: feminist deconstruction and the vocabularies of heterosex. London & New York: Routledge. ISBN 04152567312. Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy.

This research conducts a feminist poststructuralist examination of the vocabularies of heterosex: it investigates those terms, modes of talking, and meanings relating to sex which are associated with discourses such as scientific and popular sexology, medicine and psychiatry, public health, philosophy, and some feminist critique. The analysis of these various representations of heterosex involves the deconstruction of binaries such as presence/absence, mind/body, inside/outside and masculine/feminine, that are endemic to Western notions of sex. It is argued that such dualisms (re)produce and perpetuate differential power relations between men and women, and jeopardize the negotiation of mutually pleasurable and safer heterosex. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which sexological discourse deploys such dualisms as normal/abnormal, natural/unnatural, and healthy/unhealthy sex, and produces specifically gendered 'experiences' of sexual corporeality. The thesis examines a variety of written texts and excerpts from film and television; it also analyzes transcript material from individual and group interviews conducted by the researcher with heterosexual women and men, as well as sexual health and mental health professionals, in order to identify cultural pressures influencing participation in risky heterosexual behaviours, and also to identify alternative and safer pleasurable practices. Some of these alternative practices are suggested to rely on a radical reformulation of sexual relations which derives from the disruption of particular dualistic ways of understanding and enacting sex. The overall objective of the thesis is to deconstruct cultural imperatives of heterosex and promote the generation and acceptance of other modes of erotic pleasure. It is hoped that this research will be of use in the future planning and implementation of sex education and safer sex campaigns in Aotearoa/New Zealand which aim to be non-phallocentric and non-heterosexist, and which might recognize a feminist poststructuralist politics of sexual difference. / Note: Thesis now published. Potts, Annie (2002). The Science/Fiction of sex: feminist deconstruction and the vocabularies of heterosex. London & New York: Routledge. ISBN 04152567312. Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy.

No description available.