Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Media, Music, and Cultural Studies, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 303-332.

This essay investigates the feminist philosophy of Rosi Braidotti with particular focus on the alternative feminine feminist nomadic subject that she creates. I also introduce Braidotti’s theoretical inspiration from Gilles Deleuze and Luce Irigaray. I argue that Braidotti creates an alternative figuration for feminism through synthesizeing Deleuze’s concept of ”becoming” with Irigaray’s sexual difference-theory. Braidotti highlights the importance of understanding the concept of difference differently. She also argues for the difference between subjectivity and identity, for the materialistic foundation of the subject, for the fundamental asymmetry between the sexes and for the nomadic mode of thinking. Braidottis suggests that the way out of the phallogocentric system, which she means we are encapsulated in, consist in working through the images that patriarchy has produced of women, through mimetic repetitons, in order to create new representations of women. I argue that the feminist philosophy of Braidotti is both humble and subversive which makes it an interesting and useful alternative for everyone who is interested in alternative, complex and thrilling ways of theorizing female feminist subjectivity.

This thesis interrogates the ways in which the body-centred practices of women film artists embrace the materiality of direct animation in order to foreground gendered, subjective positions. Through the researcher's own creative practice, it investigates how this mode of film-making, in which the artist works through physical engagement with the film materials and the material processes of film-making, might be understood as feminine and/or feminist. Direct animation foregrounds touch as the primary sense. Its practices are process-based and highly experimental, because images are made through the agency of the body operating within restrictive parameters, making results difficult to predict or control with precision. For these reasons, direct animation has not been embraced by mainstream, narrative-focused, studio-based models of production, unlike other forms of two and three dimensional animation. It has remained a specialist area for the individual artist and auteur, and, to date, there is a paucity of commentary about direct animation practices, and what exists has been dominated by male voices. In order to develop ideas about the ways in which women represent themselves in an expanded film-making praxis that is focused on the body and materiality of process, this PhD inquiry, encompassing a body of films with written contextualisation, is situated in the context of the direct animation practices of three artists (Caroline Leaf, Annabel Nicolson, and Margaret Tait); and informed by conceptual frameworks provided by Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous. This thesis proposes, via interaction between these three axes of research, that women film artists, operating independently, are able to create a female imaginary that represents women and is recognised by them, by constructing positions of practice outside the dominant symbolic modes of patriarchy, which evolve through the maternal body and the materialities of the feminine.

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