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This dissertation examines Elfriede Jelinek’s investigation of Austria’s and Western Europe’s “obscene fantasies” through her “perversion” of generic forms in three of her best-known texts (Die Liebhaberinnen, Lust, and Die Klavierspielerin). It also investigates how these texts, at first glance less overtly political than Jelinek’s later work, can be seen as laying the groundwork for her later, more political, analysis of Austrian fascism and racism. The dissertation is composed of three chapters; each investigates a central psychoanalytic concept (alienation, jouissance, perversion and sublimation) and reads a Jelinek text in relation to the genre that it is perverting, exposing the “obscene fantasies” that lie at its heart. Chapter One examines how Jelinek depicts alienation (in the Marxist, socialist feminist, and Lacanian senses) in her 1975 novel Die Liebhaberinnen, and explores how Jelinek’s depiction of alienation functions to make Die Liebhaberinnen an anti-romance. Chapter Two addresses whether Jelinek’s novel Lust (1989) is a pornographic or anti-pornographic text. I investigate the complex relationship between aesthetics and pornography, arguing that many other Jelinek scholars collapse the distinction between mass-cultural forms of pornography and the high-cultural pornography of Bataille and Sade, and thus fail to understand how her text is simultaneously pornographic and anti-pornographic. Chapter Three focuses on Jelinek’s novel Die Klavierspielerin (1983), examining the development of its protagonist as a (perverse) sexual subject, and her ultimate failure to achieve a stable sexual position and how Jelinek’s text perverts the genre of the Künstlerroman. It also discusses Erika’s training as a pianist as a possible causal factor of her perversions and lack of sexual identity, concluding that her inability to sublimate demonstrates the similarities (and differences) between the artist and the pervert, illustrating how Jelinek’s novel deviates from the traditional Künstlerroman. The dissertation argues that the disruption of genres is one of Jelinek’s most significant literary contributions, her works functioning to create a “negative aesthetics” as opposed to a positive reworking of generic forms. Jelinek rejects an identificatory mode of writing and refuses to create “positive” subjects, preferring instead to produce art that is a “critique of praxis as the rule of brutal self-preservation at the heart of the status quo” (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 12).

The context for this research was the socio-political, culturally constructed, lived experience of eight women nurses who held middle-level positions in two Western Australian public hospitals. Glass and Davis’ (1998) integrated feminist postmodern model for nursing research framed the design for the ethnographic investigation.The researcher used an innovative self-developed trifocality method: realist; critical feminist; and feminist postmodern to critique ethnographic data against the research aim and objectives and reflexively engaged with the women nurses to reveal unacknowledged individual and collective insights. Participant observation, critical conversation, and reflective field/journaling were used as triangulated data collection methods. The methodology revealed the local, particular, historical, taken-for-granted and traditionally gender-biased subjugated voices of individual women nurses as legitimate sites for the production of knowledge and insights.The trifocal data analysis revealed multiple intersecting layers of meanings and insights. The participants unacknowledged ‘unsaid’ experiences were viewed as exemplar ‘states of being’, or subjectivity positions, of their multiple and temporal realities. Inherent within the subjectivity positions was their personal, professional and corporate efforts, assumed as self-managing strategies and implicit knowledge, to enact work roles.Deeper critique, applying feminist poststructuralism (Lather 1991b) and postmodern notions of power/knowledge networks of relationships (Foucault 1980b) revealed three competing socio-political culturally constructed discourses. Firstly, the participants’ were embedded within an empowering ‘Discourse of Values Attributed to Nursing/Between a Rock and a Hard Place’. Secondly, they were influenced by, and resistant to the patriarchally dominant ‘Discourse of Bureaucratic Managerialism Discourse/Absence of Care’. thirdly, they functioned within the influence of the disempowering ‘Discourse Medical Science/Working the Margins’.This research contributes to the knowledge base of scholarly work that exists about nurses, women nurses specifically, concerning the meaning of the experiences of practicing in the confluence of corporate and professional responsibilities. At the personal participant level the insights contribute to emancipatory consciousness-raising. The insights also positively contribute to the recommendations made in The Report of the Western Australian Study of Nursing and Midwifery (Pinch & Della 2001). The insights may evoke wider awareness of the disempowering influence of managerialism upon professional practice and inter-professional relationships. Finally, the unique trifocal data analysis method contributes to the body of nursing and social science research knowledge.

The context for this research was the socio-political, culturally constructed, lived experience of eight women nurses who held middle-level positions in two Western Australian public hospitals. Glass and Davis’ (1998) integrated feminist postmodern model for nursing research framed the design for the ethnographic investigation.The researcher used an innovative self-developed trifocality method: realist; critical feminist; and feminist postmodern to critique ethnographic data against the research aim and objectives and reflexively engaged with the women nurses to reveal unacknowledged individual and collective insights. Participant observation, critical conversation, and reflective field/journaling were used as triangulated data collection methods. The methodology revealed the local, particular, historical, taken-for-granted and traditionally gender-biased subjugated voices of individual women nurses as legitimate sites for the production of knowledge and insights.The trifocal data analysis revealed multiple intersecting layers of meanings and insights. The participants unacknowledged ‘unsaid’ experiences were viewed as exemplar ‘states of being’, or subjectivity positions, of their multiple and temporal realities. Inherent within the subjectivity positions was their personal, professional and corporate efforts, assumed as self-managing strategies and implicit knowledge, to enact work roles.Deeper critique, applying feminist poststructuralism (Lather 1991b) and postmodern notions of power/knowledge networks of relationships (Foucault 1980b) revealed three competing socio-political culturally constructed discourses. Firstly, the participants’ were embedded within an empowering ‘Discourse of Values Attributed to Nursing/Between a Rock and a Hard Place’. Secondly, they were influenced by, and resistant to the patriarchally dominant ‘Discourse of Bureaucratic Managerialism Discourse/Absence of Care’. thirdly, they functioned within the influence of the disempowering ‘Discourse Medical Science/Working the Margins’.This research contributes to the knowledge base of scholarly work that exists about nurses, women nurses specifically, concerning the meaning of the experiences of practicing in the confluence of corporate and professional responsibilities. At the personal participant level the insights contribute to emancipatory consciousness-raising. The insights also positively contribute to the recommendations made in The Report of the Western Australian Study of Nursing and Midwifery (Pinch & Della 2001). The insights may evoke wider awareness of the disempowering influence of managerialism upon professional practice and inter-professional relationships. Finally, the unique trifocal data analysis method contributes to the body of nursing and social science research knowledge.

The context for this research was the socio-political, culturally constructed, lived experience of eight women nurses who held middle-level positions in two Western Australian public hospitals. Glass and Davis’ (1998) integrated feminist postmodern model for nursing research framed the design for the ethnographic investigation.The researcher used an innovative self-developed trifocality method: realist; critical feminist; and feminist postmodern to critique ethnographic data against the research aim and objectives and reflexively engaged with the women nurses to reveal unacknowledged individual and collective insights. Participant observation, critical conversation, and reflective field/journaling were used as triangulated data collection methods. The methodology revealed the local, particular, historical, taken-for-granted and traditionally gender-biased subjugated voices of individual women nurses as legitimate sites for the production of knowledge and insights.The trifocal data analysis revealed multiple intersecting layers of meanings and insights. The participants unacknowledged ‘unsaid’ experiences were viewed as exemplar ‘states of being’, or subjectivity positions, of their multiple and temporal realities. Inherent within the subjectivity positions was their personal, professional and corporate efforts, assumed as self-managing strategies and implicit knowledge, to enact work roles.Deeper critique, applying feminist poststructuralism (Lather 1991b) and postmodern notions of power/knowledge networks of relationships (Foucault 1980b) revealed three competing socio-political culturally constructed discourses. Firstly, the participants’ were embedded within an empowering ‘Discourse of Values Attributed to Nursing/Between a Rock and a Hard Place’. Secondly, they were influenced by, and resistant to the patriarchally dominant ‘Discourse of Bureaucratic Managerialism Discourse/Absence of Care’. thirdly, they functioned within the influence of the disempowering ‘Discourse Medical Science/Working the Margins’.This research contributes to the knowledge base of scholarly work that exists about nurses, women nurses specifically, concerning the meaning of the experiences of practicing in the confluence of corporate and professional responsibilities. At the personal participant level the insights contribute to emancipatory consciousness-raising. The insights also positively contribute to the recommendations made in The Report of the Western Australian Study of Nursing and Midwifery (Pinch & Della 2001). The insights may evoke wider awareness of the disempowering influence of managerialism upon professional practice and inter-professional relationships. Finally, the unique trifocal data analysis method contributes to the body of nursing and social science research knowledge.

This thesis presents the analysis of artistic techniques of paintings from the Precisionist movement and the implementation of the results of the analysis in the creation of three new works of art using digital media. Artists working in digital media express features of pre-digital artistic movements with varying degrees of adherence to principles, intentions, and awareness. This thesis seeks to create a bridge between the recognition of common features of Precisionist works and the expression of those elements in new works through the use of a system of analysis, interpretation, and translation. One outcome of this thesis is the description of a methodology for interpretation and translation that can be applied to other art movements. The Precisionist period within the Modern Art movement has both a historical importance in the world of art and a thematic relevance to popular uses of digital media ? specifically the representation of meaning and mood derived from industrial settings. Its influences can be traced from cubist, futurist, and constructivist art, as well as influencing the development of surrealism. It is considered the first solely American movement within Modern Art. Charles Sheeler's work plays a key role in the visual analysis portion of this research. Sheeler's work offers examples for applying 2D precisionist artistic style as aesthetic inspiration in creating a three-part production of 3D digital and video work. Work from precisionist artists Charles Demuth and Edmund Lewandowski also contribute some unique artistic characteristics considered during the analytical portion of this study. The new artistic works proposed include: (1) a linear, live-action short video with post-production manipulation; (2) a linear, 3D animated work; and (3) a non-linear, interactive 3D game environment.