As a point of political and ethical contestation in U.S. American discourse, the “abortion debate” asks us to consider questions of choice, life, morality, and identity embedded with/in unequivocally conflicting axiological matrices. Consequentially, women who’ve had abortions are left caught in-between the cultural chasm between stigmatizing discourses. Framing abortion narratives within Turner’s (1969) conceptualization of liminality, this project aims to nuance the conversation from a performative autoethnographic orientation (Spry, 2011) which attends to ethical, aesthetic, and epistemic dimensions of narrative (re)construction. Layered narrative and poetic fragments (re)constitute the ruptured “truthfulness” of my abortion experience (Žižek, 2008) while (re)centering epistemological foundations of abortion discourse through subjugated corporeal knowledges (Foucault, 1980). By “talking back” (hooks, 1989) to neoliberal postfeminist discourses, this autoethnographic project seeks to performatively (re)construct the abortion experience through a language of liminality and explore the potentials of an alternative “imaginary” (Irigaray, 1991; Cixous, 1976, 1998).

The Revolutionary Breath is praxis of conscious breathing and values awareness. I explore the transformative potential of this praxis through a method I call axio-somatic ethnography, which is an expansion of traditional autoethnography that de-centers identity and valorizes body-sensing as the foundation for authentic storytelling. The Revolutionary Breath is juxtaposed to the State Sponsored Breath, a constellation of physical and cultural habits and values. The Revolutionary Breath, itself, is composed of three Allowings, or conscious sensing practices, all framed within a commitment to the depth and ease of one’s breath. Throughout the dissertation, I use axio-somatic ethnography to present my own experiences of putting this praxis into use.

This thesis argues for performative ways to write trauma, ghosts and silence against the particularities of German post-war experiences. It begins with the re-discovery of a photographic image that provides a starting point. I unfold linguistically uncalibrated yet embodied knowledge into insecure or uncertain registers of traumatic intergenerational reverberations. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory of trauma, I chart a trajectory from individuated self towards one pledged on intersubjective conditions for an iteratively-emergent subjectivity. Trauma framed in terms of interrelational silence is woven into the material fixicity of the image, with its fleetingly evoked and fragmented slivers of memory. Positioned on the cusp of an inquiry that troubles the coherence of a subject-who-knows, I argue for an eruptive heterogeneity that speaks creatively to possible ways of re-presenting the significance and specificity of familial and national silence in the aftermath of an abject war. The discreetness of trauma, ghosts and silence is reconfigured in terms of an in-betweenness of generational reverberations; these echoes form the layers into and against which I write silenced, repressed and marginalized voices, voices shaped predominately by absence from dominant discourses. The transgressive nature of writing against the grain, of writing against the primacy of certainty is developed further through the chapters, mapping a complex methodological and theoretical possibility. I trouble notions of ‘data’ in light of contestations that favour ambiguous possibilities pertaining to hauntings and ghosts, aware of the paradoxical nature of linearly constructed arguments in support of fragmentary and fragmented knowledge claims. The complexities are further accentuated through texts written in different genres, which seek to mirror context and emergent content. The thesis builds into an enmeshment of reverberations within which space is given over to Other, drawing fictitious and fictionalized voices into contestations around narrativization and finitude.

Homeplace of Hands: Fractal Performativity of Vulnerable Resistance is a feminist autoethnography of possibility that puts on display two new concepts I’ve named fractal performativity and vulnerable resistance. Fractal performativity as a way of seeing is an integrative performance methodology that utilizes fractal geometry and performative autoethnography and brings together performance studies, feminist theory, multiethnic literature, personal story and poetry to communicate vulnerable resistance as a strategy for social transformation and selfhood. Vulnerable resistance as a way of being embodies a praxis of homeplace enacted through five modes I’ve identified as nurturance, sustenance, maintenance, performance, and alliance, expressed through the daily work of the hand as a metaphor, tool, and fractal. Deploying fractal performativity as an integrative method and conceptual framework, I design the fractal hand as a template that embodies intersecting identities and holds my stories as I cultivate homeplace and enact vulnerable resistance through the five modes. For scholar-artist- activists working on the margins, this integrative strategy offers hope to keep coming back day after day, and a template for cultivating homeplace of vulnerable resistance.

This dissertation explores the process of creating and touring a community-sourced memorial quilt for the anti-mountaintop removal activist Julia “Judy” Bonds, who died in 2011. As a practice, the project positions memorialization as a possible framework for social movements to utilize when faced with loss that allows for actions that honor members of the movement while still engaging in consciousness raising and organizing efforts. From a theoretical standpoint, the practice of memorialization—especially when it is intentionally designed to align with the practices/legacy of the person(s) being remembered—is also considered through an object oriented ontology perspective, providing insight into the affective ways that a more personal/community base memorial can be considered as both a symbolic and real material representation of a person who has died.As a practice, the dissertation brings together work on object oriented ontology and travel as a way to highlight travel as a mobile object and performative practice, not just as a practice that allows for research to be presented, which can serve as a valuable site of knowledge generation and creation.Finally, this document is concerned with the materiality of textual representation, offering a series of experiments in performative writing to align with the larger goals of community organizing and environmental action, insisting that the documentation of our actions as well as the actions themselves can help to imagine new ways of being and knowing.

This dissertation is a performative interrogation of the disagreement and (dis)interest, communication issues, surrounding motherhood in contemporary U.S. culture. Textual analysis of Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document (PPD) plays a key role in my inquiry. I juxtapose documentation from my lived experiences and academic projects with Kelly's work to build upon the themes and ideas introduced throughout PPD. This project is guided by the concepts love and (im)possibility, and I will argue that, together, they are central to understanding mothering/caregiving as a site of communication inquiry. Love and (im)possibility are inherent to both mothering and communication, but they also are essential for creating the conditions for new variations, ways of doing, and being with and for one another.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Psychology, 2009. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 104-109).

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento CientÃfico e TecnolÃgico / A presente dissertaÃÃo tem por interesse principal as pornografias contemporÃneas, ou as novas pornografias, ou ainda: as pornografias realizadas recentemente e, em geral, divulgadas por meio da Internet e em festivais especÃficos. Para tal, ela toma, como objeto de anÃlise, os primeiros trabalhos do portuguÃs Antonio Da Silva â realizador radicado em Londres â, produzidos entre os anos de 2011 e 2013, e que se expressam em pornografia junto a demais linguagens fÃlmicas e discursivas. Esta anÃlise toma singularmente os trabalhos de Antonio para pensar, de modo mais geral, como as atuais produÃÃes em pornografia se apropriam de outras formas de falar do sexo, da sexualidade e da prÃpria pornografia. Ao mesmo tempo, encarando, como fundamental a presenÃa do corpo do pesquisador como espectador de sua constituiÃÃo. Nesse sentido, traz como metodologia a escrita performativa, que permite o uso em primeira pessoa, e a utilizaÃÃo de modos de escrever e de falar do tema alÃm do escrever e do falar acadÃmicos. Esta anÃlise tem, por base teÃrica, a vinculaÃÃo da imagem pornogrÃfica à noÃÃo de performatividade, com base nos trabalhos de J. L. Austin (1990), Jacques Derrida (1991) e Judith Butler (1988, 1997). Sobre a pornografia que se discute, o trabalho toma autores como Feona Attwood (2007, 2011), Nuno CÃsar Abreu (1996), Linda Williams (1989, 1991, 2004, 2014) e Katrien Jacobs (2004), dentre outros. Juntam-se, ao texto acadÃmico e dissertativo, confissÃes, memÃrias e poemetos, que vÃo compondo a anÃlise performativa dos trabalhos de Antonio, com base na escrita performativa, teorizada e apontada, aqui, por Alexandre Beigui (2011). Ao fim das contas, o principal interesse à interpretar o que à o pornogrÃfico, tanto do ponto de vista da linguagem como do espectador, e, por isso, à trazida à tona a noÃÃo de performatividade, ajudando-nos, escritor e leitor, a pensar sobre uma possÃvel performatividade pornogrÃfica no lugar de uma pornografia como algo dado e identificado a princÃpio.

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