British singer/songwriter Elvis Costello once said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to want to do” (in Brackett, 1995, p. 157). In this thesis I talk not only about music but I also talk about talk about music, perhaps an even stupider thing to want to do. But I do so because recent critical discourses in musicology and music education suggest talk about music is an inherent part of music, such that if we talk about music at all we must additionally talk about talk about music. But in talking about talk about music we are called upon to talk about talk. Consequently this thesis divides into five parts. In Part I I talk about talk with a discussion of performativity. I outline three different conceptions of the performative, showing how ethics inheres in language, with talk about talk necessarily being talk about ethics to some extent. In Part II I talk about talk about music, showing how musicology has attempted to respond to this ethical dimension of talk with a “new” musicology. In Part III I write in a number of different genres, exploring the discursive norms governing genres of writing about music and musicians and how they impact what we take music to be. Thus I write in philosophical, ethnographic, genealogical, narratological, autobiographical and literary forms, concluding that literary writing on music and musicians acts as a meta-discourse on music, bringing multiple different discourses into dialogue within a single unified text. In Part IV I explore the implications of literary writing about music and musicians for the practice of music education with critical readings of four novels, concluding with the recommendation that a “Non-foundational approaches to music education” course be offered as part of music teacher education programs, in addition to the more traditional “Foundational approaches to music education” course. In Part V I provide two annotated bibliographies for teachers interested in teaching such a course and for those who simply wish to further their understanding of music and music education through critical engagement with literary texts about music and musicians.

British singer/songwriter Elvis Costello once said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to want to do” (in Brackett, 1995, p. 157). In this thesis I talk not only about music but I also talk about talk about music, perhaps an even stupider thing to want to do. But I do so because recent critical discourses in musicology and music education suggest talk about music is an inherent part of music, such that if we talk about music at all we must additionally talk about talk about music. But in talking about talk about music we are called upon to talk about talk. Consequently this thesis divides into five parts. In Part I I talk about talk with a discussion of performativity. I outline three different conceptions of the performative, showing how ethics inheres in language, with talk about talk necessarily being talk about ethics to some extent. In Part II I talk about talk about music, showing how musicology has attempted to respond to this ethical dimension of talk with a “new” musicology. In Part III I write in a number of different genres, exploring the discursive norms governing genres of writing about music and musicians and how they impact what we take music to be. Thus I write in philosophical, ethnographic, genealogical, narratological, autobiographical and literary forms, concluding that literary writing on music and musicians acts as a meta-discourse on music, bringing multiple different discourses into dialogue within a single unified text. In Part IV I explore the implications of literary writing about music and musicians for the practice of music education with critical readings of four novels, concluding with the recommendation that a “Non-foundational approaches to music education” course be offered as part of music teacher education programs, in addition to the more traditional “Foundational approaches to music education” course. In Part V I provide two annotated bibliographies for teachers interested in teaching such a course and for those who simply wish to further their understanding of music and music education through critical engagement with literary texts about music and musicians.

This thesis aims to explore lesbian desire and sexual identity in Lydia Kwa¡¦s This Place Called Absence, beginning with the textual subversion of heterosexual norm, evolving through the author¡¦s mapping of butch/femme desire and concluding with the protagonist¡¦s formation of self-identity. Chapter One discusses how the text subverts the heterosexual norm through the erotic chaos created by queer characters. I will apply Judith Butler¡¦s notions of heterosexual matrix and gender performativity to look into the textual strategies of subversion. The appropriation of gender is not only a strategy of queer politics, but also the primary means by which lesbians articulate desire. To illuminate Kwa¡¦s mapping of lesbian desire, I apply Teresa de Lauretis¡¦s theory of lesbian fetishism in Chapter Two to examine how butches and femmes in the novel express their desire through manipulating gender signs. The masculinity fetishes are prone to social misunderstanding as penis envy and thereby arouse male hostility. The anxiety of lesbian characters with the paternal phallus will be the focus of the second part of the chapter. Chapter Three looks into how the protagonist establishes positive self-identity through reversing social stigma to empowering self-image in queer coalition. The queer coalition comprising gays and lesbians, nevertheless, cedes its place to equalitarian women¡¦s community at the end of the novel. The problems of the concept of universal women for lesbians will be discussed in the latter part of the chapter from the perspectives of Butler and de Lauretis. After probing into textual details, I will argue that the protagonist, in spite of her desire for female solidarity, ultimately identifies with queer coalition. In conclusion, I will regard the novel as a lesbian counter-discourse by summarizing its strategies of displacement, resignification and reversal of the heterosexual symbolic and foreground the multiplicity of desire and differences among lesbians against the reification of heterosexual symbolic.

Against the background of The Buddha of Suburbia and The Black Album, this study explores the ways Hanif Kureishi problematizes the notion of identity. The present study aims to lay bare how Kureishi moves the previously fixed categories into a slippery ground in his fiction and, in the process, how he challenges the fundamental givens of identity politics against the background of Homi Bhabha&rsquo / s key concepts: hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence, agency, liminality and the third space. It will also make references to the category of nation as narration in relation to Thatcherite politics and identity as a performative act/process. Bhabha&rsquo / s theories will also help highlight how Kureishi&rsquo / s characters create their liminal spaces and how they perform their identity within these spaces. Looking at both novels, it is concluded that the nature of identity is fluid since it is configured according to many variables such as religious practice, political activism, arts and sexual discourse which are not stable, either. Kureishi&rsquo / s novels fictionalize that identity can never be reified by the essentialist pre-givens of the traditional ideologies. In a multicultural world, rather than assimilation, it is important to grasp the unstable nature of identity in order to respect cultural differences. Thus, in a world where the dominant voices do not/cannot suppress the marginal ones, identity, national or individual, will keep on transforming itself.

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This project looks at the relationship between music performance and truth in narrative. Music performance is a fluid and dynamic process with complex and multiple relationships among musician, audience, text, and production. The five sections of this thesis discuss five different musical performances that address different aspects of this dynamic process. I look at the relationship between music performance and Performance Studies, issues of personae and presence, questions of identity and masculinity, pedagogy and performance, and the intersections of writing and performance. The five musical performances in this project are written to not only discuss important aspects of music and performance, but also frame my arguments about truth in narrative. I argue truth should be carefully considered because it is an idea that has a great deal of power. Truth exists in complex relationships among reader and writer, genre and text, and experience and story. Like music, approaching truth as a concept that is fluid opens up possibilities for understanding the implications truth has on the stories we live and tell.

Drawing upon critical interpretive medical anthropology (Lock and Scheper-Hughes 1996) and Judith Butler’s (1990) concept of performativity, this thesis investigates the empowerment potential and effect on well-being of a community sewing group located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. This project was conducted using the methods of narrative ethnography, including semi-structured individual interviews, focus groups, and participant observation and finds that the Saskatoon Mothers’ Centre Sewing Circle contributes to well-being in three major ways. First, learning to sew shapes women’s self-perceptions, resulting in more capable, productive, and self-sufficient subjectivities. Learning to sew also enables women to act with more agency in their daily lives, empowering them through the opportunity to express identities, enhance social networks, and act within financial limitations. Finally, the Sewing Circle creates an environment of empowerment, an emotionally and physically safe space in which mothers are supported and nurtured, resulting in the formation of a supportive and encouraging community of practice. The Sewing Circle therefore supports women’s well-being by instilling them with the confidence and ability to act in their daily lives and to fulfill their potential. This research contributes to an understanding of the way in which sewing can contribute to the holistic well-being of older mothers by linking empowerment to performativity, and may contribute to the development of similar empowerment programming in the future.

At the end of the 20th century, significant changes occurred in Lithuanian photography: a certain part of photography relinquished earlier traditions of Lithuanian photography and did not conform to the conventional criteria of artistry of photography altogether. Photographers and other artists abandoned expressive visual form and humanist content, which had dominated Lithuanian photography since 1960s, and came up with featureless photography suggesting a reflective approach towards a person and his or her environment. Such photography transcended relatively narrow boundaries of artistic photography and became a part of the Lithuanian and international contemporary art scene. At the same time the theme of personal identity gained importance in Lithuanian photography. The works of Lithuanian photographers and artists of the young generation encouraged critical look at the stereotypes of personal identity as well as the role of photography itself in the shaping of such stereotypes. Authors of contemporary photography began to treat personal identity not as a natural feature recorded in pictures, but as a problematic phenomenon. The dissertation analyses the works of Lithuanian authors, created from the second half of the 1980s to this day. The goal of the thesis is to define different creative tactics used by Lithuanian authors as well as to reveal different versions of the relationship between the image and the identity of a person in photography. This goal is achieved by... [to full text] / Baigiantis XX amžiui, Lietuvos fotografijos mene išryškėjo svarbūs pokyčiai: dalis tuomet sukurtos fotografijos netęsė ankstesnių Lietuvos fotografijos tradicijų ir apskritai neatitiko įprastų fotografijos meniškumo kriterijų. Fotografai ir kiti menininkai, atsiriboję nuo ekspresyvios vaizdinės formos ir humanistinio turinio, dominavusių lietuviškoje fotografijoje nuo XX a. septintojo dešimtmečio, ėmė kurti neišraiškingos formos, refleksyvų požiūrį į žmogų ir jo aplinką skatinančią fotografiją. Tokia fotografija, peržengus sąlyginai siauras meninės fotografijos ribas, tapo Lietuvos ir tarptautinės šiuolaikinio meno scenos dalimi. Tuo pačiu metu Lietuvos fotografijoje tapo svarbi asmens tapatybės tema. Jaunosios kartos lietuvių fotografai ir menininkai savo darbais provokavo kritišką žvilgsnį tiek į asmens identiteto stereotipus, tiek į pačios fotografijos vaidmenį jų formavime. Šiuolaikinės fotografijos kūrėjai žmogaus identitetą ėmė traktuoti ne kaip nuotraukose užfiksuotą duotybę, bet kaip problemišką reiškinį. Disertacijoje analizuojamos nuo XX a. devinto dešimtmečio antros pusės iki šių dienų sukurtos lietuvių autorių fotografijos. Vadovaujantis nauju teoriniu požiūriu, pagrįstu šiuolaikinės fotografijos sampratos ir performatyvumo teorijos sinteze, siekiama apibūdinti skirtingas lietuvių autorių kūrybinės taktikas ir tuo pačiu atskleisti skirtingus žmogaus atvaizdo ir identiteto santykio fotografijoje variantus. Disertacijoje taip pat apibrėžiama Lietuvos šiuolaikinės... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

This thesis argues that contemporary theorizations of online identities on social-networking sites (SNS) require more robust accounts of the relationship between language, perfomativity, and the tensions of the material/virtual binary. In her analysis of subject formation on multi-user domains, Internet sociologist Jenny Sundén uses poststructuralist philosophy to theorize identity as a process of “textual performativity”. Citing Sundén, many contemporary sociologists theorizing subjectivity on SNS use the terms “writing the self” and “performing the self” and overlook the poststructuralist philosophy that informs them. To explore the lack of philosophical analyses within sociological accounts of subject formation on SNS, and to rethink “writing” and “performing” the self, I draw on the work of J.L. Austin, Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida. I argue that creating a self on SNS is a ”sedimentation” process whereby different discursive identity performances are reiterated over time, and I investigate the implications of archiving and externalizing the self.

Hair is a remarkably complex material-semiotic entity. Caught on the cusp between self/society, meticulously contrived and purposely styled, hair is crucial in the articulation of identity and difference. However, although scholars have focused a great deal of attention on the body as a site of cultural production and identity politics, discussions surrounding hair have been largely ignored and relegated to the realm of the trivial or inconsequential. Addressing this void, this project places hair at the centre of examination in a two-part qualitative analysis. First, hair is reconfigured as sign and examined as a socio-cultural performance achieved through the reiteration of historically contingent practices, and materialized through the body. Particular attention is paid to Black women’s hair/styling practices as a vital site of cultural production, identity negotiation and radical subversion. Following this is a critical discourse analysis of the representation of hair within popular culture, with a specific focus on the way in which Black women’s hair/styling practices are fundamentally implicated in the production of identity and difference. The possibility of resistance through transgressive hair stylizations is also explored. Overall, hair is found to be intimately involved in the (re)constitution of sexed/gendered beings, integral to the process of racialization and a potential locus of resistance. However, this investigation also finds that popular culture displays –even those that purport to offer a critical analysis – fail to destabilize the underlying regimes of domination and oppression that limit and sustain the systems of meaning through which hair is understood. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2010-06-21 23:24:38.111