Making Sense of Things is a piece composed through consideration of the relationship between music, meaning, and materiality. The piece, written for voice, flute, percussion, and live electronics, explores topics of the "sensible" and "nonsensical" in music, moving through a variety of sonic episodes that feature different notational approaches, electronic textures, technical instrumental practice, and theatrical elements in order to explore a variety of expressive possibilities while unified around the central musical ideas of scratching sounds and metal bars. The critical essay examines the relationship between the piece and the theoretical writings which inspired it. Reading through the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I examine the relationship between Making Sense of Things and new materialist discourses, affect theory, and semiotics.

The aim of this thesis is to explore how affect theory can contribute to pneumatology in a way that illuminates how it might inspire action regarding the current climate crisis. To do this, this thesis analyses and discusses how feelings could relate to (human) action to combat climate change. This is done through a discussion of how different pneumatologies that describe the Holy Spirit as acting, and as inspiring action in the world, can be further developed through affect theory. The main material used are Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds (2017) by philosopher of science Maria Puig de la Bellacasa and Grave Attending: A Political Theology for the Unredeemed (2020) by theologian Karen Bray. Several different pneumatological voices, representing the variety of pneumatologies present within the Christian tradition, are used to analyse the main material pneumatologically. The conclusions drawn suggest that the combining of affect theory and pneumatology not only points out the similarity of the traits with which they are commonly associated, but they also suggest that it might be possible – and even necessary – to talk of the Spirit as present also in “negative” feelings such as anger or depression. The Spirit can be understood as present in all affects (even if they appear within capitalist contexts), and also as a rewiring of our relationship to become more attuned to how others (human and non-human alike) actually feel. Care, this thesis suggests, is as a very concrete example of how the Spirit can be seen as materialising through affected actions. The Spirit understood as present through affect could also provide a way of speaking of the Spirit as present in the world, in creation, without making it what gives nature its worth and meaning.

This dissertation explores the political potential of dance and dance performances in public protests whereby dancing bodies are capable of performing politics through actions and movements within the boundaries established by existing power structures. Building upon the insights of political theorist Jacques Rancière, dance theorist André Lepecki, and affect theorist Brian Massumi, this study reveals the micro-political value of dancing in the form of dissensus and as an affective and aesthetic practice in politics. Dissensus, as articulated by Rancière, refers to the collision between the prevailing order and opposing viewpoints that disrupts "the distribution of the sensible" (or common sensual perception) in society. In this sense, this study suggests that the subversive affective intensities of dancing in the form of dissensus not only transgress politics as what is articulated in words, but also, transindividually, spread to other bodies and thus potentially compel them to act and think differently. Within this theoretical framework, this study argues that dissensual dancing not only expresses via the body political messages and alternative ways of living and becoming in motion, but also enables bodies to disrupt the predominant, normative, representational, and choreographic structures of power that control them in certain ways. Following the insights of critical theorists Gilles Deleuze, Brian Massumi, Judith Butler, François Debrix, and Nigel Thrift, this dissertation methodologically problematizes the idea of a singular mode of knowledge and the operation of normative frames that limit our apprehension of different worlds and lives. Thus, it adopts a more-than-representational mode of thinking, coupled with affect theory to work towards a pluralistic methodological perspective that avoids simplistic dichotomies stemming from established linguistic constructs and structures of meaning. In doing so, this study offers an alternative mode of intelligibility about precarious and resistant dancing bodies in the context of dissensual flamenco performances. Within the context of flo6x8's protests in Spain (between 2010 and 2019), this study explores how these dance performances affectively destabilized the ways people perceived and understood flamenco as an art form and challenged the physical embodiments and social norms associated with it. By putting the flamenco body at the center of this exploration, the dissertation argues that flo6x8's dissensual dance performances are not only dialectical or antagonistic, in other words, designed to be positioned against relations of economic oppression. Rather, choreographically and affectively, they also unsettle the very categories of historical, social, cultural, and normative understanding and representation of flamenco as an art and of flamenco bodies. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation explores the political potential of dance and dance performances in public protests whereby dancing bodies are capable of performing politics through actions and movements within the boundaries established by existing power structures. Building upon the insights of political theorist Jacques Rancière, dance theorist André Lepecki, and affect theorist Brian Massumi, it reveals the micropolitical value of and subversive intensities in dance performances that are deployed as forms of political protest. This study further suggests that these subversive intensities extend beyond politics as articulated in words to affect non-linguistic modes of perception for the performers and the viewers. It argues that the protest dance performances not only enable dancing bodies to convey their political messages in motion or through movement, but that they also allow bodies to articulate their agency beyond dominant structures of power and authority that seek to represent and control them in certain ways. Drawing on the thought of critical theorists Gilles Deleuze, Brian Massumi, Judith Butler, François Debrix, and Nigel Thrift, this dissertation methodologically challenges the notion of a single, fixed way of understanding the social and political world. By adopting a pluralist methodological perspective, this study moves beyond oversimplified categories and binaries, which often result from established discourses and representations. In doing so, it offers an alternative mode of understanding about precarious and resistant dancing bodies in the context of politically resistant flamenco performances. Specifically, by looking at the protest performances of the flo6x8 flamenco protest collective in Spain (between 2010-2019), this study examines how this group's protest dance performances disrupt conventional perceptions of flamenco as an art form and challenge the social and normative expectations associated with flamenco and flamenco dancing bodies. By putting the body in flamenco at the center of this exploration, this dissertation suggests that flo6x8's performances not only protest current forms of economic oppression, but also affectively confront historical, cultural, and normative representations of flamenco and bodies, thus offering alternative expressions that can transcend the representational boundaries of the flamenco tradition.

This dissertation theorizes the synthesis of solidarities around queer embodied performativities as a mode of making-resistant the everyday experiences of exploitation under transnational capitalism. These solidarities, I argue, are cultivated around the affective, embodied experiences of what José Esteban Muñoz terms "queer time," which I extend to denote the ephemeral, experiential sensations of being "out of sync" with the structures and norms of capital-space-time power assemblages. I theorize "emulsion" as a heuristic for envisioning synthetic solidarities as making space and time for the importantly distinct experiences of queer spatio-temporalities of those at the various intersections of marginalized/minoritized identities to coagulate and coalesce into something new – at once remaining beautifully fragmented and becoming grotesquely amalgamated beyond distinction. I suggest that such trans-spatial/temporal/material solidarities, formed via antinormative performativities and the curation of "revolting archives," existent and not-yet-formed alike, can and indeed already do resist the totalizing and unplaceable ether of increasingly transnational capitalism across scales. This dissertation takes form and transdisciplinarity to be a part of the praxis/theory of cultivating such synthetic solidarities that confound the structures of capital-space-time. As such, I (gender)fuck with genre, and format throughout, interweaving theoretical and autotheoretical writing with prose, poetics, and altered text to create a visceral sense of disruption of spatiotemporality in not only content, but the affective experience of reading the piece itself. This dissertation thus moves across disciplines via a theoretical constellation of critical scholarship including affect theory, queer theory, (neo)Marxist theory, Black feminist theory, post- and de-colonial theory, disability theory, and transnational feminism. / Doctor of Philosophy / In this dissertation, I attend to two primary concerns: first, the ways in which the power structures of transnational capitalism are fundamentally affective in nature, such that they act unevenly on and are accordingly felt/sensed/experienced unevenly by embodied subjects through processes of exploitation, subjugation, and marginalization necessary to maintain and perpetuate capitalist structures; and secondly, the ways in which emergent movements attempting to resist structures of global capitalism/the effects thereof have failed to do so, in that the most marginalized have been continuously, violently excluded from those same movements which (cl)aim to include them, or be in solidarity with them, all under some unilateral and exclusionary notion of "we/us." This dissertation works with a curated collection affect theory, queer theory, auto-theory (neo)Marxist theory, Black feminist theory, post- and de-colonial theory, disability theory, and transnational feminism to theorize transnational capitalism as always already affective and embodied, an important dimension of global power structures that has been left largely unaddressed in global politics/international studies. I argue that global capitalism itself is comprised of linear capital-space-time power assemblages which act to exploit embodied subjects – disproportionately acting on/experienced by historically marginalized and minoritized bodies – across scale, space, and time in order to maintain itself and ensure its perpetuation into futurity. I take particular interest in the affective/sensed, everyday, varied lived experiences of nonlinearity by subjugated bodies – theorized in this project as an expanded notion of "queer time" as conceived of by José Esteban Muñoz – by the most marginalized under those structures, and further argue using playfulness with form and the heuristic of emulsification that those affective experiences of queer spatiotemporalities can be taken up as that around which meaningful, resistant solidarities under global capitalism can be synthesized.

The love plot is one of the most widely consumed genres of fiction for women. Romance often dictates a woman's identity and her "story" or narrative, leaving little room for other avenues of self-development. However, when romance fails, even in the realm of fiction, women are left with shame. Shame might suggest a catastrophic aftereffect of the failure of women's initial investment of the love plot; however, I argue that shame functions in place of the love plot and helps to provide a critique of the oppressive and patriarchal nature of conventional romance. Using affect theory, I look at both Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea as they rewrite the love plot typified by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), and Peau d'âne (1970), though quite popular with the public at their time of release and continuing to leave an aesthetic stamp on contemporary cinema, have been received by some critics and viewers in general as pure contrivance with little edification. This thesis puts forward, however, that such interpretations of these Demy musicals as primarily saccharine, superficial, and light miss the elemental melancholy belied by the charming varnish. Here, the three are unified as a triptych that thematizes and aestheticizes lack and desire in ways that can speak directly to the queer viewer. This thesis first situates the films among criticism from the 1960s to the present, opening a discourse on the potential for diverse political and aesthetic readings of Demy's work that continues to the present queer reading. Through a method of narratological close reading, I unify the three films as a triptych, each a variation on themes of isolation, absence, and amorous lack. Jean-Pierre Berthomé's Jacques Demy et les raciness du rêve (1982) is a rich resource in presenting these three seemingly distinct films as a totality. Once justified for study as a triptych, my thesis presents a queer reading of the films' ostensibly heterosexual narrative structures. With the buttressing of the queer theory of Harold Beaver, Andrew Ross, and Michael Koresky, among others, this chapter demonstrates how the narratives of longing Demy crafts can speak to the queer viewer and transcend a heterosexual framework. Finally, my thesis moves beyond narrative to another continuity, the aesthetic of camp present throughout the triptych. Through an exploration of the interconnectivity of camp, gender performance, and seduction, drawing on scholars Susan Sontag, Judith Butler, and Jean Baudrillard, respectively, the aesthetic of Demy's triptych is situated in a queer sensibility. Catherine Deneuve, Demy's "princesse idéale," is read as the reification of this sensibility in her potent performance of gender at the confluence of masculine and feminine qualities, as well as the ideal tabula rasa onto which the queer viewer's desire and longing can be projected. Ultimately, the triptych's reconciliation of the visually confectionary and the narratively somber is celebrated, as it points to a victory over tragedy through affective agency. / Master of Arts / Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), and Peau d'âne (1970), French musicals from a masterful director of the New Wave movement in cinema, have been generally received positively by the public, and especially by gay viewers. Yet, these Demy films have been met with a range of skepticism to derision by some critics and even by a number of Demy's contemporaries. The three films' narratives concern a nascent romance thwarted by the Algerian War and economic demands, potential amorous encounters prevented by missed connections and arbitrary social barriers, and a flight from incestuous demands and its consequences of isolation and ridicule, respectively. Though these narratives are fundamentally melancholic, they are aestheticized through kaleidoscopic colors, virtuosic dancing, and the beautiful music scores of Michel Legrand. This thesis reexamines these films as a triptych that, considered together, thematizes lack and desire in a way that can speak directly to the queer viewer. Areas of overlap between the filmic narratives and the queer experience in the West are excavated and explored to demonstrate how the films can carry intimate signification to sexual minorities, as well as other marginalized identities. Finally, the particular and continuous aesthetic of the three films is studied as a queer sensibility embodied by the star of all three, Catherine Deneuve. The ability of this triptych to transcend a singular heterosexual interpretation and to heighten its effects on the viewer through a tension of form and content is celebrated.

Den här essän kommer att behandla ett vanligt förekommande ämne inom förskolan, introduktioner av nya barn och föräldrar. Genom introduktionen måste pedagoger förhålla sig till den nya familjen för att försöka få till anknytning och trygghet. Utgångspunkten ligger i två egen upplevda dilemman där pedagogerna beskriver två olika introduktioner. Den ena introduktionen pågår en längre period. Barnet vill inte släppa sin förälder och är ledsen så fort föräldern försöker lämna honom. Den andra introduktionen går fort, barn och förälder visar glädje. Pedagogerna på den förskolan känner trots det en oro då barnet upplevs gränslöst när hon springer mellan aktiviteter, andra barn och deras föräldrar. Syftet med den här essän är att undersöka hur olika anknytningsmönster och förutsättningar kan påverka introduktionen av nya familjer i förskolan. Den kommer även att belysa pedagogens eller pedagogernas erfarenhet, samt hur viktigt det är med ett gott samarbete. Förskolans miljö och organisation kommer också att undersökas och vilken roll den spelar för barnets introduktion och även för pedagogernas möjlighet att utföra en god introduktion. Detta kommer att göras genom tre frågeställningar, vilka är: Hur kan vi som pedagoger möta Pelle och Almas olika behov? Vilka är förutsättningarna för en god introduktion? Vilka psykologiska fenomen är relevanta för introduktionen? Genom att använda olika begrepp såsom affektteori, affektintoning, trygg bas, säker hamn och anknytning kan den här essän närma sig dessa frågeställningar. Essäns huvudsakliga uppgift är att ge pedagoger, oavsett erfarenhet, olika perspektiv på introduktionen och hur dessa kan tillämpas på nya familjer. I essän beskrivs anknytningsteorins framväxt och graderingar av olika anknytningar. Trygg bas och säker hamn är olika sätt att se hur en anknytning fungerar mellan barnet och föräldern, då det är där den första anknytningen börjar. Under arbetets gång har fokus på barn och föräldrar blivit mer nyanserat och pedagogernas roll undersökts allt mer kritiskt. Genom litteraturstudier och samtal i handledningsgruppen på skolan och med kollegor har vi fått en större förståelse för alla parter som deltar under introduktion till förskolan. En viktig slutsats vi kom fram till är att anknytning, oavsett till vem, inte kan skyndas fram. Den måste få växa fram genom tillit och trygghet. / This essay will treat a common subject within the preschool environment, the introductions of new children and parents. Throughout the introduction, teachers must relate to the new family to try and achieve a connection/attachment and provide security. The starting point is two self-perceived dilemmas where the teachers describe two different introductions. One introduction goes on for a longer period. The child does not want to let go of its parent and is sad as soon as the parent tries to leave it. The second introduction goes fast, children and parents are expressing happiness. The teachers at the preschool nevertheless are concernedwhen the child is perceived boundless as it runs between activities, other children and their parents. The purpose of this essay is to investigate how different connection patterns and prerequisites can affect the introduction of new families to the preschool environment. It will also examine the experience of the teacher or teachers, and the importance of good cooperation between the teachers. The preschool's environment and organisation will also be investigated and the role it plays in the introduction of the child and also for allowing the teachers to carry out a good introduction. This will be done through three questions, which are: How can we, as teachers, meet Pelle and Alma's different needs? What are the prerequisites and conditions needed for a good introduction? What psychological phenomena are relevant to the introduction? By using different concepts such as affect theory, mirroring, safe base, safe heaven and connection/attachment, this essay can approach these issues. Essen's main task is to provide teachers, regardless of experience, with different perspectives on the introduction and how these can be applied to new families. The essay describes the progression of the connection/attachment theory with different levels of connection. Safe base and safe heaven are different ways to see how a connection/attachment works between the child and the parent, as that is where the first connection/attachment is established. During the work, the focus on the children and parents has become more nuanced and the role of teachers is increasingly critical. Through literature studies and discussions in the tutoring group at school and with colleagues, we have gained a greater understanding of all parties involved in the introduction to preschool. An important conclusion we found is that connection/attachment, regardless of who cannot be accelerated. It must grow through trust and confidence.

Vorliegende Dissertation greift in zeitgenössische Debatten queerer und feministischer Politiken durch die Analyse von Gegenwartsliteratur ein. Hatte die zweiten Frauenbewegung vertreten, dass im Zentrum politischer Veränderungen stets persönliche Veränderungen stehen, nutzt die Arbeit mit diesem Ausgangspunkt ein scheinbar anachronistisches Paradigma, um solche Narrative zu kritisieren, die Queerness sowie queere Politik und Theorie im Präsens, lesbischen Feminismus dagegen in der Vergangenheit positionieren wollen. These ist dagegen, dass die utopischen Impulse des lesbischen Feminismus der zweiten Frauenbewegung sich mit aktueller queerer Politik überschneiden und dass beide auf zu differenzierende Art Praktiken und Konzepte von Intimität in den Vordergrund stellen, die auf soziale Transformationen in größerem Maßstab verweisen. Die Erkundung der komplexen Weisen, in denen Politik durch Intimität praktiziert wird, erfolgt hier am Beispiel der Figur der Lesbe in der zeitgenössischen Anglo-Amerikanischen Literatur, speziell in Auseinandersetzung mit der Literatur der kanadischen Schriftstellerin Ann-Marie MacDonald. Mit Figur oder Trope der Lesbe im Zentrum der Analyse ist ein spezifischer historischer und politischer Kontext signalisiert. Die Lesbe sowie lesbian existence als eine feministische Praxis bieten einen produktiven Ausgangspunkt, weil beide im Lauf der Zeit oft und teils simultan als das Abjekt oder das idealisierte Objekt von sexueller und Genderpolitik konstruiert worden sind. Darüber hinaus markiert lesbischer Feminismus einen bestimmten zeitlichen Ort sowie eine politische Funktion und besetzt einen bestimmten Platz im feministischen und queeren Imaginären. Aufgabe der Dissertation ist es, die Potentiale herauszuarbeiten, die heute noch immer von der Figur der Lesbe und vom lesbischem Feminismus ausgehen, ohne dabei deren teils unbequeme Beziehung zum beachtlichen Einfluss der Queer Theory aus den Augen zu verlieren. / This dissertation intervenes in contemporary debates in queer and feminist politics through an analysis of literary fiction. Taking as its point of departure the second-wave feminist claim that personal and intimate transformation are at the heart of political transformation, it uses a seemingly anachronistic paradigm to critique linear narratives that position queerness and queer politics and theory in the present and lesbian feminism in the past. It argues that the utopian impulses of second-wave lesbian feminism overlap with those of contemporary queer politics, and claims that both foreground practices and conceptions of intimacy that prefigure broader social change. Exploring the ways in which politics are enacted via intimacy, this dissertation takes as its object of study the figure of the lesbian in contemporary Anglo-American literature, specifically engaging with the fiction of Canadian writer Ann-Marie MacDonald. Situating the figure of the lesbian at the centre of this analysis signals a specific historical, political, and social context. The lesbian, as a figure or trope, or lesbian existence, as a way of doing feminism, offers a productive point of departure for such considerations because both have, over time, been variously and often simultaneously constructed as either the abject or idealized object of sexual and gender politics. Lesbian feminism signals a specific temporal location and political function and holds a particular space in the feminist and queer imaginary. While exploring both the influence of queer theory and politics in the political and theoretical structures of sexuality, and the unprecedented mainstreaming both of (certain versions of) non-heterosexuality and (certain versions of) feminism, this dissertation’s project is to consider the possibilities still generated by the figure of the lesbian and lesbian feminism, while considering its sometimes-uncomfortable relationship to the considerable influence of queer theory.

Words are fickle, easily misunderstood, and often put us at a loss... but we all have so much we feel we need to express. This begs the question: Is there any safe way of communication? Can anything ever really be communicated how you mean it? Will you ever see the reflection of what you feel, think, and dream outside of yourself? In response to this existential dilemma, I imagine an alternative language of images, sounds, color, feelings, and non-identification. My thesis is a meditation on the issues with standard language and the idea of alternative language. In my argument I understand language as a medium, and communication as an art for which we choose the medium that best conveys what we need to express. Through an experimental audiovisual collage film, I grapple with the phenomenon of the inexpressible and play with alternative ways that we can communicate more effectively and truthfully– with an emphasis on image-language.

This dissertation examines dog and idiot tropes—and, specifically, the conflation thereof—in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929), John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1937), and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Or The Evening Redness in the West (1985). In addition to illustrating the key roles the idiot/dog figure plays in canonical works of twentieth-century U.S. fiction, it argues that this conflation is too often presumed to signify denigration (i.e. a social, political, and ethical exclusion) and degeneration (i.e. a biological threat). Around the turn of the century, the idiot/dog emerges as an aesthetic figure in conjunction with contemporaneous practices of dog breeding and eugenics, as well as co-extensive discourses of national progress and racial purity. In this context, literary idiot/dogs can be read as enciphering a violent historical subtext. Yet, rather than simply condemn this figure as a dehumanizing stereotype, this dissertation challenges such a reductive approach on the grounds that it risks reproducing a hermeneutic that is both ableist and speciesist. A new approach is proposed: reading for the tropological confusion of idiocy and caninity and the destabilizing affective and epistemological effects this poses for liberal subjectivity. Reading for tropological confusion in the fictions of Faulkner, Steinbeck, and McCarthy not only develops new interpretations of three canonical works; it unlocks the idiot/dog figure as a site of textual excess. In so doing, this dissertation makes original contributions to twentieth-century U.S. fiction scholarship, Disability Studies, Animal Studies, and biopolitical theory. The idiot/dog figure’s in/determination—a paradoxical embodiment of humanized canine animality and animalized human mental disability—catalyzes hermeneutic and affective uncertainties. Ultimately, both impinge upon questions of readers’ own abilities to: (i) fully parse the fictions idiot/dogs appear in, and (ii) self-reflexively understand themselves as autonomous, human(e) subjects. Each chapter carefully elaborates this figure’s centrality to the textual operations of, respectively, The Sound and the Fury, Of Mice and Men, and Blood Meridian in terms of their narrative and meta-narrative dimensions; this reveals under-examined continuities. By arguing for idiot/dogs’ disruptive potentials (i.e. affective, epistemological, and ethical), this dissertation bridges and extends previous Disability Studies and Animal Studies interventions that link literary representations to social and material contexts. Also, it further intervenes in these subfields by elaborating the biopolitical reasons for and ramifications of the idiot/dog figure’s emergence in twentieth-century Anglo-American fiction. Each chapter outlines how and why idiot/dog figures constitute a means for harmonizing readers’ experiences, thoughts, desires, and feelings with the normative U.S. social and symbolic order—a national order that hinges on recognitions and denials of human subjectivity, as well as on the production of subjectivity in which fiction is implicated. Ultimately, by closely analyzing literary idiot/dog figures, this dissertation contributes a biopolitical critique of the ontological production and governability of readerly subjects themselves. / Graduate / 2021-09-05