Galen Strawson argues that we have a sense of mental selves, which are entities that have mental features but do not have bodily features. In particular, he argues that there is a form of self-consciousness that involves a conception of the mental self. His mental self view is opposed to the embodied self view, the view that the self must be conceived of as an entity that has both mental and bodily features. In this paper, I will argue against Strawson’s mental self view and for the embodied self view. I will draw on P. F. Strawson’s theory of persons and Gareth Evans’ Generality Constraint to argue that Galen Strawson fails to provide a satisfactory account of the mental self that can counter the embodied self view.

Embedded in debates concerning Britishness and citizenship, this thesis considers the influence of the dualistic tradition on citizenship theory and highlights the exclusionary nature of citizenship as founded in this paradigm. Working within this dualistic paradigm means that the lives and practices of being a citizen are not captured, creating an exclusionary cycle whereby the concept excludes the lives of many citizens, and many individuals are excluded from being a citizen as defined by the concept. This thesis used participatory, visual and online methods to explore belonging and exclusion with young people around England. Informed strongly by the field research, this thesis analyses citizenship as defined through dualistic and embodied paradigms and considers the potential of an embodied concept of citizenship for engaging young people.

Developing behaviours for interaction with objects close to the body is a primary goal for any organism to survive in the world. Being able to develop such behaviours will be an essential feature in autonomous humanoid robots in order to improve their integration into human environments. Adaptable spatial abilities will make robots safer and improve their social skills, human-robot and robot-robot collaboration abilities. This work investigated how a humanoid robot can explore and create action-based representations of its peripersonal space, the region immediately surrounding the body where reaching is possible without location displacement. It presents three empirical studies based on peripersonal space findings from psychology, neuroscience and robotics. The experiments used a visual perception system based on active-vision and biologically inspired neural networks. The first study investigated the contribution of binocular vision in a reaching task. Results indicated the signal from vergence is a useful embodied depth estimation cue in the peripersonal space in humanoid robots. The second study explored the influence of morphology and postural experience on confidence levels in reaching assessment. Results showed that a decrease of confidence when assessing targets located farther from the body, possibly in accordance to errors in depth estimation from vergence for longer distances. Additionally, it was found that a proprioceptive arm-length signal extends the robot’s peripersonal space. The last experiment modelled development of the reaching skill by implementing motor synergies that progressively unlock degrees of freedom in the arm. The model was advantageous when compared to one that included no developmental stages. The contribution to knowledge of this work is extending the research on biologically-inspired methods for building robots, presenting new ways to further investigate the robotic properties involved in the dynamical adaptation to body and sensing characteristics, vision-based action, morphology and confidence levels in reaching assessment.

Through practice-led research this thesis will explore the phenomenology of interactions between the digital 'other', and the lived experience of the subject through real-time video performance practice. It challenges the assumption that the digital video image is merely or simply other to the subject and aims to re-position the 'other' as an integral part of self where we perform the other. It does this by drawing on Jacques Lacan's Mirror Stage and claims that through digital performance we can suspend divisions between the self and the digital other. By being immersed within the real-time video image the thesis argues we re-enter the Mirror Stage and become captivated within the digital counterpart. Through a disruption in the proprioception of the body there is a crossover of the actual self and digital other which are suspended in each other. Through the use of Head Mounted Display Systems in the work In[bodi]lmental it is claimed that the actual body can In[body] the other subject as part of self. The thesis argues that the digital other is a component of self mediated through new digital technologies to be understood as an augmented self. Therefore it is through an In[bodied] Mirror Stage we momentarily access the loss of the Lacanian real encountered through the uncanny experience. This investigation has been conducted in the form of four digital performance projects defined as Inter-Reactive Explorations I-REs (i-iv).The I-REs were subjected to critical analysis and reflection using a variety of disciplines including: psychoanalysis, philosophy, the study of perception, phenomenology, and ethnography. The methodological framework for this research has been coined 'auto-ethnophenomenology'; a mixed-method approach utilizing auto-ethnography and the phenomenological lived experiences of informants. This model has enabled both the 'I' of the researcher and the other to be equally represented from both first person and third person perspectives. The symbiotic relationship between the theory and the practice is exemplified through the phenomenology of interactions between the digital 'other', and the lived experience of the subjects supported by the writings of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Drew Leder and Rane Willerslev.

In this project I outline the current discourse within feminist epistemology and elucidated its limitations of feminist epistemology particularly its lack of formal attention to the modes of theorization and, in complementarity, the generative potential of an analysis foregrounding materiality. The first chapter explores the theories that constitute the field of study and the relationships between both feminist empiricism and standpoint theory illuminate the conceptual concerns of feminist epistemology. Building from this, I present an analysis that examines the rhetorical and disciplinary structures that determine the kinds of arguments and methodologies that are possible within these frameworks. This argument simultaneously presents an analysis of theoretical formation as well as a critique of the lack of attention given to the rhetorical and formal scaffolds which render additional epistemic limitations perceivable. Lastly, I demonstrate a mode of knowledge production that centers materiality and body which exerts pressure on the very frameworks utilized in the analysis of materiality and embodiment. If materiality has the capacity to articulate relationships between knower and knowledges formed by the knower and formal elements of research has the capacity to render the limits of knowledges created from the research, then feminist epistemology should account for the formal and the material in its attempts to explicate the possibilities and limitations of epistemology.

This thesis stems from a large, international research project funded in the UK by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (RES-000-22-2003) and led by Dr. Emma Rich and Professor John Evans at Loughborough University between 2007 and 2009. The study investigated how new health imperatives and associated curriculum initiatives were operationalized within and across eight schools located in a county in the Midlands region of England. The schools were chosen to reflect a variety of socio-cultural settings in the UK, and specifically those that were typical of the Midlands county in which the study took place. The research findings formed part of a three-way international collaboration with parallel studies conducted in Australia (led by Professor Jan Wright) and New Zealand (led by Associate Professor Lisette Burrows) and revealed, among other significant findings, that whilst some young people are deeply troubled by obesity discourse, others are emboldened by it. In pursuit of this key finding, this PhD study departs from the aforementioned project through detailed case study exploration of the emplacement , enactment and embodiment of health policy in three of the eight UK schools from the ESRC-funded study, focusing specifically on the class and cultural mediations of health imperatives in each setting and the various ways these can affect a young person s developing sense of self (particularly the relationships they develop with their own weight/size). Young people are considered to be body subjects (Blackman, 2012) whose embodiments are assembled, performed and enacted in situ. I therefore speak of troubled , insouciant and emboldened bodies as categories which reflect the fundamentally agentic, contingent, relational and fluid nature of young people s embodiment in time, place and space. Hence, whilst highlighting the deleterious and indeed ubiquitous effects of some health education programmes on some young people s relationships with their weight/size, key findings presented in this thesis offer nuance and complexity to the notion of the neoliberal body (Heywood, 2007; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010; Rose, 1999) through exploration of the ways in which contemporary health imperatives also have potential to privilege and empower some young people. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for policy makers, educators and researchers whose work concerns young people s health and well-being.

IMAGINATION AND DEFORMATION: MONSTROUS MATERNAL PERVERSIONS OF NATURAL REPRODUCTION IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND examines the creation in early modern English reproductive, teratological, wonder, and fictional literature of the "monstrous mother"--a female reproductive figure capable of generating both fetal and non-fetal forms of offspring through the power of her imagination. While earlier critics have identified monstrous mothers in early modern English literature--figures who produce grotesque and/or excessive offspring, deny or obstruct nurture, commit infanticide, and sometimes exhibit their own physical deformities--such mothers require offspring to expose their monstrosity. That is, deformed, numerous, starving, sickly, or slain bodies testify to their mothers' monstrous desires, reproductive natures, and parenting practices. In contrast, I argue that monstrous maternity develops independently of the birth of offspring, and specifically, manifests during conception and pregnancy, before women deliver issue that exposes their monstrous maternal inclinations. While monstrous maternal power primarily develops from women's desires, it also remains embodied within conceiving and pregnant women, and thus permits women to generate not only deformed offspring and power, but also new, monstrous forms of generation.While monstrous mothers exercise powerful imaginative force that permits them to produce numerous types of "monstrous births," they also face antagonistic attempts to suppress their monstrous tendencies. Yet the authors of regulatory imagination texts, particularly sixteenth- and seventeenth-century obstetrical manuals, are repeatedly confounded by the monstrous mother's ability to innovate her imaginative influence when confronted with attempts to limit it. Thus, antagonism actually augments monstrous maternal power. Early modern fictional literature depicts the growth and innovation of monstrous maternity even as practitioners, husbands, and communities attempt to suppress it. Fictional works therefore re-theorize regulatory imagination theory, as they persistently underscore the uncontrollable nature of monstrous mothers and monstrous maternal reproduction.

This study is an investigation of embodiment. It is informed by the experiences and understandings of health, healing, violence and oppression among 15 young South Asian women living in Toronto, Canada. Their articulation of the importance of, and difficulties associated with, health and healing in contexts of social inequity contribute to understandings of embodiment as co-constituted by sentient and social experience. In my reading of their contributions, embodied learning – that is, an ongoing attunement to sentient-social embodiment – is a counter hegemonic healing strategy that they use. Their experiences and insights support the increasingly accepted claim that social inequity is a primary determinant of health that disproportionately disadvantages subordinated people. Furthermore, participants affirm that recovery and resistance to violence and oppression and its consequences must address sentient-social components of embodiment simultaneously. In this study, Yoga teachings provide a framework and practice to investigate embodiment and embodied learning. Following 12 Yoga workshops addressing health, healing, violence and oppression, I conducted individual interviews with 15 workshop participants, 3 Yoga teachers and 2 counsellor / social workers. Participants discuss Yoga as a resource for addressing mental, physical, emotional and spiritual consequences of violence and oppression. They resist New Age interpretations of Yoga in terms of individualism and cultural appropriation; they also challenge both New Age and Western biomedicine for a lack of attention to the consequences of social inequity for health and healing. This study considers embodied learning as an important healing resource and form of resistance to violence and oppression. Scholarship addressing embodiment in sociology, health research, anti-racism, feminism, anti-colonialism, decolonization and Indigenous knowledges are drawn upon to contextualize the interviews. This study offers insights relevant to health promotion and adult education discourse and policy through a careful consideration of the embodied strategies used by the participants in their nuanced negotiations of social inequity and pursuits of health and healing.

In her article “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema” (1975) Laura Mulvey explains how film portrays the female characters as passive sexualised objects, on display for the male (erotic) gaze. Although, Mulvey did make amendments to the original article after it was criticised, her original article is still influential and referenced in academic writing on film. This dissertation investigates how the three selected mainstream American films, namely, Alice in Wonderland, Monster and Transamerica, have female protagonists who deviate from Mulvey’s initial standpoint and enact a new dynamic, whereby the female characters possess active bodies. In order to explain this new dynamic, the dissertation provides an overview of relevant theory in order to establish the necessary analytical tools to investigate the representation of the female body. These tools are taken from feminist notions of the body, most importantly Mulvey’s notions, in order to establish what constitutes an active female body that subverts the male gaze. This subversion is most notable when examining the iconography of the active female body. The dissertation also draws from the overview the importance of place and space, the embodiment of the characters’ inner workings in specific locations, and their relationship with the locations in which they are depicted. Since all three films include a physical journey on which the respective protagonists embark the examination of borders and border crossings is included. The dissertation shows that journeys bring with them the opportunity for the body to be active, as each female protagonist is on a journey to self-discovery. The changing settings in which the protagonists find themselves are an embodiment of their inner workings. Topographical borders mark the entering of new locations. However, concomitant symbolic and epistemological borders are also crossed. The female protagonists need to make choices concerning their lives and as a consequence alter the representations to reflect bodies that subvert the male gaze. These female bodies are active. However, they are active in different ways. Alice, from Alice in Wonderland, delves into her psyche to emerge a changed and independent Victorian woman. Bree, from Transamerica, heals the relationships with her family and is able to have her gender reconstructive surgery to become a physical woman. These two female protagonists have positive representations of the active female body. The protagonist from Monster, Aileen, is represented in a constant state of abjection and her active body is portrayed in a negative light. Whether represented in a positive or egative light, these chosen films all portray an active female body that does subvert the male gaze, and hence represent a new dynamic different from the one Mulvey described. / MA (Language Practice), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

The thesis explores human embodiment in 3D Virtual environments as a means of enhancing interaction. I aim to provide a better understanding of embodied interaction in digital environments in general. 3D interactive virtual environments challenge users to question aspects of their embodiment by providing new modes for interacting with space. Designers are facing new challenges that require novel means of interacting with virtual environments that do not simply mirror the way we interact within physical environments. Much of the research in the field aims to show how such environments can be made more familiar and "realistic" to users. This thesis attempts to probe the unfamiliar aspects of the medium. In this thesis I explore the concept, image and object of intimate space. How can an understanding of intimate space inform embodied interaction with virtual environments? I also investigate the role of familiarity by analysing and testing it in two contrasting interactive virtual environments. My contribution is to provide an account of familiarity as the driver behind embodied interaction in virtual environments based on human experience (from a phenomenological standpoint). In order to enhance the process of design for human embodied interaction in 3D virtual environments or in physical environments, I will identify tangible and intangible elements that affect human embodiment in 3D virtual environments and space, such as ethics and scale. Both examples are explored in interactive 3D virtual environments corresponding to real physical environments by subjects who are the daily users of the real physical environments. The thesis presents scale as a tangible element and ethics as an intangible element of human embodied interaction in space in order to highlight the different aspects that affect human engagement with space, and therefore human perception of their space and their embodiment. The Subjects’ accounts contribute toward informing the design of interactive 3D virtual environments within the context of embodied interaction.