This thesis is situated at the intersection of feminist political theory, identity politics and moral philosophy. Its broader aim is to show the positive consequences of returning the self and its inner activity to the ethical domain for feminist identity politics. To this end, it brings feminist identity politics into dialogue with contemporary developments in virtue ethics, in particular Christine Swanton’s pluralistic virtue ethics. As its starting point, it takes issue with the tendency to reduce the complexity of identity to issues of category. The first part of the thesis problematises this tendency and argues for a reconsideration of the question of identity politics by shifting the focus away from identity per se and towards a more complex picture of the self that is reflective of the constitutive relation between the self and identifications, commitments and values. The work of the post-modern feminists Wendy Brown and Judith Butlers are read as proposing just such a shift away from the identitarian engagement of identity politics of ‘who am I?’ towards a more ethically imbued engagement that centres a complex self with inner depths. Part Two of the thesis extends this reconceptualisation of the problematic of identity politics and elaborates on what it could mean to undertake such a shift and how such a project could be conceived. Drawing on both Michael Sandel’s and Michel Foucault’s formulations of the self, identity and its relation to the good, the thesis develops the argument that the problematic of identity politics, articulated in ethical language, enables the formulation of an argument for giving an account of the good life and that this entails developing a subject imbued with a full inner life. Part Three of the thesis argues that contemporary work in virtue ethics offers the best way to take this project forward, suggesting that it represents a positive development in conceptions of the self and that a complex picture of the person emerges that provides the basis for a richer approach to the ethical concerns raised in identity politics. The thesis concludes by illustrating the potential value of taking those feminist insights into the constructed nature of identity into dialogue with a pluralistic virtue ethical account of the self and suggests that this approach provides new opportunities for understanding and discussing the collective dimension of identity politics in situations of diversity and inequality.

As much of the scholarly literature shows, gender has served as a central organizing force for knowing and theorizing about sexuality. The governmentality of sexuality in Western societies over the last 200 years has led to sex being discursively implicated with reproduction, and this has had a profound effect on the ways sexuality has been theorized and understood in terms of gendered desire. The aim of this dissertation is to theorize an alternative approach to sexuality that decenters gender and gives attention to the materiality of sex and the body. Using existentialism and phenomenology, this dissertation offers a particular challenge to heteronormative conceptions of “sexual orientation” and “sexual identity” for their ostensibly timeless and enduring quality, or being. The research presented herein theorizes sexuality through an ontology of becoming that takes into account the diverse, multi-faceted nature of sexuality as a series of temporal experiences, attractions, desires, sensations, practices, and identities – that is, as a phenomenon. A genealogical methodology is used to trace the discursive history of sexuality and demonstrate how modernist discourses of sexuality have influenced how sexuality is known and experienced. This research emphasizes the discursive constraints on knowledge about sexuality. In considering an alternative framework, the principles of existentialism and phenomenology are critically examined through the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Attention is then turned toward a non-classical paradigm of science to elaborate on an ontology of becoming and its significance for understanding the development of sex and sexuality. In conjunction, contemporary biological research is introduced to expand upon de Beauvoir’s (1996) analysis of “the data of biology” on sexual difference and to help situate the sexed body as dynamic and developmental. An existential phenomenological approach theorizes sexuality as a self-project and the dialectical becoming between the sexed body and the sexual self. Because both the body and the self are contingent becomings that are open to instability and change, so too is sexuality. This alternative approach offers particular attention to the body in sexuality and considers the materialities of sexual desire. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2013-02-04 00:33:41.993

Abstract If Time Permits: The Politics and Aesthetics of the Popular Creative Writing Manual Therese O’Neill Creative writing manuals, often called craft books within the literary establishment, represent a genre with a significant place in print culture. These books not only offer advice on how to construct interesting, emotional, and experience-mimicking narrative prose but also suggest that creative writing is a practice available broadly to those who give themselves the permission to write. However, despite early creative writing manuals’ democratic promise to level the playing fields of the intellectual and artistic economy by facilitating individuality in the writerly voice, popular creative writing manuals have failed to substantively engage the politics implicit in craft and have discouraged individuality in the case of writers of progressive political orientation. This dissertation looks at the ideological underpinnings of these guidebooks and the development of the genre in the United States, which is situated in an extended tradition that has wed iconoclasm and a sometimes exacting paradigm of self-making.

Suniti Namjoshis short work St. Suniti and the Dragon, found in the authors fabulist collection of the same name, is a formally amorphous text that alternates among allusion and alteration of Western canonical myth. The story, in which the journey of the aspiring hero St. Suniti is detailed, alludes primarily to Beowulf and the legend of St. George and the Dragon in a manner similar to, but expansive upon, the feminist revisionist project of the last few decades. While Namjoshi navigates feminist politics, she also examines the postmodern impulse to consider identity as subjective experience. In so doing, she deconstructs notions of canonical character archetypes while suggesting that identity politics must involve a multiplicity of archetypes that is, the self is seldom archetypal in the singular, but rather an amorphous and discontinuous series of mythic archetypes. Thus, the form of Namjoshis text generically ambiguous and varied mimics the authors suggestion for the composition of identity. The result is a story that transgresses prescribed social conventions and archetypes while simultaneously invoking their mythic sources as means of argumentation.

Suniti Namjoshis short work St. Suniti and the Dragon, found in the authors fabulist collection of the same name, is a formally amorphous text that alternates among allusion and alteration of Western canonical myth. The story, in which the journey of the aspiring hero St. Suniti is detailed, alludes primarily to Beowulf and the legend of St. George and the Dragon in a manner similar to, but expansive upon, the feminist revisionist project of the last few decades. While Namjoshi navigates feminist politics, she also examines the postmodern impulse to consider identity as subjective experience. In so doing, she deconstructs notions of canonical character archetypes while suggesting that identity politics must involve a multiplicity of archetypes that is, the self is seldom archetypal in the singular, but rather an amorphous and discontinuous series of mythic archetypes. Thus, the form of Namjoshis text generically ambiguous and varied mimics the authors suggestion for the composition of identity. The result is a story that transgresses prescribed social conventions and archetypes while simultaneously invoking their mythic sources as means of argumentation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-251).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 378-418).

In the 1930s and 1940s, American atomic physicists developed an identity akin to those ethnic identities developed by Chicanos and African Americans in the 1960s. Tremendous successes in high-energy physics put these American physicists at the pinnacle of science worldwide. Luis W. Alvarez was one of the central figures in this rise, was central to the development of “Big Science,” and won the Nobel Prize in 1968. However, historians have largely ignored him. Through Alvarez we see that American atomic physicists before the 1930s lacked an identity. Alvarez witnessed the growth of his field and was an early advocate for an identity for American atomic physicists. Using identity politics as a theme, we find five stories centered on Alvarez that illustrate this emerging self-image. Alvarez’s autobiography demonstrates his interest in preserving the history of physics and establishing his place in it. A textbook draft that Alvarez abandoned in 1952 further illustrates his early interest in the history of physics then absent in physics textbooks and an early interest in mythology and heroes. Alvarez’s work outside of physics helps define the boundaries of this newly self-identifying group as he conquered fields like forensics and pyramidology, as well as famously proposing the theory that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs. A collection of letters from cranks helps us demarcate science from non-science and thus define the boundaries of science. Finally, Alvarez’s identity as a physicist is contrasted with another category of identity, his ethnic identity. Alvarez was a white man with a Hispanic name, which provides us with the rare case of a white man discussing his whiteness with would-be biographers who wanted to frame him as a “Chicano physicist.” Altogether, Alvarez would, much more than any physicist in his generation, promoted and exemplified an identity as an American atomic physicist while rejecting other identities. / text

This thesis investigates the dual concepts of place as home and place within the canon for diasporic communities, immigrants, and minorities within Canada. This thesis argues that a new understanding of “home” is necessary as the immigrant, forced within an in-between place of “there” (the birth-country) and “here” (the host-country), does not experience “home” as a singular, rooted location. “Home” for the immigrant is a feeling of belonging that spans multiple places simultaneously. This investigation of politics through poetics is grounded in the belief that national literature reflects national identity. As the immigrant presence within Canada has heretofore been perceived as secondary to the national identity, and diasporic and immigrant literature as other-to the Canadian canon, this thesis purposes to re-imagine that national identity in a way that includes minority literature. I focus on the work of two widely known Caribbean Canadian poets: Cyril Dabydeen and Lorna Goodison.

As a capital city, Ottawa is a national and international icon. On one hand, its inhabitants are players in a larger spectacle of national identity. On the other hand, they still have the requirements of an everyday life, which is the foundation of civic identity. This thesis explores this paradox in Ottawa through the design of a public building. It proposes to site the new Capital Library in Ottawa in the midst of an underused space in the Parliamentary Precinct, where the civic vitality of the downtown core meets the institutional zone. The siting has both clear political and urban agendas, and the program has a clear cultural agenda. The execution of the building uses an architectural language to promote participation, provide waterfront access, reveal a vista, cap an important axis and strengthen the quality of life in our capital city.