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.

Wet : a Project is a ficto-critical essay, a writer's diary, concerned with language, trauma, the body and image. A complement to Wet, it is greatly informed by Probyn's model of 'belonging' as a writing subject, and psychoanalytic theorisation such as Gibb's analysis of psychosomatic speech, Pines' and Anzieu's conceptualisations of the 'skin ego', Kristeva's account of sensation and its relation to language and Lacan's development of the ego in the mirror stage. In addition, it engages Herman's analysis of trauma and Scarry's account of pain, and their relationships to language, the body and subjectivity. Interspersed with autobiographical accounts, Wet : a Project explores the milieus, spaces and specific geographical sites in which trauma, language, forms of identity, desire, belonging and becoming, emerge or assert their visibility. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

No description available.