Zugl.: Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 2002

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1987. / Includes glossary. Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-210).

Thesis (M.A.)--Liberty University, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references.

Univ., Diss.--Tübingen, 2002.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, August 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Chicago, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 384-397). Also available on the Internet.

Aware, as generally conceived in Japanese aesthetics, refers to the felt content within a particular work of art that drives the aesthetic value of that work. In this thesis presents a theory of art that places aware as central to the aesthetic experience in the Japanese as derived from Shinto and Buddhist ontology, as well as the aesthetic theories of Motoori Norinaga. This theory is then contrasted with the aesthetic theory of Susanne K. Langer as presented in Philosophy in a New Key, Feeling and Form, and Problems of Art, to provide a full explication of what it means to have an aesthetic experience or create art in the Japanese context.

Traditional theories of gender performativity, grounded in the tradition of Judith Butler, fail to capture the experience of encountering a gendered subject. By reducing gender to a series of discursive acts and ignoring the aesthetic dimension of gender, these theories neglect the possibility for alternative gender performances divorced from the materiality of the body, except through acknowledging the ficticious nature of gender as a consequence of citational acts. In contrast, this dissertation presents a theory of gender as aware, or the “aboutness” that emerges through the repeated citational acts that make present gender in our lived experience. Gender, therefore, does not possess any ontological essence except insofar as it is articulated by citational practices, without which it cannot exist. To this end, this dissertation argues for an expansion of our discourse on gender through appealing to Japanese aesthetic and poetic concepts of aware and mono no aware to demonstrate the aesthetic nature of gender. In so doing this dissertation will present gender as fundamentally aesthetic through appeal to no, kabuki, and the Takarazuka Revue, all sites which divorced gender form biological sex for the purpose of an aesthetic praxis.

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