No description available.

This thesis posits post-humanism as a philosophy that engages directly with the problem of anthropocentrism and is concerned primarily with the metaphysics of subjectivity. It studies five literary texts (James Joyce's Ulysses, Virginia Woolf's Flush, Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, Brigid Brophy's Hackenfeller's Ape and J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons) that challenge the humanistic or classical subject through critical engagement with what this subject traditionally saw as its antithesis - the animal. These texts contest various fixed assumptions about animality and disrupt the status-quo of the human. Breaking with the tradition that treats animals exclusively as a metaphor for the human, they attempt to see and understand animality outside the framework of anthropocentric suppositions. This project aims to describe the strategies these texts employ to conceptualize animality as well as the methods they apply to delineate its subversive potential and to disrupt the human- animal binary. Its theoretical framework combines the work of thinkers belonging to the new but thriving field of Animal Studies with the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It is this project's great ambition to contribute towards the development of new post- humanist ethics defined by its...

La presente tesis aborda el tema de la identidad femenina y las relaciones de poder que la determinan en los relatos de Luisa Valenzuela. Se analizan dos grupos de relatos de la autora que subvierten los modelos dominantes y opresivos de la feminidad. El primer grupo abarca las reescrituras de los cuentos de hadas, mientras el segundo trata la construcción de la feminidad en el ambiente de la última dictadura militar argentina. Los dos grupos de relatos presentan una suerte de crítica respecto a la formación discursiva de la mujer como sujeto. La tesis presenta en los capítulos introductorios varios problemas teóricos que se reflejan en la obra ensayística y narrativa de Valenzuela. Se analizan las relaciones entre el posmodernismo, el posestructuralismo y el feminismo, especialmente en lo que concierne al problema del sujeto femenino. También se presentan las teorías de Luce Irigaray y Hélène Cixous sobre la escritura femenina que guardan muchas similitudes con las de Valenzuela. Estas autoras realizan ante todo el análisis deconstructivo del discurso psicoanalítico sobre la sexualidad femenina y la señalan como el lugar de la represión discursiva falocéntrica, pero también como el instrumento de la conquista de la libertad. Las dos teorizan sobre un lenguaje femenino, a veces fundándose en ciertas ideas esencialistas sobre la identidad femenina. El concepto clave en la poética de Valenzuela es el de “escribir con el cuerpo”. Valenzuela se reafirma en la existencia de una escritura específicamente femenina, que tiene su origen en una sexualidad y experiencia históricas únicas de la mujer. Escribir con el cuerpo significa oponerse a la unión del logos con la cultura falocéntrica, hablar desde una posición de marginalización de las mujeres en la cultura y la sociedad patriarcales. Los cuentos de hadas de Perrault y de los hermanos Grimm representan un tipo de discurso marcadamente falocéntrico y las reescrituras de la autora sirven para deconstruir la arbitrariedad sociocultural que está en base de los textos que pretenden presentarse como transcendentales y cercanos a la mitología, el folklore y los contenidos universales de la psique humana. Se trata de la crítica de los modos más sutiles de la normativización del sujeto femenino a través de las ideas de la belleza, la virtud, la humildad y la pasividad de las heroínas, en contraste con las brujas y las madrastras. Las rescrituras de Valenzuela devuelven la voz narrativa a las heroínas y subvierten las dicotomías entre las construcciones normativas y estigmatizadas de la feminidad. Los relatos que tratan la vida de las mujeres bajo la dictadura militar argentina comparten algunas características importantes con las reescrituras de los cuentos de hadas, pero también presentan diferencias importantes que exigen otro tipo de análisis y una contextualización sociohistórica adicional. El libro de Diane Taylor, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War”, analiza las estrategias discursivas y performativas de la propaganda oficial del régimen dictatorial a partir de las ideas posestructuralistas y proporciona instrumentos críticos muy importantes para acercarse a este grupo de relatos. Taylor demuestra de qué manera los discursos y las prácticas autoritarias militares participaron en la construcción simbólica de la feminidad. El “relato maestro” de la dictadura argentina exhibe características más siniestras que los cuentos de hadas, puesto que presenta a las mujeres no sumisas como un Otro deshumanizado, lo que justifica los castigos más brutales. Los dos grupos de relatos analizados en la tesis expanden la idea de la identidad femenina más allá de su construcción dominante. La liberación femenina se persigue principalmente a través de la reapropiación del lenguaje; las heroínas toman la voz narrativa para oponerse a las narraciones canónicas que crean y oprimen a los sujetos femeninos. Valenzuela no propone ningún modelo hegemónico de la feminidad, más bien quiere ampliar el horizonte de las posibilidades para la mujer a través de la subversión de los discursos y las estructuras sociales dominantes. / This thesis attempts to analyze from a feminist perspective the concept of female identity and the depiction of power relations in selected stories of the Argentinian writer Luisa Valenzuela. The study aims to show in which ways the author subverts oppressive models of femininity created in canonical fairy tales which she is rewriting, as well as the manner in which some of her stories denounce the construction of femininity during the last Argentinian dictatorship. In her essays, Luisa Valenzuela has developed a theory about the specificity of women’s writing and the role of a woman in subversion of existing social, cultural and political orders. I tried to establish a theoretical framework about female identity with regard to poststructuralist theories of the subject and their relations to feminism. I also presented the ideas of French feminists, Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous, about women’s writing and female desire which bear a strong resemblance to the ideas developed by Valenzuela. Moving between poststructuralism and essentialism, Valenzuela’s poetics and politics propose the idea of a woman as a privileged subject of social change, deriving the strength from her historical oppression. She is thus able to reinvent her identity in a freer manner than a man, and even able to access the obscure knowledge, suppressed by the dominant, falogocentric culture. In her rewritings of fairy tales, Valenzuela tries to subvert the traditional discourse about femininity. The tales of Perrault and Grimm created the normative model of femininity, in accordance with the social conception of appropriate women’s behavior of their time. As such, this literary tradition is reflecting and further establishing the patriarchal oppression of women. The traditional heroines of fairy tales have no voice of their own, are submissive, passive and obedient, their primary ambition being to get married. The narrative voice is omniscient, and the very specific, falocentric view is presented as a universal, objective truth. Valenzuela’s rewritings give voice back to women, subvert the dichotomies between normative and stigmatized constructions of femininity, and give agency and autonomy to the heroines who take charge of their destinies. Valenzuela also subverts dominant discourses of femininity in her stories about the ultimate Argentinian dictatorship. The grand narrative of the dictatorial regime constructs femininity as fragile and submissive. These stories describe physical abuse in conjunction with symbolic acts of gendered oppression and as such exhibit more obvious modes of control of women and their bodies and identities, but also denounce the more subtle, discursive and performative ways by which the regime enforces femininity to their political enemies as a means of degrading them. The question of female sexuality and of writing with the body obtains special meaning in this sociohistorical context. The bodies that write are to be interpreted as tortured, abused and stigmatized bodies and are conceptualized as parts of discursive and performative reality rather than natural bodies who try to subvert the system by their connection with mythical or ahistorical essence. The two groups of stories analyzed in the thesis subvert the dominant, falogocentric discourses of femininity and expand the idea of a female identity beyond its canonical production. The main proposition of Valenzuela’s stories is reappropriation of female language, primarily by giving the narrative voice to the heroines who challenge the traditional and dominant narratives by which the female subjects are constructed and subjugated. She does not aim to create any hegemonic model of femininity but rather to question the existing social structures and discourses which stand on a woman’s way to liberation.

This study concerns the novel Die Schmerzmacherin. by Marlene Streeruwitz and analyzes the narrative as a story about gender as felt on and through the body. The theoretical framework employed in the analysis includes a look at the gender economy; this is done through a presentation of the different actors involved and their contribution to the dynamic. The gender economy itself is characterized as a phallogocentric forum where the possibilities of participation and effecting change are unequally distributed. The study goes on to argue that disciplinary power is how the actors in the novel are taught to engage with and submit to the rules of the gender economy, and different arenas or spaces of disciplinary power are described through text-based examples. It is further suggested that the power of engaging differently also lies within reach of the actors, and that this is accomplished through attuning to the affectively felt knowledge of the effects of the gender economy. Affective knowledge, the study argues, is gained through aesthetics, by which is meant an overcoming of sensory or affective numbness and a regaining of a sense of bodily reality. As a final note, the study briefly considers the role of art in such acts of re-sensitization. / Diese Studie behandelt den Roman Die Schmerzmacherin. von Marlene Streeruwitz und analysiert die Erzählung als eine Geschichte über Gender so wie es am und durch den Körper erlebt wird. In der Studie wird als Teil des theoretischen Rahmens die Gender-Ökonomie näher betrachtet; die Analyse erfolgt durch eine Darstellung der verschiedenen Akteur*innen und deren Beitrag zur Dynamik. Die Gender-Ökonomie an sich wird als eine phallogozentrische Bühne verstanden, auf welcher Möglichkeiten der Teilnahme und der Veränderung ungleich umgesetzt werden können. Die Studie wird auch zeigen, wie Disziplinarmacht den Akteur*innen die Regeln der Gender-Ökonomie beibringt und diese in verschiedenen Milieus durchsetzt. Es wird nahegelegt, dass die Akteur*innen auch andere Handlungsmöglichkeiten entdecken können, insoweit sie imstande sind, die affektiv erfahrenen Folgen der Gender-Ökonomie wahrzunehmen. In der Studie wird dafür argumentiert, dass ein derartiges Wissen über die körperliche Wirklichkeit auch entwickelt werden kann; anschließend wird die Rolle von Kunst kurz berücksichtigt.

An overview of global statistics on violence, country to country and worldwide, indicates that men are the main perpetrators of violence in our societies. Furthermore, the behavioural traits of risk-taking and self-harm are also associated with men. It is my contention that the formative processes involved in gender identity are at the root of these dysfunctions. In an attempt to present a positive alternative, I focus on a group I name the X- Men: white South African Generation X males. Drawing on Judith Butler‟s theory of performativity and its allowance for agency and resistance, I argue that they are not necessarily trapped by how their gender identities were formed through Apartheid‟s gendered institutions. These included schools, sport and the military. I posit that within the institution of art, self-aware artists may present visual representations of resistance and transformation. Acknowledging art as signifying text, the X-Men situate signs differently in an effort to accomplish a social and intersubjective raising-of-awareness. Additionally, this new identity and its associated positive performance have the potential to undermine certain stereotypical perceptions harboured by the broader society as a result of problematic behaviour associated with men. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.V.A.