'Skin-Deep' Impressions: Somatic Sense in an Age of Simulated Significance illuminates a variety of bodily modes of expression, ranging from body-art and popular body-fixation, over body-mutilation, body-play, and self-mutilation, to psycho-somatic patterns of behaviour. The question governing the work concerns the extent to which the physical orientation, currently characterizing our society, is to be considered a productive response to the so-called "crisis of representation." / A reading of Kerstin Ekinan's novel Blackwater (1996) is woven into and through the body of the work, indicating the shortcomings of theoretical understanding, the limitations of literary analysis, and the strength of literary narrative with respect to the issue in question. The distinction traditionally drawn between fashionable, transgressive and pathological ways of turning toward the body no longer holds. The blurring of the boundaries between self-making and self-destruction opens for a rather unexplored field of possibilities. / 'Skin-Deep' Impressions takes as its point of departure the claim made by some postmodern thinkers, that the cultural climate in the Western part of the world has turned "schizophrenic." The enthusiasm with which the arrival of the "schizo" has been received, ironically and tragically, is out of touch with reality. The suggestion emerging from my work is that the bodily phenomenon serves as a request for the reinstitution of more common frames of reference. The focus on the texture of the flesh, on physical wounds, and on the experience of physical pain, is viewed not as a manifestation of a general sense of victimization but rather, as the manifestation of a need to reinvent forms of representation allowing for the realization of emotionally intense and often ambiguous experience. The violent turn toward the body, finally, is viewed as a collective means of coping with the social unconscious, that is with the guilt associated with the crimes committed in the name of progress in the Western world. In this manner, physicality comes to substitute for what is lacking, namely a more suitable metaphysics. Paradoxically then, body-fixated subjects, commonly perceived as being self-absorbed and asocial may in fact represent a most serious attempt at introducing respect for other living beings in a culture characterized by an increasingly split between notions of humanity and conditions of living.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.35054 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Rose, Gitte Braut. |
| Contributors | Raite, Berkeley (advisor), Ohlin, Peter (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001610447, proquestno: NQ44567, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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