This project reconsiders nineteenth-century hysteria and recovery in selected works of
1990s historiographical Canadian fiction. Using a material feminist perspective, I develop
an understanding of the "archival hysteric": a figure whose permeable mindbody reacts in
eccentric ways to her environment. The material mindbody becomes a physiological
archive of intersubjective interactions, social expectations, and past traumas. Expanding
the concept of the archive to include the human subject, the family home, and the
landscape, the fictions provide models for personal and social change. Chapter One explores the eccentric nature of the female body as viewed in nineteenth-century
documents and in Alice Munro's "Meneseteung." This chapter focuses its
analysis on the hysteric's eccentric mindbody as the site of partial recovery. I propose that
moving from hysteria to sanity involves a transformation to health of the mindbody that
can occur through the ethical relationship and an acknowledgement of the permeable
nature of intersubjective boundaries. The nineteenth-century concept of female flow is
replaced by a model of viscous porosity. Chapter Two explores how the archive functions as a metaphor for hysterical subjectivity. Following Kelly Oliver's theory of witnessing, I show how the act of shared witnessing reveals the permeable boundaries between researcher and research subject. Margaret
Atwood's Alias Grace provides a case study of an archival hysteric that illustrates the
ways in which shared witnessing can lead to both illness (reactivity) and health (response-ability). Chapter Three explores Away, in which Jane Urquhart mobilizes the figure of the love-mad hysteric in postcolonial and environmental contexts. The archival hysteric here
represents permeability not only between human subjects, but also between human and
non-human subjects. The archival hysteric illustrates human subjects' unfixed positions in
the world: relying upon the binary of mental health and illness, diagnostic labels therefore
misrepresent the complexity of states of being. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/21134 |
| Date | 01 1900 |
| Creators | Raymond, Katrine |
| Contributors | York, L., English and Cultural Studies |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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