This is a fictitious and interdisciplinary speculation on the signification of engendered subjectivities, engaging with concepts from art history, critical theory, philosophy, religious philosophy and iconography, science, visual art, fiction and poetry. The ‘actions’ in the work are mental processes involving durational perception in time. Narrative, if it appears at all, does not arrive, derive or result – rather it accumulates as consciousness. Operating as a zootrope, the work revolves around eight ‘openings’ in the body, chosen for their visceral, metaphysical and ideological permeabilities, which act as ‘Doors’ into each chapter: cleavage, the tiniest mappable distance in cell division; hymen, controversial site of female ‘virginity’; larynx, cleft ‘lips’ vulnerable to colonization and ‘possession’; ear, the uncloseable organ, always open to suggestion; blindspot, the gap in vision that allows vision to be processed; synapse, the tiny impulse-sensitive interval between neurons in the brain; navel, the point of absolute memory or uroboric continuity with the mother, a vampire’s memory, blood-permeable; cloaca, non-function specific passage, viscerally absent in humans, but ‘fissured’ into existence through desire. Each opening is ‘cloacal’, functioning simultaneously as both entry and exit point of/for experience. Linking the intervals of the ‘zootrope’ are passages of ‘Descent’ interspersed between openings. The descent into word is a continuum: a fall into hermaphroditic being. There is no arrival because word, being always flesh-held, is always only ever beginning. / Master of Arts (Hons) Writing
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/189571 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Lingham, Susie, University of Western Sydney, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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