School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemBakhtinian Chronotopes in the Campus Novel; and a Short Story Collection: Gutsy Little Unit( 2022)This thesis contributes to Bakhtinian chronotope studies by identifying and examining the campus chronotope produced in campus novels. In the campus novel genre, campus environs are more than simply a setting in which to locate action: the university is a geographical and psychological site that occupies a central position within the text and acts as an influential character determinant. Given that campus spatiotemporalities underpin campus novels, Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the chronotope presents as an apposite analytical framework with which to study them. In the literary analysis component, I consider three distinct chronotopic forms – dominant, intervallic and motivic – to present chronotopic readings of three campus novels. Taking Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (2005) as an exemplar campus novel, I examine the narrative opportunities afforded by the spatiotemporal constraints of the novel’s dominant campus chronotope. This examination subsequently informs the argument that competing intervallic chronotopes of campus, crime fiction and Greek tragedy create a notable chronotopic hybridity in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992). The campus chronotope also supports reframing and extending the diegetic value of Bakhtin’s staircase chronotopic motif and his established interpretation of stairways as sites of threshold and encounter. I contend that Vladimir Nabokov amplifies the stairway to the level of a stage in his campus novel Pnin (1957) by exploiting its associated spatiotemporal elements of performance, display and spectacle. In the creative component, I position the campus chronotope as a generative writing device to present a collection of interlinked short stories and flash fiction titled Gutsy Little Unit. Threaded through many of the stories is the campus chronotope in dominant, intervallic or motivic form. The collection is primarily focalised through the character of Nessie Loewe, though several characters in her orbit are protagonists in their own dedicated stories. Nabokov’s Pnin strongly influences the configuration of this short story collection; I take inspiration from its lightly comical tone and interlinked story structure of impressionistic sketches of Timofey Pnin’s life in and around a college.
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Item(Re)defining recovery: exploring poetry as a therapeutic tool in recovery from severe mood episodes and associated suicide attempts in bipolar disorder( 2020)The critical component of this thesis explores the value of poetry as a therapeutic tool in recovery from severe mood episodes and associated suicide attempts in individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Through literary analysis of Shira Erlichman’s Odes to Lithium and Jeanann Verlee’s Said the Manic to the Muse, I suggest that poetry allows a therapeutic space for dynamic reclamation of subjective narrative experiences of bipolar disorder from the medical discourse. Poetic devices such as personification and juxtaposition support the decentralisation of narrative in the subjective dialectic, thus creating scope for the productive tolerance of polarities, fragmentation and disorder. In doing so, poetry can facilitate emotional healing whilst eschewing redemptive narrative arcs. This provides valuable alternate readings and renderings of ‘recovery’ as part of an ongoing management of chronic mental illness which prioritises the experiential perspective, and thereby posits poetic process as a dynamic therapeutic tool in bipolar and attempted suicide contexts. The creative component of this thesis is a collection of poetry exploring my own recovery.
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ItemExtreme males: autistic masculinity in three bestsellers( 2015)Inspired by Simon Baron-Cohen’s theory that autism can be understood as an extreme version of typical male behaviour, this thesis will examine whether this view is reflected in the representation of autistic males in best-selling fiction (“Extreme Male Brain” 248). It will investigate autism representations in the context of hegemonic masculinity, by comparing the behaviour of Christopher Boone from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Jacob Hunt from House Rules, and Don Tillman from The Rosie Project to Linda Lindsey’s masculinity norms. These include anti-femininity, emotional reticence, success, intelligence, toughness, aggressiveness and an obsessive heterosexuality (Lindsey 241-7). While Christopher's surprising violence, extreme intelligence, insensitivity and stubbornness are masculine traits, his asexuality disqualifies him from being an extreme male. Jacob’s masculinity is shown in his aggressiveness, intellect and physique, but is undermined by his ambiguous sexuality and patchy career history. Don’s physical appearance, heterosexuality, stoic attitude and intellect are all masculine qualities, unlike his need for social guidance and apparent virginity at the novel’s beginning. All three characters are white and compensate for a lack of emotional awareness with hyper-rationality. Their paradoxical masculinity may account for their novels’ success. This thesis finds that these three fictional autistics are not extreme males by the standards of hegemonic masculinity.
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ItemWriting DNA: why does the human animal write creatively?( 2018)This thesis argues that creative writing is a form of play that uses cognitive patterns of information. It begins with a collection of short fiction, titled Small Science, loosely based around scientific themes, particularly the ways in which biology is a ubiquitous, yet often ignored, force in our lives. The work of this collection prompts the dissertation that follows, namely the question: Why would an animal write creatively? The theoretical dissertation draws on theories of cognition to enhance close analytical readings of short fiction by two seminal writers. Firstly, analysis of Vladimir Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols" (1958) foregrounds three key components of the thesis-pattern seeking, cognition, and play. Works by Lydia Davis are then examined in light of particular cognitive aspects of the creative writing process. The simple complexities of "Hand" (2007b) and "Double Negative" (2001a) illustrate how Davis's highly compressed forms both exploit and illuminate our innate cognitive processing capabilities. "Happiest Moment" (2001b) explores notions of compression and expansion, and how the mind may deal with literary ambiguities. Then, analysis of "Grammar Questions" (2007a) investigates the role of cognitive play in the creative writing process. Finally, the thesis concludes by returning to the initial biologically-based question to re-examine how the theoretical discussion impacts a practice-led creative writing thesis.
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ItemFauna Fiction: 'Interspecies Communication in Contemporary Literature' and 'The Animals in That Country'( 2017)Instances of interspecies communication and miscommunication occur in almost every interaction humans have with other animals. Nonetheless, discussions of nonhuman animals as communicative subjects are often relegated to interspecies language experiments and children’s fiction. This thesis makes an original contribution by exploring representations of interspecies communication in contemporary adult fiction, which I call ‘fauna fiction’. In the critical component I analyse in some detail what is occurring in novelistic accounts of human-nonhuman animal encounters. I focus on six contemporary fauna fictions: The Conversations of Cow (1985) by Suniti Namjoshi, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (2011) by Benjamin Hale, Wish (1995) by Peter Goldsworthy, A Beautiful Truth (2013) by Colin McAdam, Bear (1976) by Marian Engel and Dog Boy (2009) by Eva Hornung. In these texts, the meeting point of attempted contact between species is framed theoretically by three key concepts: the ‘speaking meat’ (as conceptualised by ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood), the ‘species boundary’, and ‘language primacy’. I argue that what I call ‘agency-centred models’ of literary animal studies – in which nonhuman animals are considered as responding beings – provide a relevant theoretical base from which to study interspecies communication in fauna fiction. In order to draw out these ideas, I ask: how we might read these novels as disruptive speculations upon a perceived species divide between human and nonhuman animals? I argue that fauna fiction contains subversive sexual and violent subtexts of nonhuman animal resistance. Through this lens, the nonhuman animal protagonist is no longer an allegory or stand-in for human meaning in fiction, but a destabilising, transgressive and resistant figure. The creative component consists of a novel extract, The Animals in That Country. The novel is an apocalyptic literary fiction that provides new insights by exploring communicative human-nonhuman animal relationships. The story follows Jean, a fifty-one-year-old Australian zoo guide, into a world where humans can understand other animals. Through shared communication the human characters in this novel are able to put words to their complex relationships with other animals. They are also confronted with their own animality, a reality for which the language barrier usually provides a convenient shield. Conversations between species forge new connections. The novel also engages with issues of intersubjectivity, power and violence, resulting in dystopian outcomes. As the narrative develops, a dingo character called Sue becomes increasingly important to Jean, and eventually takes charge of Jean’s life. Through this process, dingo speech is prioritised. In The Animals in That Country, the overwhelming responsibility that comes with sudden shared communication with other creatures is sometimes offset by the thrill of insight into previously incomprehensible minds.
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ItemThis loved philology( 2017)‘This Loved Philology’ re-examines the notion of philology as a term meaning ‘love of language’. This thesis juxtaposes the key practice of slow reading against secondary literary and language theory, and against creative texts by writers such as Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, and Miguel de Cervantes. The Creative Component is an excerpt from the novel The Adventures of Mr Cock. The novel is a work of fiction, following the protagonist Win as he moves through the failure of his romantic relationship, emphasising motifs of attempted expression, mutable identity, and desire. Throughout, this thesis argues for a reframing of philology as a process of non-linear reading that traces inter-relationships, allusions and tensions between and across creative and theoretical texts.
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ItemFemale desire and agency in selected short stories by Lorrie Moore & Thrill: short stories( 2016)This dissertation employs Simone de Beauvoir’s and Jessica Benjamin’s theories of female subjectivity to perform a gynocritical feminist exploration of women’s desire and agency as depicted in selected short stories by Lorrie Moore. Examining Moore’s short stories ‘You’re Ugly, Too’ (Like Life 67–91), ‘Willing’ (Birds of America 5–25), ‘Two Boys’ (Like Life 3–19) and ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love’ (Self-Help 97–116), the thesis aims to discuss the ways in which Moore’s stories call into question both the objectification of women under patriarchy, and the impact that this objectification has on female subjectivity, desire and agency. It is my hypothesis that, key to Moore’s critique of the objectification of women, is the portrayal in her short fiction of straight women whose complex romantic and sexual encounters with men compromise their sense of themselves as subjects capable of desire and agency. My research attempts to show that Moore’s stories comment on the often-compromised desire and agency of women under patriarchy, and can be considered creative solutions to the question of how short fiction might function to broach the complexities of female subjectivity. The creative component of the dissertation, Thrill, comprises seventeen short stories that explore female desire and agency. Thrill responds to Moore’s work, and to the thinking of Beauvoir and Benjamin, by depicting young heterosexual women grappling with issues of desire, agency, and subjectivity. These stories hinge on the idea that female subjectivity is controlled and negated by a patriarchal sexual politics which is at its most potent in the interpersonal sexual arena.
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ItemHow can we lose when we're so sincere?: A study of sincerity in autobiographical comics( 2016)In the last twenty to thirty years there has been an increased emphasis on sincerity, in both critical writing and art practices across a variety of media. This thesis looks at how this emphasis on sincerity can be seen manifesting in autobiographical comics. Critical writing on autobiographical comics has tended to focus on authenticity or irony, and this thesis seeks to find out how sincerity is related to or differs from authenticity and irony in tone and register. It looks at how sincerity in autobiographic truth telling manifests in openness and intimacy, in a kinder, gentler tone (than irony or authenticity) and in providing comfort through both language and gesture; through not only the cartoonist’s words but through the cartoonist’s hand, and handwriting, on the comics page. The creative component of this thesis, Raw Feels, is a practical inquiry into how sincerity is written and drawn into autobiographical comics, and our lives in general. Being sincere can include being ironic and serious at the same time; Raw Feels attempts to inhabit this space and to take conventions of comics (such as the thought balloon) as seriously as possible in order to work through new ways of thinking about thinking and our bodies.
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ItemBeneath the Long White Cloud: settler Chinese women's storytelling in Aotearoa New Zealand( 2016)This thesis analyses settler Chinese women’s storytelling in Aotearoa New Zealand in order to articulate a conception of autonomous subjectivity within the context of hegemonic Colonialist Orientalist narratives. Utilising a bricolage methodology that combines the researcher’s creative writing with critical analyses of spoken and written stories, including interviews with authors, it focuses on Chinese women’s lived experiences and the narrative strategies they deploy. The prolonged absence of the feminine voice is barely acknowledged in extant studies of the settler Chinese community in New Zealand. Chinese women’s stories did not emerge in the public domain until the 1990s. While increased recognition of this writing appears to point to the country’s progress, Colonialist Orientalist narratives have continued to characterise Chinese women as either exotic and Oriental or assimilated and invisible, subordinating them in accord with a an enduring prototype: ‘Chinese woman’. I contend that the insidiousness of this prototype is reflected in its integration into settler Chinese women’s subjectivities, and in the stories they tell: both ‘inside’ the Chinese community, and ‘outside’ in the Pākehā mainstream. As such, it appears that there exists no space within which these women can express an autonomous subjectivity and thereby assert a ‘separate’ identity. This thesis is concerned with identifying such a space. Framed by key premises drawn from Judith Butler’s critical analysis of subjection, and with reference to Rey Chow’s analysis of Chinese woman’s subjectivity, Linda Alcoff’s positional feminism, Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical schema and Mary Ann Doane’s theory of femininity as ‘masquerade’, this research analyses the stories that settler Chinese women have told in diverse contexts including personal interviews and in their published writing. In these analyses, in which I conceive of storytelling as performance, I identify a range of narrative strategies through which autonomous subjectivities may be articulated and validated, and which have the potential to ground claims for previously unrecognised subject positions. The more explicitly imaginative creative writing in this thesis is also interrogative, and as such, has more than adjunctive value to the (more overtly) critical discussion. Chapter Five demonstrates a range of counterhegemonic narrative strategies in its juxtaposition of multiple genres including fictionalised autobiography, poetry, images and excerpts from mainstream New Zealand newspapers. Creative writing is also utilised to articulate an intimate conversation among Chinese women in Chapter Two, and in the autoethnographic narrative threads integrated into the critical discussion in most of the other chapters. The incorporation of this creative writing into the body of the thesis is intended to demonstrate that the language of traditional academic discourse alone is inadequate for the task of illuminating settler Chinese women’s subjectivity. It also reveals how the autonomy and agency of this Chinese woman writer – in the capacity of researcher – may be grounded in the transformation of the very language that has produced her as ‘Chinese woman’.
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Item'Fleischgeist': subversive tropes of the flesh of 'Woman' and 'Animal' in selected novels by Angela Carter, Marie Darrieussecq and Deborah Levy( 2016)This dissertation offers an ecofeminist exploration of subversive tropes of the flesh in selected novels by Angela Carter, Marie Darrieussecq and Deborah Levy. The aim of this investigation is to discover how patriarchal and carnivorous ideologies can be disrupted through novelistic narrative, which incorporates particular tropes of ‘Woman’ and ‘Animal’. My hypothesis is that subversive tropes of the flesh portrayed in selected novels by Carter, Darrieussecq and Levy trouble the deadly authority of Western culture’s carnophallogocentric logic. That is, the logic underpinning material-semiotic practices that reduce women and nonhuman animals to objects of consumption. My research shows that subversive tropes of the flesh inform a specific narrative strategy found in all three novels examined: a subversive, double-voiced mimicry. It is my contention that Carter, Darrieussecq and Levy apply this form of parodic mimicry to trouble old narratives in new political ways. This study uses theoretical frameworks developed by Luce Irigaray, Mikhaïl Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Mary Russo, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Jacques Derrida, Linda Hutcheon and Matthew Calarco to explore how Carter, Darrieussecq and Levy portray sexist and speciest violence while foregrounding an ethical feminist allegiance to an embodied, relational and contingent aesthetic. Moreover, I consider the way this aesthetic collapses species boundaries by depicting meat as a substance of exposed embodiment and suffering shared by humans and other animals. I conclude this study by suggesting that the narrative experimentations developed by Carter, Darrieussecq and Levy jam the discursive functioning of the carnophallogocentric machine and offer new narrative models for writing beyond the ‘Fleischgeist’. Sleeper, a novella, engages the subversive tropes and narrative techniques examined in my literary-cultural analysis. Sleeper uses the language of carnophallogocentric oppression to stir up practices and politics of gender inequality in an Australian suburban setting. The narrator, Anna, plunges into a world where reality, dreams and hallucinations intermingle to form a landscape of actual and imagined human-animal death. Anna’s fictionalised world takes aim at the so-called authority of carnophallogocentrism.