1,720,967 research outputs found
United controversies of Benetton : rethinking race in light of French poststructuralist theory and postmodernism
No full textPostmodernist texts by non-white authors consistently challenge accepted theoretical discourses with some notion of race or ethnicity. Until recently however, race as a unique category for theoretical investigation has remained largely unexplored. The author here outlines how both a variety of theoretical disscussions about race and ethnicity, about difference, and about experience, have formed the basis of how race is currently talked about in postmodernist discourse and how these various postmodernist discussions about race and difference may both enrich and be enriched by a theoretical examination of French poststructuralist theory. Employing the popular Benetton ads as a vehicle for theorizing a common ground between postmodernist and poststructuralist theory, the author argues that current theoretical discourse must reconceptualize not so much the multiple and varied definitions of "race" by which it has tried to account for the experiences of non-white subjects worldwide, but the very grounds upon which those definitions have been constructed. Race can no longer be thought of as a collective identity predicated on biological similarities but must be re-thought in terms of a transformational metaphor, a multivocal sign for political solidarity and alliance among dispersed groups of people sharing common historical experiences of discrimination and oppression. On this note, the author will herein argue that the naturalized connotations of race must be disarticulated out of racial discourse and rearticulated in such a way as to emphasize race as a contingent, multi-accentual signifier constructed out of varying social and political practices
The cultural logic of dis-ease : difference andas displacement in popular discourses of the AIDS crisis
No full textThis thesis investigates the cultural and social production of AIDS in popular discourse, particularly film and mass media, and offers a critical consideration of the ways in which the proliferation and dispersion of these discourses function in our current episteme to rearticulate and reinscribe traditional value systems of sexuality, familialism, and nationalism. Taking the lead of the work of Michel Foucault on the body in various historical regimes, the author here will posit a theoretical analysis of the "discursive formation" of AIDS, how the body of AIDS is put into discourse, to provide a matrix for establishing the various disciplinary and regulatory apparatuses structuring the epidemic--that is, the affirmation of certain kinds of pleasures and bodies and the strategic circumvention of other pleasures and bodies. Under what the author refers to as the cultural logic of dis-ease, the investigations that follow will be animated by the central question: Whose pleasure and/or power is served by these representations and discourses of the body of AIDS in popular cultural practices
As her world turns : women and soap opera
No full textMass produced narratives that have been designed and targeted for predominantly female audiences have been marginalized by dominant culture. Throughout the history of art and English literature, women have been both objectified and misrepresented. All that has been deemed domestic, emotional and of the personal sphere has been declared valueless by patriarchy. The soap opera genre reverses this negative valorization. It is one that perpetuates the feminine tradition of creating communities through words---talk, gossip, testimony. In this work, the American soap opera is discussed as a venue for the exploration of issues that concern women's lives, as a site for the generation of female pleasure, and as the mother of subcultural networks that inform a female community. While the narratives address women's concerns, the soap opera fan magazines and fan clubs celebrate a form that highlights orality, emotion and empathy in a culture that often depreciates them
Performance of a lifetime : an exploration of notions of "performance" in lesbian and gay activist and academic rhetoric
No full textIn this thesis, I will explore the different notions of performance as a political tool and gender/sexuality as a performative act that forms identity, within lesbian and gay academic and activist rhetoric. I posit that the extensive, and often contradictory, use of "performance" within lesbian and gay discourse serves as a useful entry point to explore existing theoretical precepts of identity formation, and the processes of representation and signification. Through this exploration, effective theoretical and practical techniques can be developed to subvert the dominant discourses of normative (hetero)sexuality that continue to create a "reality" which is physically and psychically harmful to those who do not adhere to these discourses.Lesbian and gay activists have used various performance techniques as political tools to de-stabilize notions of identity and the fixity of the representational process. Some lesbian and gay academics have developed a "queer" theoretical perspective that concurrently binds and privileges fluid concepts of representation, identity formation, and gender/sexuality performativity. In this thesis, I argue that the convergence of performance and performativity within the work of Annie Sprinkle yields an especially clear potential for the disruption of a signification process that consistently demonizes the sexual "Other.
Haunted dwellings, haunted beings : the image of house and home in Allende, MacDonald, and Morrison
No full textThis study examines the image of house and home as the reification of our domains as living, dwelling, housed beings in three novels: Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits; Anne-Marie MacDonald's Fall On Your Knees; and Toni Morrison's Beloved. Being human, we form through perception, build through forming, dwell in building, and perceive through dwelling. Through close reading and analysis, this thesis examines questions of: If we are how we dwell, then what happens when the structures and the spaces of our dwellings become haunted? What happens when "home" becomes a facade that suspends necessary elements of dwelling? This study projects that if we are how we dwell, the very nature of our being entails a constant questioning of what it is we allow a presence to in our how we form, build, dwell, and perceive within both tangible and intangible realms and the influential perspicacity literature bears within this process
The Intimacy of Commodities: Social Control, Subjectivity and Feminine Hygiene
Get PDFThis thesis examines one instance of the sexual oppression of women, that which is found in the emergence of the feminine hygiene market. It is demonstrated that certain forms of commodities, with specific application for feminine hygiene, were developed and introduced at times when women entered the paid labour force in large numbers. It is argued, however, that the correspondence between these two parallel phenomena is more than temporal. Social control in the culture of the office is disciplinary ln mode, sexist in orientation. The manipulation of the "cosmetic self" implies a regulation of socially constructed femininity; this discipline is internalized, and thus successful, as women purchase products which regulate sexuality and femaleness. A semiological analysis of advertisements for feminine hygiene products demonstrates that the "problem that women bleed" has remained constant but has assumed varying forms. The content analysis of ads lends access to speculation about why women consume redundant products and how, ideologically, they come to understand and organize their work force experiences. The mythicizing effects of advertising involves the construction of the subject in terms of a reconciliation of what she knows and how she acts in a social totality. The gender relations of dominance require that women appropriate what it means to be a woman, to be feminine.Master of Arts (MA
All dressed up : adornment practices, identity and social structure
No full textThis thesis attempts to survey the function of clothing adornment practices as a form social communication. It is shown that clothing enables the formation and distinction of social groups. The ways in which clothing becomes symbolic for a group and the way in which this system is challenged and/or destroyed are also examined. A distinction between fashion and antifashion is made to enable a repositioning of the Western system of dress into a wider context of meaning. Assumptions on the nature of appearance as related to the concept of truth are examined. Chapter One looks at the various and contradictory myths of body ideals, challenging the opposition of nature and culture. Chapter Two examines the uniform and applies its characteristics to all forms of dress. Chapter Three provides a brief summary of the history of sumptuary laws and how they operate in the social world. Throughout this work, common sense assumptions and privileged reading of particular theoretical frameworks are challenged. Theory itself is subject to fashion, allowing for a comparison to be made between human adornment and the methodologies that attempt to define its practices
Photo-graft : a critical analysis of image manipulation
No full textFor 150 years, chemical photography had a privileged status as a truthful means of representation. The emerging technology of digital imaging is challenging this unique position. This paper proposes to examine the status of the photographic image in the digital age, as well as the debate surrounding the new technology and its implications. Chapter one begins with a brief technical history of the medium and establishes the construction behind the myth of photographic truth. Chapter two debunks the myth of photographic image's objectivity. Chapter three describes the specifities of digital imaging technology and discusses the potential problems and consequences of the invasion of digitally enhanced images in the media, as well as possible solutions. Finally, the fourth chapter considers the use of digital imaging in women's magazines and examines what such a use says about our society's values. By considering the issue of photo-manipulation, one can understand that manipulation expresses the human will to create a world of simulation
Inhaling : the changing significations of marijuana in hegemonic and subcultural discourses, from antiquity through its prohibition
No full textThis thesis is an examination of the various ways in which marijuana, its use, and its users have historically been signified, within both hegemonic and subcultural discourses, from marijuana's origins in antiquity through its North American prohibition in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Attention is given to how this history, and prohibition in particular, has informed contemporary North American significations of the drug, its use and its users
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