RUcore Resource Object
RUcore Resource Object
PDF-1(1.04 MB)
TitleRepetition, alignment, and curvature
NameBarks, Alicia (author), Grosz, Elizabeth (chair), Gossy, Mary (internal member), Alexander, Karen (internal member), Rutgers University, Graduate School - New Brunswick,
Degree Date2012-01
Date Created2012
SubjectWomen's and Gender Studies,
Repetition (Philosophy) ,
Habit (Philosophy)
DescriptionThis project considers repetition as both individual action and accumulated force. Thinking of repetition in this way means finding ourselves, with each repeated action, between the force of what we have done and the potential of what we can yet do. From this position, the project will, first, explore how previous repetition creates inertia toward future action. Second, it will explore the possibility of ongoing negotiation of this inertia in a way that allows some indeterminacy to exist for our future actions (which is also to say our future identities). The first chapter considers how it is that repetitions compress over time into habit and how this compression allows past actions to be made useful for present and future action. The chapter will challenge the understanding of habit as a static position, or place of stagnation, for the body and instead address it as a necessary process. It will account for the formation of habits as well as their effects (effects that include the creation of our identities and placement into categories). That our actions, reactions, and repetitions occur in a context of prescriptive (if not coercive) forces is addressed in the second chapter, specifically through technique of ii discipline and the effects of normalization. The second chapter addresses the disciplinary techniques employed to move bodies toward a particular, recognizable form and to value bodies relative to their distance from this form, and their distance from other bodies. Through Michel Foucault and Sara Ahmed, pressures of normalization are discussed in terms of pressure on the body to align with other bodies, and extended to the example of femininity. Retaining the terms of straightness and alignment, the third chapter will consider curvature as a departure that may be painful and punishable but which has the potential to open new possibilities of action for the future. It provides a way of relating to our own inevitable repetitions and forces that seek to direct those repetitions.
NoteM.A.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Noteby Alicia Barks
Genretheses
Persistent URLhttp://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000063986
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
Statistical Profile