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Abstract
Frontice
pages (includes summary, acknowledgements &contents page)
[pdf file - 6 pp]
Introduction
[or pdf file - 6 pp]
Chapter 1:
Writing On, About, and Through Breasted Bodies [pdf
file - 16 pp]
Chapter 2 :
Post-structuralist Feminism and the Body [pdf
file - 11 pp]
Chapter 3:
The Matter of Bodies and the Paradigm Shifts of
Post-structuralism, Quantum Physics, and Ecological Spirituality
[pdf file - 35 pp]
Chapter 4:
Thinking Beyond the Mind/Body Split:
Writing, Reading and Thinking with the Heart
[pdf file - 23 pp]
Chapter 5: Historiography and Method: Putting it into Practice
[pdf file - 22 pp]
Conclusion
[or pdf file - 5 pp]
Select Bibliography
[pdf file - 48 pp]
Part Two:Samples
from
A Short (Personal) History of the Bra and its Contents
(a novel in progress) --
2
chapters -
The Art of Peace parts 1 & 2
Note: page numbers for the text of Part One have, where
possible, been kept the same as in the submitted thesis, but each pdf
file here also includes the endnotes for that chapter, whereas in the
thesis these are placed after the Conclusion.
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Abstract
This thesis uses fiction as a research technology for investigating
and thinking about issues to do with bodies and knowledge at the cusp
of the 20th and 21st centuries.
It includes sample
material from a novel in progress -- A Short (Personal) History of the
Bra and its Contents -- to illustrate some of the unique outcomes of
this approach to exploring cultural history and writing cultural criticism.
One of the advantages
of fiction is that it allows me to create a discursive field in which
it is possible for the very wide range of issues raised by my topic
to coexist, work off each other and cross-fertilise. These include ideas
regarding gender, sexuality, nurture and subjectivity; issues to do
with the implants controversy, the cancer industry and the corporatisation
of medicine (and hence various current debates within science and medicine);
as well as movements in fashion history and popular culture -- all of
which contribute to making up the datasphere in which and through which
we continually reproduce ourselves as subjects.
More importantly,
fiction allows me to write from within a specific historical, cultural
and sexual body; thus engaging readers likewise as embodied desiring
subjects. Which is to say, it presents a way to write about the body
and to involve it in relationship at the same time; to engage and move
readers on an emotional (visceral) as well as intellectual level --
indeed, to explore the place where these are inseparable.
As a companion
text to this material, the first section of the thesis describes the
discursive strategies used in the novel in the context of an exploration
of points of convergence between post-structuralism, quantum physics
and ecological spirituality -- in particular, regarding the relationship
between body and mind, matter and spirit, nature and culture, as well
as the overriding question of: 'how do we know what we know?'
*
http://www.bethspencer.com/body-as-fiction.html
ABSTRACT: Phd thesis, University of Ballarat, Australia, March 2006
The Body as Fiction
/ Fiction as a Way of Thinking:
On Writing A Short (Personal) History
of the Bra and its Contents
Beth Spencer
email: beth at bethspencer dot com
*
Some related
essays:
Cosmetic
Surgery, 'Makeover Culture' and the Privatisation of Bodies
(or 'Are Wrinkles Really All That Ugly?' The Age, October 2006)
'From
the "Primitive Droop" to the "Civilised Thrust"
:
Towards a Politics of Body Modification'
Paper presented
at the Body Modifications Conference,
Macquarie University, April 2003.
"D-Cups, Groin Guards and Supermodels: Writing the Body into History"
Australian Humanities Review - (If you are downloading this
essay, note that it's in two parts.)
'Bras, Breasts and Living in the Seventies: Historiography in the
Age of Fibs.' (Forthcoming, 2007) Australian
Feminist Studies: Seventies Issue.
'The Milk of Humankind-ness: From A Short Personal History of the
Bra and its Contents.' Australian
Feminist Studies. Meanings of Breastmilk: New Feminist Flavours.
Vol 19, No 45 (Nov 2004). 315-327.
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