Introduction
This thesis uses fiction as a research technology
for exploring a range of issues to do with difference, identity, knowledge,
and beliefs about bodies and nature at the cusp of the 20th and 21st
centuries. It includes sample material - as the experimental outcome
of this process - from a novel in progress called A Short (Personal)
History of the Bra and its Contents.
As a research topic,
the 'bra and its contents' opens up a network of issues concerning the
complex and dynamic relationships between bodies and culture.
The bra is an accoutrement
to the body which also (re)creates it in its own image. It is a wonderful
example of how the 'nature' of the body is constituted by and within
discursive practices such as fashion, medicine, the law, science and
spirituality.
By defining and
accentuating the most visible signifiers of femininity in our culture,
the bra (as a topic) also 'contains' gender. Furthermore it holds or
gestures towards the origins of subjectivity, with 'the breast' - by
its presence and absence - as the first Other.
Through this, the
breast - as the first Other, and as a signifier of gender difference
- opens up the subject of the dualities or oppositions which underpin
phallocratic discourse; at the same time as it confounds the unitariness
of sexual signification by being a doubled image. As the first Other
it is 'the breast'; as a signifier of sexual difference it is the plural,
'breasts'. Likewise, as the first Other it initiates the process whereby
we see our individuality as neatly bounded at the skin. At the same
time, in the closely intertwined needs and rights of the mother-child
dyad focussed around the milk produced by this relationship, it also
messes up that boundary.
In colloquial terms,
the 'breast' (for both genders) is the seat of feelings, the fleshy
door to the heart. In this way, too, it is a deep element or site of
our sense of self or identity, for when asked to point to themselves,
most people indicate their heart (pointing to their breast) rather than
their head.
As such, for this
thesis I have taken the contents of the bra as indicating the whole
of the body-self and body-culture relationship. Within this there is
also a range of more specific but inter-linking issues around subjectivity,
gender and gender diversity, the implants controversy and body modifications
in general, the cancer industry and the corporatisation of medicine,
maternity, nurture and the history of breast and bottle-feeding, and
fashion history.
There is no part
of this thesis that came 'first'. The fiction is not an illustration
of the theory. The theory or non-fiction is not an exegesis (in the
usual sense of interpretation or explication) of the fiction. Both parts
were developed and written in a continuous back and forth process -
the theory informing and deepening the research and fiction writing,
and the research and fiction writing, in turn, informing, grounding
and deepening the theoretical insights.
Thus the novel
structure was created in response to research and ideas and what developed
in the novel was used to target and guide further research and further
develop and refine the ideas. Sometimes I used the mechanism and techniques
of fiction to explore an issue, other times I used the tools of logic
and reasoning and the language of non-fiction to keep working over the
plethora of images, concepts, questions and ideas thrown up by my topic.
The theory gave me additional tools to interrogate the issues raised
by my topic and to constantly analyse my own textual strategies. While
the materiality and more concrete circumstances of fiction provides
a space for exploring and testing out and expanding on the theories.
My intention is
that the two parts should act as companion pieces, complementing and
working off each other and expanding the reading possibilities of each.
Both are ways of discovering and expressing things that are unlikely
to be discovered and are difficult to express with only one process
or the other. So the design here is a matrix rather than a linear journey,
and all parts of the thesis are in a sense different ways of telling
the same overall story. Even the bibliography is a way of telling a
story through links - another mapping of the issues; while the longer
endnotes at times also function as a hypertext to the main narrative.
Within all of this
there is the constant tension between an artistic process and a polemical
one - between expanding out and reigning in; between the wide radar
that creative thinking both allows and encourages, compared to the narrowing
down process of constructing a single definite thesis.
As well there is
the tension between producing an artistic work where you want the influences
and theory to be almost invisible, and an academic thesis in which you
are required to demonstrate clearly the connections. Indeed, part of
what I want to explore and demonstrate in this thesis is the power of
juxtaposition and montage. Thus while there are obvious and explicit
links between the fiction and non-fiction parts of this thesis, there
is also, I hope, power in the juxtaposition of these two very different
ways of approaching a similar field of topics about the body-mind and
its relationship to and within western culture.
So part one of
this thesis is the non-fiction 'exegesis', while part two presents a
large amount of sample fiction (as much as space would permit). Some
is in the form in which it is likely to appear in the final novel, other
parts have been reconfigured specifically for this thesis and to create
special themed chapters. Basically, the overall focus of this thesis
is to explore the process and outcomes of using fiction as an academic
research technology in tandem with non-fiction, rather than to present
a completed fiction work ready for mainstream publication.
In these samples
I am using fiction as a discursive technology to create a laboratory
in which to observe aspects of culture at work: the connections, disconnections,
interweavings, the gaps and slippages. (What happens when you put x
with y - two things not usually juxtaposed or looked at together?) My
aim is to create a discursive space in which to track some of the ways
we perform and manage cultural ideas about normativity and bodily difference
(ideas around gender, beauty, health and illness, for instance). The
novel is, in this sense, a place in which to experiment with the chemistry
of different characters and situations.
By injecting meticulous
research into the complexity, pleasure, playfulness and fluidity of
fiction, this becomes both a process of discovery and a process of creation,
often facilitating a more uninhibited cross-pollination of ideas than
in more traditionally disciplined writing modes.
My technique is
to keep going out from an initial topic (such as body modifications,
or breast-feeding, or cancer treatments) drawing in as many unexpected
threads, metaphors, images, allegories and stories as I can, often relying
initially on an irrational feeling that something is appropriate, a
gut sense that a connection will emerge. The long process of collecting,
sifting and working over this plethora of data - all the ways in which
we decorate, modify, describe, classify, train, enjoy, nourish, abuse,
love and hate our bodies, the ways in which we use them in relationship
with others and the world around us, the many ways as a culture we regulate
and re-design them - creates, in a sense, a complex system. When the
quantity of factors gets to a certain saturation point, meanings, connections
and possibilities start to accumulate.
As such fiction
is used here not just as a frame or a means for presenting ideas or
information arrived at through logical thinking or non-fiction discourse,
but as a way of analysing and generating ideas, a way of thinking.
Indeed, this process
was so effective that the difficulty was in knowing where to draw the
line. Nevertheless, while there are numerous ways in which this topic
could have been expanded and explored, I found that what I kept coming
up against - whether I was researching gender and gender variations,
breast implants and cosmetic surgery, the history of bottle and breastfeeding,
or cancer treatments and theories of disease - was a recurring epistemological
question of: how do we know what we know? Can anything ever really be
proven in a universal and permanent way? If not, then what is involved
in something becoming 'true'?
So the recurring
theme in the first (non-fiction) part of this thesis is the question
of how we derive knowledge of ourselves, or how we represent ourselves
to ourselves - as individual personalities or gendered subjects (the
notion of a self), and as a species (how 'the body' is conceptualised
in discourses such as science, medicine and spirituality). Or, to put
it another way, how we negotiate conflicting notions of truth and meaning,
and how our bodies might figure in this.
Chapter
one begins with a review of literature about breasts, from mainstream
popular books and 'owner's manuals', to writing by, on and through breasts
by feminist writers and thinkers. From these examples it seemed clear
to me that in order to write an empowering narrative of the body, or
any aspect of it, it was also necessary to constantly interrogate and
explore the basic cultural categories out of, through and around which
it is constructed.
Therefore Chapter
two is a brief overview of some of the concerns of post-structuralism,
in particular post-structuralist feminism, regarding the relationship
between bodies, language, power and knowledge. This chapter looks, for
instance, at the pervasiveness of dualistic thinking and the operation
of the mind/body, nature/culture split within western philosophy, and
the difficulty of rethinking these dichotomies in relation to bodies
without simply reversing them.
Chapter
three takes up this problem by looking at philosophical post-structuralism
in the context of the two other great paradigm shifts (or post-structuralisms)
of the twentieth century that also form a part of the discourse of bodies:
quantum physics (as a shift from the structuralism of Newtonian science)
and ecological spirituality (as a shift from monotheism or atheism).
In this chapter I trace a history of these movements and explore how
they might help reconceptualise the body (and nature) as more than just
a passive surface for the activity of culture. As critiques of the possibility
of objective or value-free knowledge, these shifts also pose important
questions not only for science and philosophy, but about the function
of all forms of story-telling and history-making, all forms of 'knowing'.
As such this chapter also raises questions with regard to the form,
method and aims - the myriad choices and decisions I had to make - in
writing my own history of the bra and its contents.
In Chapter
four, I take a slightly more meandering or meditative trek through
several ways of challenging the mind/body split by conceptualising the
body as an open, dynamic and flexible system interdependent with the
mind. Drawing on ideas from ecological spiritual traditions (such as
Buddhism and Breema), Affect Theory, psychoneuroimmunology, and some
recent findings in neurology about the role of emotions in decision
making, I explore some of the ways in which the body is an intelligent
and essential participant in the formation of our ideas, beliefs and
knowledges. By exploring the role of affect and emotional scripting
in the continual cultural process of ascribing meaning and value, I
look at how fiction, as a psychophysiological practice - a process that
affectively engages the body as well as the mind - might be able to
play a role in this.
Chapter
five returns to the question of form and method, and the philosophy
of history that underpins my stylistic choices in writing my novel,
in particular the use of montage. It also gives a brief overview of
the characters, structure and recurring devices used in the novel and
how these are managed in order to explore some of the themes. I also
look at the issue of accountability, and ways of creating a research
context for the novel as 'a text event' so that it can provide a focus
for a continuing cultural conversation about these issues.
While the Conclusion
should, by rights, go at the end of the whole thesis (and thus at the
end of the fiction samples), in order to fit into the constraints of
a linear form and make two comfortably sized packages, the conclusion
and bibliography follow Chapter five at the end of the non-fiction section.
Placed here, these remarks offer both a commentary on the non-fiction
thesis while also acting as a springboard (or invitation) into the fiction.
*
http://www.bethspencer.com/body-as-fiction.html
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
