Reimagining Subject-Other Relations: Embracing the other Without and Within

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorRedding, Arthur F.
dc.contributor.authorMelo-Thaiss, Janet Dasilva
dc.date.accessioned2024-10-28T13:28:06Z
dc.date.available2024-10-28T13:28:06Z
dc.date.copyright2022-10-12
dc.date.issued2024-10-28
dc.date.updated2024-10-28T13:28:06Z
dc.degree.disciplineEnglish
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractThis study analyses literary depictions of subject-other relations through representative post-World War II Western literature. Such relations have been negatively impacted by a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” a phrase coined by French Philosopher Paul Ricœur to refer to thinkers Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche who, he argued, were shaped by “suspicion[s] concerning the illusions of consciousness” (34). Contextualized within a larger body of theoretical work (Patrick O’Donnell, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Teresa Brennan, Joanna Zylinkska), the project explores both the symptoms as well as the “epidemic nature of contemporary paranoia” as represented in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel, and Dione Brand’s Inventory (O’Donnell vii). While the literary and generic structures, aesthetic approaches, and historical contexts for the texts chosen are varied, they each trace the “cultural epidemiology” of paranoia over the last seven decades, weighing the consequences of paranoia’s transformation into a prescription (O’Donnell vii-viii). In so doing, they highlight how paranoia has been normalized as a response “for us, as national, corporate, historical subjects in” time periods “beset by questions about their cohesion and continuance” (O’Donnell 16). Whether through satire, parody, or hyperbole, these texts confront readers with the consequences of the internalization of and complicity with said fear and paranoia as responses to an unknown other, highlighting the need for more ethical subject-other relations. Through their political, cultural, and historical “inventories,” these writers illustrate how the subject has been interpolated into a patriarchal system that keeps them locked into a cycle of fear and hatred that, if allowed to continue, will only lead to ongoing violence. Instead, this study imagines subject-other relations based on care, trust, and love. Such relations are life-affirming – mindful of the fragile connections that hold humans together in kinship. By imagining such possibilities for a non-colonizing relation between self and other, this project explores imagined spaces that do not “will another empire,” but instead show how to take “history’s pulse / measured with another hand” (Brand 11).
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/42368
dc.languageen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectLiterature
dc.subjectWomen's studies
dc.subjectCanadian literature
dc.subject.keywordsGeorge Orwell
dc.subject.keywordsEL Doctorow
dc.subject.keywordsDionne Brand
dc.subject.keywordsFreud
dc.subject.keywordsSocial responsibility
dc.subject.keywordsFeminist
dc.subject.keywordsParanoia
dc.subject.keywordsAnxiety
dc.subject.keywordsPost world war literature
dc.subject.keywordsCold war
dc.subject.keywordsCanadian poetry
dc.subject.keywordsFeminist sublime
dc.subject.keywordsCultural paranoia
dc.subject.keywordsEdmund Burke
dc.subject.keywordsLonginus
dc.subject.keywordsPaul Ricœur
dc.subject.keywordsAzorean
dc.subject.keywordsPatriarchal
dc.subject.keywordsSocial justice
dc.subject.keywordsEthical subject other
dc.subject.keywordsCompassion
dc.subject.keywordsWitnessing
dc.subject.keywordsThe Matrix
dc.subject.keywordsNineteen Eighty Four
dc.subject.keywordsInventory
dc.subject.keywordsThe Book of Daniel
dc.titleReimagining Subject-Other Relations: Embracing the other Without and Within
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Melo-Thaiss_Janet_D_2022_Phd.pdf
Size:
1.23 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.87 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
YorkU_ETDlicense.txt
Size:
3.39 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download

Collections

English

All items in the YorkSpace institutional repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved except where explicitly noted.