Thèses sur le sujet « Feminist new materialisms »

A speculative inquiry into perception regimes, ‘unlearning’, entanglements and how to discuss re-production in the realm of (art) production today. A textual crossreading of how to actively admit and amplify the colonial and imperial consequences active in all levels of society, both personal and collective, and how these ideas continues to (re)produce in ways outside (and inside) of our imagination.  An experimental essay negotiating the relations and symbioses between form an ideology, a try to undermine binary thought formations such as nature and culture, private and public. A proposed crossreading of theory and lived life; how to deal with the (im)possibility of imagining outside of neoliberal conditions, of colonial and capitalist frameworks?

Thesis advisor: Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace
This dissertation explores what a new materialist line of thinking can offer the study of eighteenth-century Irish and British literature. It sees specific objects that were considered indicative of eighteenth-century Irish identity—coins, mantles, flax, and spinning wheels—as actively indexing and shaping the formal development of Irish character in fiction, from Jonathan Swift to Sydney Owenson. Through these objects, I trace and analyze the material origin stories of two eighteenth-century discursive phenomena: the developments of Irish national character and Irish literary character. First, in the wake of colonial domination, the unique features and uses of objects like coins bearing the Hibernian typeface, mantles, and flax helped formulate a new imperial definition of Irish national character as subdued, raced, and, crucially, feminine. Meanwhile, material processes such as impressing coins or spinning flax for linen shaped ways of conceiving an interiorized deep subjectivity in Irish fiction during the rise of the individual in late eighteenth-century ideology. Revising recent models of character depth and interiority that take English novel forms as their starting point (Deidre Lynch’s in particular), I show how Ireland’s particular material and colonial contexts demonstrate the need to refit the dominant, Anglocentric understanding of deep character and novel development. These four material objects structure Irish character’s gradual interiorization, but, unlike the English model, they highlight a politically resistant, inaccessible depth in Irish character that is shadowed by gendered, colonial violence. I show how, although ostensibly inert, insignificant, or domestic, these objects invoke Ireland’s violent history through their material realities—such as the way a coin was minted, when a mantle was worn, or how flax was prepared for spinning—which then impacts the very form of Irish characters in literary texts. My readings of these objects and their literary manifestations challenge the idea of the inviolable narrative and defend the aesthetics and complexity of Irish characters in the long eighteenth century. In the case of particular texts, I also consider how these objects’ agency challenges the ideology of Britain’s imperial paternalism. I suggest that feminized Irish objects can be feminist in their resistant materiality, shaping forms of Irish deep character that subvert the colonial gaze. Using Ireland as a case study, this dissertation demonstrates how theories of character and subjectivity must be grounded in specific political, material contexts while arguing that a deeper engagement with Irish materiality leads to a better understanding of Irish character’s gendering for feminist and postcolonial analysis
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: English

Our western society and lifestyle is to a considerable extent depended on the way we perceive and treat our co-existing non-human species. Industrial farming, vivisection, sports, circuses etcetera are just a few examples of how human use and exploit animal bodies for own gain. A phenomenon that in many ways, is perceived, as natural and normal, and therefore seldom discussed. The thesis purpose is to problematize this phenomenon by examine, what I call “The Speciesism Gaze”, through analysis of posters that promote animal rights, selected online, through the search domain Google. The theoretical framework used, are theories focusing on intersectionality, derived within postcolonial-, eco-critical and new materialist feminism. A brief introduction of animal right movements, its linking to feminism activism and theories derived within affect theory is presented as background for the analysis. As method, I use critical discourse analysis, focusing on intertextuality of the posters context. Asking what discourses emerge, challenging the anthropocentric and androcentric western dualistic hierarchy, whilst displaying mutually reinforced structures of sexism, racism and speciesism? I discuss the western historical and cultural human idea that the human species is separated from nature and animal, and where the “right” human subject standard is perceived as male, white, heterosexual and western in the Anthropocene age. I found that, this standard is displayed, played on, and questioned in the posters selected, in relation to animal materiality, grievability, killability, species necropolitics, sexism and racism. I discuss in my conclusion that oppression based on speciesism is not a power relation discussed in society today to the same extent as expressions of sexism and racism are. It is however an oppression that we all take part in every day and that affect all of us, despite species belonging. In that context, I hope the theorization and meaning of the speciesism gaze will have significance within the field of feminist theorizations and practices.

Breathing is not a common subject in feminist studies. Breathing Matters introduces this phenomenon as a forceful potentiality for feminist intersectional theories, politics, and social and environmental justice. By analyzing the material and discursive as well as the natural and cultural enactments of breath in black lung disease, phone sex work, and anxieties and panic attacks, Breathing Matters proposes a nonuniversalizing and politicized understanding of embodiment. In this approach, human bodies are onceptualized as agential actors of intersectional politics. Magdalena Górska argues that struggles for breath and for breathable lives are matters of differential forms of political practices in which vulnerable and quotidian corpomaterial and corpo-affective actions are constitutive of politics. Set in the context of feminist poststructuralist and new materialist and postconstructionist debates, Breathing Matters offers a discussion of human embodiment and agency reconfigured in a posthumanist manner. Its interdisciplinary analytical practice demonstrates that breathing is a phenomenon that is important to study from scientific, medical, political, environmental and social perspectives.
Andning är inte ett vanligt förekommande ämne inom feministiska studier. Breathing Matters introducerar detta fenomen som har en potential för feministiska intersektionella teorier, politik, social rättvisa och klimaträttvisa. Genom analyser av materiella, diskursiva, naturliga och kulturella dimensioner av andningens formationer, i sjukdomen pneumokonios, telefonsexarbete samt ångest och panikattacker, föreslår Breathing Matters en icke-universialiserande och politiserad förståelse av förkroppsligande. Genom denna ansats konceptualiseras mänskliga kroppar som agentiella aktörer i en intersektionell politik. Magdalena Górska argumenterar att kampen för att andas och för andningsbara liv är ett angeläget ämne för differentiella former av politisk praktik. Denna sårbara och vardagliga praktik som både består av kroppsmateriella och kroppsaffektiva handlingar konstituerar politik. Placerad i en kontext av feminist poststrukturalistisk, nymaterialistisk och postkonstruktivistisk debatt erbjuder Breathing Matters en diskussion kring mänskligt förkroppsligande och agentskap som är omkonfigurerad på ett posthumanistiskt sätt. Den tvärvetenskapliga analytiska praktiken visar att andning är ett fenomen som är viktigt att studera från vetenskapliga, medicinska, politiska, miljömässiga och sociala perspektiv.

Abstract Sustainability is a catchword for contemporary concerns of environmental and societal vulnerability. Scholars, policymakers, designers, and educators alike find themselves knotted increasingly within fabrics of sustainability, approached as an object of concern in education and technoscientific projects. In relation, scholars drawing from posthuman and new materialist thinking have begun to re-imagine sustainability. Considering human subjectivity as part of the world in its ongoing, reiterative becoming has introduced new possibilities to rethink responsibility in and for sustainable change. This research is rooted in my engaged practices of participatory design and education on violence, violence prevention, and non-violence, which form the empirical research terrain of this study. This dissertation includes four articles that inquire into the practices in question by exploring possibilities for nurturing non-violence—and by scrutinising responsible participatory practices in design. This synopsis re-engages with the results presented in the articles mentioned and participates in calls to rethink sustainability. In order to reconsider sustainability in and for practices of sustainable change, I develop theoretical thinking based on response-ability and touch, as discussed by Karen Barad and Donna Haraway. Through a diffractive, affirmative engagement with sustainability in the engaged practices of change-making, I aim to unfold the affordances of feminist (new) materialist renegotiations of ethics and responsibility, in order to inform responsible participatory practices of change-making and, in particular, change towards non-violence. This research offers insight into the intricate ways sustainability reconfigures in and through practices of change-making in participatory design, education, and everyday engagements for non-violence. I begin by proposing a thinking and practice of response-able engagement. Then, through the idea of touchable matters, I foreground how the co-constituted conditions of ethically sustainable response become reconfigured in the designerly, the researcherly, the pedagogical, and other everyday practices, challenging for a shift to a new mode of entangled response-ability for sustainable change and towards non-violence
Tiivistelmä Kestävyys on aikaamme läpileikkaava, sosiaalisiin ja ekologisiin epäkohtiin tarttuva haaste, joka yhdistää tutkijoita ja muita toimijoita moninaisina jaetun huolen ja interventioiden kohteina myös koulutuksellisissa ja teknotieteellisissä projekteissa. Posthumanistinen ja uusmaterialistinen ajattelu on haastanut ymmärryksiä kestävyydestä asettamalla inhimillisen toimijuuden erottamattomaksi osaksi maailman jatkuvia tulemisen ja tuottumisen prosesseja. Painopiste kestävyyden, muutoksen ja niihin liittyvien vastuullisuuksien tarkastelussa on siirtynyt arkisten käytänteiden moniulotteisiin kietoutuneisuuksiin. Väitöstutkimukseni sisältää neljä artikkelia, jotka perustuvat kahteen empiiriseen kokonaisuuteen. Työni aineisto on tuotettu tutkimalla työpaikkakiusaamiseen liittyvän osallistuvan suunnittelun vastuullisia käytänteitä sekä väkivaltaa, väkivallan ehkäisemistä ja väkivallattomuutta käsittelevää akateemista koulutusta. Väitöskirjaan sisältyvissä artikkeleissa olen tarkastellut pyrkimyksiä kohti väkivallattomuutta sekä muutokseen sitoutuneita ja siihen moninaisesti kietoutuvia käytänteitä. Työni yhteenveto-osassa työstän artikkeleissa esitettyjä osallistumista, refleksiivisyyttä, välittämistä ja väkivallattomuutta käsitteleviä tuloksia diffraktiivisesti. Työstämisen teoreettis-käsitteellisenä kumppanina toimivat Karen Baradin ja Donna Harawayn kosketusta ja vastuullisuutta käsittelevät keskustelut. Yhteenvedon tavoitteena on tarkastella feministisen (uus)materialistisen ajattelun mahdollisuuksia tuottaa uutta ymmärrystä kestävyydestä osana vastuullisia osallistuvia toimintatapoja muutoksen – ja erityisesti väkivallattomuuteen pyrkivän muutoksen – jokapäiväisissä käytänteissä. Kestävän muutoksen ja väkivallattomuuden mahdollisuudet tuottuvat osallistuvan suunnittelun, koulutuksen ja arjen käytänteissä moninaisin tavoin. Vastuullisuutta tarkastellessani esitän ajatuksen ”koskettavista kudelmista”, mikä kutsuu tunnistamaan, kuinka eettisen kestävyyden ja suhteisuuden mahdollisuudet ”kanssatuottuvat” arkisissa kohtaamisissa. Samalla se haastaa rakentamaan uudenlaista, tähän eettis-ontologiseen kietoutuneisuuteen sitoutunutta vastuullisuutta jokapäiväisissä suunnittelun, tutkimuksen, koulutuksen ja arjen pyrkimyksissä kohti kestävää muutosta ja väkivallattomuutta

This thesis is a contribution to feminist laboratory studies and a critical engagement with the natural sciences, or more precisely research on the biochemical workings and deadly relations of Alzheimer’s disease emanating from a year of field work in a Drosophila fly lab. The natural sciences have been a point of fascination within the field of gender studies for decades. Such sciences produce knowledge on what gets to count as nature and natural, healthy or sick, normal or not, and they have done it with great societal authority and impact throughout European modernity. However, feminist technoscience scholars argue that science and knowledge is socially produced, and political too. Concepts such as nature, animal, human, body, sex, and life itself are not simply given natural realities but phenomena processed through the naturecultures of the laboratory. Situated within such theoretical and methodological approaches, this thesis wonders how scientific facts about Alzheimer’s disease are made in the lab today. What kinds of realities, bodies and ethico-political concerns are enacted? Who gets to live and who gets to die in everyday laboratory practices? Theoretically, the thesis is grounded, particularly, within Karen Barad’s agential realism and posthumanist performativity, and as such it accounts for human and nonhuman entanglements through which AD is performed in the lab in relational ways. In other words, the thesis explores how AD is enacted in the bodies of transgenic fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), as these flies embody the disease, live and die with it. Last but not least, the thesis explores the materialities of death, dying, embodiment and biological waste in a biochemistry lab as constitutive parts of the produced knowledge about AD.
Denna avhandling utgör ett bidrag till feministiska laboratoriestudier och är en kritisk analys av naturvetenskaperna. Närmare bestämt är det en feministisk studie av forskning om Alzheimers sjukdom, dess biokemiska verkningar och dödliga relationer utifrån ett års fältarbete som labbtekniker i ett fluglabb. Naturvetenskaperna har under decennier fascinerat genusforskare. Dessa discipliner formar kunskapen om vad som räknas som natur och naturligt, hälsa och sjukdom, normalt eller inte, och de har gjort så med stor samhällelig auktoritet genom Europeisk modernitet. Forskare inom feministiska teknovetenskapliga studier har länge hävdat att vetenskap också är social praktik med politiska implikationer. Begrepp som natur, djur, mänskligt eller kropp, kön och livet självt kan inte tas för givna utan formas också i laboratoriets naturkultur. Med utgångspunkt i sådana feministiska teknovetenskaplig teoribildningar och metodologiska utgångspunkter bearbetar denna avhandling frågor om hur vetenskapliga fakta om Alzheimers sjukdom skapas i laboratoriet idag. Vilka kroppar, verkligheter och etisk-politiska förhållningssätt aktualiseras? Vem får leva och vem får dö i vardagliga laboratoriepraktiker? Teoretiskt bygger avhandlingen framför allt på Karen Barads agentiella realism när den diskuterar sammanvävningen mellan mänskligt och icke-mänskligt, samt det som kallas posthumanistisk performativitet, i relation till Alzheimers sjukdom som den förkroppsligas i transgena fruktflugor (Drosophila melanogaster) i laboratoriet. I särskilt fokus står relationerna som skapas inom den biokemiska forskningen kring död, biologiskt avfall och kroppslighet.

La present tesi doctoral examina una comunicació relacional com a objecte d'estudi per a la literatura. Aquesta comunicació es produeix entre autors i autores i lectors i lectores a través de les xarxes socials. Per a tals fins, utilitza una escriptora en particular, Toni Morrisson i una modalitat de xarxa social concreta, la seva pàgina oficial de Facebook. Utilitzant com a marc teòric el nou materialisme (Van der Tuin & Dolphijn, 2010) i una metodologia "difractiva" (Barad, 2007), aquesta tesi desenvolupa un concepte de comunicació literària basada en mecanismes que infereixen diferències substancials fonamentalment en dos aspectes: gènere i política.
La presente tesis doctoral examina una comunicación relacional como objeto de estudio para la literatura. Dicha comunicación se produce entre autores y autoras y lectores y lectoras a través de las redes sociales. Para tales fines, utiliza una escritora en particular, Toni Morrisson y una modalidad de red social concreta, su página oficial de Facebook. Utilizando como marco teórico el nuevo materialismo (Van der Tuin & Dolphijn, 2010) y una metodología "difractiva" (Barad, 2007), esta tesis desarrolla un concepto de comunicación literaria basada en mecanismos que infieren diferencias sustanciales fundamentalmente en dos aspectos: géenero y política. El marco teórico nuevo materialista lleva como principal premisa la ruptura de opuestos dicotómicos, tales como el binomio sexual entre hombres y mujeres. Por otra parte, la metodología difractiva se opone al "efecto espejo" en el cual las partes de la investigación (investigador o invcestigadora, metodología, instrumentos de medición y objecto de estudo, entre otros) son claramentes diferenciadas con el objeto de representar una realidad. Este punto de partida supone un cambio referencial por el cual buscamos procesos y no resultados. Así pues, en esta tesis encontramos que el objecto literario es la comunicación en sí (y no la obra o el autor o autora), y que en esta comunicación se produce una materialización de política basada en afinidades y no identidades y un concepto de género relacional situado (Haraway, 1991) racialmente. Estos conceptos teóricos se articulan empíricamente gracias al análisis de los afectos (Colman, 2008), o sentimientos, que se encarnan en las relaciones.
The present doctoral dissertation examines a relational communicacion as an object for Literary Studies. This communicacion between authors and readers is stablished through Social Networking Sites. For those means, it uses a concrete autor, Toni Morrisson and a particular Social Network, like her official Facebook page. Using New materialism (Van der Tuin & Dolphijn, 2010) as a theoretical framework and a "diffractive metodology" (Barad, 2007), this thesis develops a concept of literary communication based on mechanisms that produce differences on two main aspects: gender and politics. The new materialist framework postulates mainly breaking through opposite poles such as the sexual binary between men and women. On the other hand, the diffractive methodology is oppodef to the "mirroring effect" in wich the different elements of a research (such as researcher, methodology, apparatuses and object of study, among others) are separated from each other to represent reality. This requires a referential shift to look for processes instead of results. Therefore, in this thesis we find that the object of Literary Studies is the communication itself (not the novel or the author), and this communication materializes politics based uppon affinities and not identities and a concept of gender as relationally "situated" (Haraway, 1991) in a racial context. Theses theoretical concepts are empirically articulated thanks to the analysis of affects (Colman, 2008), or feelings, embedded in those relationships.

This thesis brings together a fascination with the city and a keen interest in the knowledge process. The point of departure is the bodily, sensory and emotional experience. That the author uses her own perceptions and experiences and is preoccupied with her own knowledge process means that she writes herself into an autoethnographic context. She also experiments with the writing and allows it to take on a more literary form as she writes about her own sensory impressions and feelings. The term rhythmanalysis is employed as a way of assessing, exploring, interpreting and understanding the world that embraces the embodied experience. Human beings are embodied beings, a claim we can make by referring to our own experiences as well as how we perceive, communicate and interact. The study delves into two aspects of rhythmanalysis, first as a way of describing the knowledge process as rhythm-analytical, which implies that bodily experiences are equally important as intellectual ones, and secondly as a way of talking about the city as polyrhythmic. It follows upon the latter that embodied rhythmanalysis of the city is possible. The rhythmanalysis may ultimately be seen as a project aimed at overthrowing the Cartesian dualism between body and mind. That we are embodied has a methodological consequence that is as simple as it is essential: the scholar exists in the world she studies. The researcher is not a neutral observer. She is a co-creator. She is a body, placed in time, space and history. She is situated, which means that her knowledge is also situated. Thus, the rhythmanalysis encompasses the body, the senses and feelings, and can be described with one key word: movement. It finds support in theories that acknowledge the fluid, the becoming, the situated, the performative, the relational, the dynamic, the material. It seeks methods that experiment, that focus on practices rather than discourses, that are preoccupied with a movable world rather than a static one.

Avhandlingen handlar om användandet av assisterad befruktning i Danmark och Sverige. Teknologierna är intressanta eftersom de skapar möjligheter för barn att födas som annars inte skulle ha blivit till. De utmanar också normerande föreställningar om sexualitet, etnicitet, normalitet, ålder, kön och släktskap. Genom att undersöka vad som sker i mötet mellan normer, patienter, personal, teknologi och könsceller på fertilitetskliniker och spermabanker, skapar avhandlingen insikt i de skapelse- och förändringsprocesser som äger rum. Analysen visar hur beslutsfattare, personal och patienter förhåller sig till teknologierna. Den genomgående princip som används för att sätta etiska gränser utgörs av försök att imitera naturen. Denna princip omförhandlas och förändras dock ständigt. Omförhandlingar kan äga rum i möten med teknologin eller genom kroppars sätt att reagera på. De äger också rum då naturaliseringsprincipen skapar absurda situationer, t.ex. sådana i vilka patienter och deras kommande barn stigmatiseras och marginaliseras. Med utgångspunkt i den empiriska analysen bidrar avhandlingen dessutom till en teoretisk förståelse av hur materialiseringsprocesser (skapelseprocesser) äger rum i mötet mellan diskurser och materiell agens. Avhandlingen är skriven med utgångspunkt i feministiska och teknovetenskapliga studier och kan läsas som ett bidrag till feministisk ny materialtetsteori och metod.
This thesis investigates the use of assisted reproduction in Denmark and Sweden. Assisted reproduction is fascinating, because it enables the creation of children who would not have been born otherwise. At the same time, it challenges existing norms concerning sexuality, ethnicity, normality, age, gender and kinship. The processes of creation and change that take place at fertility clinics and sperm banks are analyzed by exploring the encounters between norms, patients, employees, technology and gametes. The analysis shows how legislators, patients and employees relate to and manage the use of these technologies. It illustrates that the predominant principle used for setting ethical limits is the mimicking of nature. However, this principle is constantly negotiated and changed. One reason is that negotiations take place in an encounter with the agency of the technology, gametes and body. Another reason for the change of the naturalization principle is that absurd situations, such as stigmatization and marginalization of patients and their technologically conceived children, take place. The empirical analysis also contributes to a theoretical understanding of how materialization processes (creation processes) take place in the encounters between discourse and material agency. The thesis is written with a point of departure in feminist science studies, and can be read as a contribution to feminist new materialist theory and method.

abstract: This study weighs the connection of environmental crisis with race and gender in different cases of environmental crisis and conflicts. The study documents how Indigenous cosmologies and cosmopolitics, and scientific arguments converge in unexpected alliances in the advent of environmental crises. This research focuses on specific instances, or situations related to environmental justice movements addressing the environmental crisis in Mexico (and its convergences to other similar cases). I examine and present a discussion of the research methodologies and methods used to study the ‘environment’ as well as indigenous cosmologies and cosmopolitics. With this, I embark on a research that includes feminist decolonial theory, eco-feminism and material feminisms into a larger project for autonomy and decoloniality. In particular, I discuss one of the concepts that have caught the attention of those studying race and ethnicity in the Americas: mestizaje as an ordinal principle in the context of Mexico. Also, I discuss the inscriptions of the mestiza body in relation to the materiality of race and gender in the context of Latin America. It is shown how the discourse of mestizaje is tangled with the idea of a modern civilization, such as in the Mexican state. Overall, this research analyzes different responses to environmental crises; from environmental activists, community organizers to plastic artists and scientific experts. Also, it includes a literary analysis of contemporary indigenous literatures to show how state sponsored violence and settler colonialism have an incidence in gender violence by placing the female body close to nature. As global environmental problems have risen, this research contributes to the understanding of the underlying factors in environmental crises and conflict that have been overlooked. Herein lies an important possibility to reach a broader audience in different disciplines, ranging from indigenous studies to the global politics of human rights. Furthermore, this research aims to contribute to the work of environmental activists, scholars and scientists with regard to the understanding of how different arguments are used in research and advocacy work, and how they can integrate an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach when addressing environmental justice cases.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2016

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
This project endeavors to move beyond traditional conceptualizations of voice in conventional qualitative research and instead focuses on embodied, liminal experiences of Latina adolescents, the intersections of identity, gender, spirituality, ethnicity, etc., how these junctures broadly impact mental health, and more specifically, how we perceive mental health and well-being within educational institutions. The study draws upon an intervention pilot study that sought to increase resiliency and self-mastery in Latino adolescents while simultaneously reducing their depressive symptoms. However, this project aims to take these findings and focus upon the complex and multiple factors that influence depression, including citizenship status, trauma in crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, and racial and gendered oppression specific to the experiences of Latina adolescent immigrants. Thus, this project explores ways in which four Latina adolescents make sense of their lived experiences through a critical feminist theoretical framework that integrates post/anti colonial feminism. The framework provides a nuanced conceptualization of power, oppression, and marginalization that creates opportunities to explore alternative notions of thinking that encourages new paths to transform interdisciplinary, university, community, and family relationships surrounding mental health concerns within educational institutions. Finally, theory, research, epistemology, and ontology are interwoven to inform a methodology that is fluid, interchanging, and always becoming.

I find that making sense of what confounds us is often instinctual, preconditioned and resolute, and without conscious thought. This practice-­led project is grounded in difficulties during my human science studies when in a moment of clarity, I envisaged the complexities of human biology within a confined order of patterning. Out of a perceived chaos grew a system using colour and ordering to sequence fluid arrangements. My project investigates the proposition of autopoietic patterning in dynamic human biology. I consider the visually creative potential of fluid arrangements inherent in physiology that drives seepage across fragile membranes. My investigation focusses on the human organism’s visual qualities in its smallest, less obvious, yet visually fascinating parts. I explore notions grounded in microscopic observations that lead to greater emphasis on the performance and interactions of materials in the studio, referencing observations of human matter. I frame this studio investigation within conceptions of material agency offered by new materialism. My creative output is a speculative study expressing human physiology in colour and forms of fluid patterning. I use pigments in a viscous medium that allows additions of colour to flow between applications. The proposition is strengthened in the studio in an extended use of diagnostic tools;; a microscope, glass-­slides, a petri dish. I build on empirical data obtained from clinical observations in the pathology laboratory. The referent in more recent works is in historic models of biological complexity that captured the microscopic in x-­ray diffraction pattern – a revolutionary process that advanced our understanding of the structure of matter. I frame this expression of the human organism and its processes in illuminated colour and transparent layering addressing this significant time in history, capturing the microscopic and the speculative in two and three-­dimensional models. I situate my project in contemporary artworks from artists that support my concepts. I include Justine Cooper, Annette Messager, and Mona Hatoum for their methods addressing invasive medical interventions and our failing bodies. Anna Dimitriu engages with biology and bioscience with a focus on bacteria and bioinformatics. My engagement with colour identifies with James Turrell’s use of colour and light in installations creating affective environments. The immersive qualities of Mark Rothko’s and Barnett Newman’s colour fields inform my staging of embodied encounters that evoke seepage across boundaries. Dustin Yellin’s corporeal sculptural works elicit an embodied experience that inspirits my use of layered materials. The project explores theories amplified in feminist writings that challenge and repudiate the gendered notion that biological matter is selectively passive or inert, so encouraging others to embrace dynamic biology at the phenomenological level. In addition, I embrace Stacy Alaimo’s affective proposition that we inhabit trans-­corporeality within the space where the fleshy corporeal human and its complex systems are inseparable from nature and environment. My project bridges the highly intellectualised and abstracted conceptions of human biology with an affective encounter with materiality, immersing viewers in the biology they often fail to acknowledge.

In Resurrection Flowers and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Kaden C. Milliren seeks to evaluate and analyze differences in perspectives and perceptions of the environment between Western and Indigenous worldviews and, consequentially, the different attitudes and ways-ofbeing with the world that emerge as a result. In so doing, Milliren discusses the sacredness of local landscape for Indigenous peoples and the role its spiritually-significant elements impact an entire cosmology. These important elements of sacred local ecologies are socially, materially, and symbolically rhetorical, ascribing meaning onto all elements of worldview from faith to ceremony, oratory to cultural tradition, physical sustenance to ancestral connection. In feedback and feedforward loops, these aspects of cosmology continue to ascribe meaning onto one another, affecting and being affected by each other, continually weaving together meaning and, therefore, rhetorical mattering.

The legal philosophy known as Earth Jurisprudence sets a countercultural objective for Western law and legal theory by valuing the establishment of a mutually beneficial human–earth relationship over the satisfaction of exclusively human interests. I propose a novel strategy for meeting this objective: reimagining the human in the human–earth relationship. The original contribution of this thesis is the reconceptualisation of the human legal subject based on the non-dualised construct of human identity suggested by combining insights into the nature of reality from a variety of contemporary fields of scientific and critical inquiry. The project begins with an analysis of the traditional Western construct of human identity, which is structured as a dualism. In this view, humans are understood to be of a separate and superior order to nature. The thesis dissects the set of assumptions that conspire to form, in the first instance, a primary reason/nature dualism from which branch not only the singular human/nature dualism, but also an interlocking set of dualisms relegating non-human and some human Others to the underside of the hierarchy. A dynamic of radical discontinuity in the human–earth relationship is established by this complex, which precludes mutuality. I characterise thinking within and about Western law and legal theory as anthropocentric, given the anthropocentrism of Western culture. The extent to which this is true is examined in this thesis, first in a discussion of an emblematic case in which the fate of particular non-human subjects is decided without regard for the needs and interests of the same, then in a critique of Earth Jurisprudence in which I conclude that the philosophy is insufficiently disruptive of the foundational reason/nature dualism. The crux of this thesis is the contention that systems can be transformed by strategic intervention at key points at which the system is upheld or perpetuated. I argue that the legal subject is one such point in the Western social imaginary of mastery and control. More specifically, I argue that a construct of human identity, the master identity, to which the prevailing concept of the human legal subject (the rational, autonomous individual) corresponds, keeps the anthropocentrism of this system in play. Each of the contemporary concepts-in-use of the human legal subject has an origin story and various disciplines from which it draws its supporting ontological, epistemological and ethical commitments. The thesis draws from new cosmology, Big History, new materialisms and posthuman critical theory to tell the origin story for the proposed alternative legal subject, the Cosmic Person. By accounting for the earthliness of human existence, by which I mean the normative materiality of being embodied, embedded and entangled in a single plane of existence comprising a natureculture continuum, the Cosmic Person as legal subject takes into direct account the needs and interests of the whole community of life on Earth. Finally, the thesis examines the Waimea River Watershed Mediation Agreement as a case study in which the Cosmic Person is prefigured in a performance of posthuman normativity.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Adelaide Law School, 2019

Tese no âmbito do Doutoramento em Sociologia, apresentada à Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra.
As vitórias alcançadas nas últimas décadas pelas teorias feministas pós-estruturalistas no combate ao naturalismo e ao essencialismo biológico cobraram um alto preço; mais especificamente, essas batalhas parecem ter sido ganhas à custa da renúncia à materialidade corporal. De fato, ao situarem nos textos, nos sentidos, nas epistemes e nos processos de significação cultural seus objetos praticamente exclusivos de interesse e de escrutínio, tais posicionamentos construtivistas popularizaram determinado entendimento sobre o corpo que o assemelha a uma mera “posição discursiva”. A presente tese é animada pela compreensão de que as teorias feministas, na atualidade, veem-se confrontadas com a urgente tarefa de novamente “levar a matéria a sério” (Alaimo, 2010: 6). O estudo aborda a questão de como reinserir a problemática da materialidade nos atuais debates feministas sobre corpo de maneira a não sucumbir à concepção moderna de matéria enquanto pura facticidade biológica, inerte e autossuficiente (posição que, tradicionalmente, fundamentou naturalismos e essencialismos antifeministas) e, simultaneamente, não capitular aos impulsos linguísticos totalizantes que marcam grande parte dos construtivismos hoje dominantes na área. No âmago da tese, reside uma tentativa de demonstrar, a nível tanto teórico quanto empírico, que a modalidade de neomaterialismo proposta pela física e feminista norte-americana Karen Barad, nomeada de “realismo agencial”, oferece à sociologia e aos estudos feministas promissoras ferramentas político-teóricas (e nos convida a pensar muitas outras) capazes de superar as contendas circulares entre construtivismos totalizantes e naturalismos reducionistas que atualmente marcam e limitam grande parte dos debates acerca dos corpos e das subjetividades. De modo a ilustrar as potencialidades do edifício político-teórico desenvolvido por Barad para abordagens feministas do corpo situadas no domínio das ciências sociais, algumas das principais propostas do realismo agencial são operacionalizadas na análise de um fenômeno específico: as vivências de mulheres com uma forma rara de malformação do aparelho reprodutor, que se manifesta na ausência congênita do útero (ou presença do órgão em forma rudimentar) e agenesia vaginal (presença de 1/3 do canal vaginal), conhecida na literatura médica como Síndrome de Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH). A partir daquilo que nomeamos de perspectiva metodológica qualitativa de viés (auto)crítico, o estudo promove leituras difrativas dos relatos das entrevistadas quando tratando das capacidades reprodutivas de seus corpos e do encurtamento congênito do canal vaginal associado à Síndrome. Das leituras conduzidas, emerge uma compreensão alternativa de corpo que o identifica como uma entidade ontologicamente relacional, uma materialidade dinâmica e detentora de limites mutáveis, cuja aparência de estabilidade, unidade e autossuficiência é tecida contextualmente por/em redes nunca estáticas de agências heterogêneas, incluindo forças de ordem política, econômica, cultural, tecnológica, entre outras. No decorrer das análises, somos também convidados a repensar, mediante uma visada atenta à materialidade de actantes humanos e não-humanos, noções de importância fulcral para os estudos feministas contemporâneos, tais como performatividade, agência, processos de materialização e práticas discursivas. A presente tese contribui no sentido de suprir duas carências distintas. Primeiramente, no campo das pesquisas sobre a MRKH, que tem sido historicamente dominado por abordagens das ciências médicas, o estudo representa uma rara aproximação sociológica e informada pelas perspectivas feministas. Em paralelo, reconhecemos a carência, em espaços lusófonos, de estudos que, partindo das teorias feministas, se dediquem especificamente à operacionalização do realismo agencial de Karen Barad em análises empíricas.
The victories achieved in recent decades by post-structuralist feminist theories in their struggles against naturalism and biological essentialism have taken a heavy toll; more specifically, such battles seem to have been won at the expense of renouncing the materiality of the body. In fact, by placing their exclusive objects of interest and scrutiny in texts, meanings, epistemes, and processes of cultural signification, these constructivist positions popularized a certain understanding of the body that regards it as a mere "discursive position". The present thesis is animated by the understanding that feminist theories, today, are faced with the urgent task of “taking matter seriously” (Alaimo, 2010: 6). The study addresses the question of how to reintroduce the issue of materiality in the current feminist debates about the body in such a way as not to succumb to the modern conception of matter as an inert and self-sufficient biological facticity (a position that, traditionally, has based anti-feminist naturalisms and essentialisms) and, simultaneously, as not to capitulate to the totalizing linguistic impulses that characterize a large part of the constructivisms that are currently dominant in the area. At the heart of the thesis lies an effort to demonstrate, at both a theoretical and empirical level, that the modality of new materialism proposed by American physicist and feminist Karen Barad, called “agential realism”, offers promising political and theoretical tools for sociology and feminist studies (and invites us to think of many others) capable of overcoming the circular strife between totalizing constructivisms and reductionist naturalisms that currently mark and limit much of the debates about bodies and subjectivities. To illustrate the potentialities of the political and theoretical framework developed by Barad for feminist approaches to the body in the domain of social sciences, some of the main propositions of agential realism are operationalized in the analysis of a specific phenomenon: the experiences of women with a rare form of malformation of the reproductive system, which manifests itself through congenital absence of the uterus (or presence of the organ in rudimentary form) and vaginal agenesis (presence of 1/3 of the vaginal canal), known in the medical literature as Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH). Based on what we name as a qualitative methodological perspective of (auto)critical bias, the study promotes diffractive readings of the interviewees' accounts when dealing with the reproductive capabilities of their bodies and the congenital shortening of the vaginal canal associated with the Syndrome. From the readings conducted, an alternative understanding of the body emerges, one that identifies it as an ontologically relational entity, a dynamic materiality with mutable limits, whose appearance of stability, unity, and self-sufficiency is contextually enacted through never static networks of heterogeneous agencies, including political, economic, cultural, and technological forces, among others. In the course of the analysis, we are also invited to rethink, without losing sight of the materiality of human and non-human actants, notions of central importance for contemporary feminist studies, such as performativity, agency, materialization processes and discursive practices. This thesis contributes towards filling two distinct needs. Firstly, in the field of studies on MRKH, which has historically been dominated by approaches from the medical sciences, the study represents a rare sociological effort informed by feminist perspectives. In parallel, we recognize the lack, in Portuguese-speaking spaces, of studies that, based on feminist theories, are specifically dedicated to the operationalization of Karen Barad's agential realism in empirical analysis.

Given the state of the planet at present —specifically, the linked global ecological and economic crises that conjure dark imaginings and nihilistic actualities of increasing resource depletion, poisonings, and wide-scale sufferings and extinctions—I ask What might we hope now? What points of intervention offer possibility for transformation? At best, the response can only be partial. The approach this thesis takes initiates from specific pre-discursive assumptions. The first understands current conditions as having been produced, and continuing to be so, through practices that enact and sustain neoliberal relations. Secondly, these practices are expressive of a subjectivity tied to a Cartesian worldview, which, therefore, needs to be interrupted at its foundational roots. Thirdly, the scaffolding that supports this subjectivity draws on Newtonian science and neo-Darwinian narratives deemed to be natural law and, therefore, ontological, immutable reality. Contrary to modernist thinking, I premise that these two strains, subjectivity and science, are neither autonomous nor ontological, but that they are materially and contingently integral. Finally, this thesis presumes that different and life-affirming trajectories are, in fact, desired. An integral framing of science and subjectivity provides a productive method of feminist science studies analysis and theorization. Observing the capitalist Western social imaginary through this lens reveals its philosophical and scientific infrastructures to be outdated and crumbling. Observing how emerging scientific narratives in quantum physics and systems-biology intersect with marginalized theories in process-philosophy and subjectivity reveals a life-affirming imaginary of difference, one that arrests nihilism and sets ethical trajectories in motion. Certain, though not all, percepts of feminist new materialism engage twentieth and twenty-first century sciences successfully to show that ethicality matters. Though many questions remain, this points auspiciously towards the possibility for a transformed politics of justice.

This inquiry has been concerned with identifying aesthetic languages that make visible relationships and processes that connect body and world beyond the surface of the skin. It hypothesised that aesthetic language provides a material connection which co-enables this exchange. Examining the aesthetic dimension of the embodiment-environment intersection, this inquiry reasoned, could make tangible the material continuum generated through transient processes of living. The key sites of the home and the landscape framed the scope of this research. The methodology used to undertake this research combined multi-artform practice spanning sculpture, video, installation, and drawing, visual diary-led observation and critical reflection, theoretical research, and critical engagement with the work of other artists and practitioners working in two- and three-dimensions. An examination of subjectivity and of aesthetics as an intersection of body and world centres this research. A new materialist perspective provides a logic and drive for scrutinising this intersection. New materialism unsettles traditional assumptions about the passivity of matter. It provides a framework for re-imagining the materiality of the world and the position of human subjectivity within it: a re-imagining, this research contends, that the current ecological crisis demands. The notion of aesthetics used in this inquiry is an embodied aesthetics that refers to the meaningful sensuousness that adheres and orients the body in the world. Ideas from John Dewey and the field of everyday aesthetics informed critical engagement in this embodied aesthetics through creative practice. This approach enabled a dialogue between special aesthetic experiences, everyday aesthetics, and habitual perception to emerge in the research. This research used aesthetics to examine how spaces are demarcated and different experiences enabled. Over time, the home as it is situated within the landscape became analogous for the body’s intertwining with the environment. In this context, the material passage of water through the home provided a powerful and instructive embodiment of this intertwining, revealing both the demarcation and the continuity of disparate spaces. The final body of artwork is an installation that integrates the key aesthetic languages developed through this inquiry to form a three-dimensional river that is animated with the everyday sounds of water and the textures of domestic warmth. It is titled Oikos, the Greek root for ecology. ‘Oikos’ means ‘whole house and dwelling place’. The artwork reflects the multi-layering of aesthetic relationships through which our bodies fuse with this world.