Postmodern feminist readings of identity in selected works of Judith Thompson, Margaret Hollingsworth and Patricia Gruben

grantor: University of TorontoThis dissertation uses a strain of postmodernist thought, informed by discourse theory and inflected by feminism, to explore the articulation of identity in selected plays of Judith Thompson and Margaret Hollingsworth and selected films of Patricia Gruben. In these works, identity is configured as a process, an accumulation of temporary points of coherence. This dissertation demonstrates how identity is contingent on fluctuating relations of power. The notion of mastery in the relations of power is critiqued through the serialization of identity, through images of the body, and through the interruption and destabilization of narrative structure. As a result of the conflictual representation of identity, the spectator experiences a destabilized subject position; identification is both engaged and thwarted as several different possibilities for seeing the action are activated. 'Chapter One' discusses the theoretical parameters of this dissertation. The work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Stuart Hall is important in the development of a model of 'subject'/' identity' which is applied in later chapters. In 'Chapter Two ', selected plays by Judith Thompson are considered with particular attention to the dynamic of subject/identity and its inscription on the body. Here Julia Kristeva's notion of the abject is applied, for example, to illuminate the instability of identity. Margaret Hollingsworth's plays are remarkable for the foregrounding and destabilizing of narrative structure. In ' Chapter Three', Catherine Belsey's definition of classic realism is used to focus the discussion of Hollingsworth's plays. In 'Chapter Four', Gruben's work is considered with attention to both body and narrative. Audre Lorde's term "bio-mythography" is applicable, particularly when Gruben takes herself as her own object of inquiry. The results of these analyses are considered in 'Chapter Five'. In conclusion, identity as a site of ambiguity involves a relinquishment of a subject/object positioning and of binaries such as right/wrong, self/'other'. Given the destabilized subject position which is afforded the spectator, a different kind of viewing pleasure must be imagined. Temporary moments of intelligibility and mastery are activated, accompanied by an interrogation of the singularity and imperialism of these positions.Ph.D