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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Invisible Monsters: Chuck Palahniuk’S Transgressive Look At A Hyperrealized Society, Jordan R. Trevarthen
Invisible Monsters: Chuck Palahniuk’S Transgressive Look At A Hyperrealized Society, Jordan R. Trevarthen
MSU Graduate Theses
By critically analyzing Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters, I was able to conclude that the transgressive portrayal of hyperrealized consumerism warranted a close examination into the value American society places on an individual’s ability to replace authenticity for consumer obedience. Palahniuk’s dangerous representation of the body throughout the novel serves to highlight numerous ways in which a consumer transgresses against their own physical and mental well-being to achieve happiness constructed by capitalistic agendas. By using French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality in connection with gender, disability, and feminist theory and ecocriticism, I attempt to deconstruct the neoliberal ideology to which …
Flesh In Line With The Mind : Gender In Caitlin Kiernan’S The Drowning Girl., Sarah Buckley
Flesh In Line With The Mind : Gender In Caitlin Kiernan’S The Drowning Girl., Sarah Buckley
College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses
This paper analyzes how Caitlyn R. Kiernan in her novel The Drowning Girl characterizes gender identity, particularly in regards to women, both transgender and cisgender. The book's characterization of gender roles for cisgender men, cisgender women, and transgender women, while seeming on the surface to subvert sexist stereotypes, reproduces the pitfalls of feminist literary criticism popularized in the 1970s and 1980s. Notably, such themes include viewing women's madness as a method of transcending masculine rationality, a dichotomized essentialism of masculinity and femininity, and universalizing women's experience without regards to race, class, and nationality. Transgender autobiographical and literary archetypes employed in …
What Do You Think I Am?: On Perceiving Unintelligibility In The Nonbinary Gender Experience, James Warwood
What Do You Think I Am?: On Perceiving Unintelligibility In The Nonbinary Gender Experience, James Warwood
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
What does it mean to be “retired from gender,” and what role does such an identity play in daily life? Engaging with the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Judith Butler, this project attempts to elucidate the experience of nonbinary – that is, external to the male/female gender binary – gendered individuals, and the ultimate unintelligibility of that experience. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach to perception allows for an exploration of the social norms and regulations that determine how gender is defined in Western culture; combined with Butler’s significant work on gender and its performativity, phenomenology proves a useful tool for revealing the …