Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Discursive Departures: A Reading Paradigm Affiliated With Feminist, Lesbian, Aesthetic And Queer Practices (With Reference To Woolf, Stein And H.D.) (Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Hilda Doolittle), Tamara Ann Ramsay

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In her conclusion to Bodies That Matter Judith Butler posits that “if the power of discourse to produce that which it names is linked with the question of performativity, then the performative is one domain in which power acts as discourse" (225). In this thesis I will adopt theories of the performative, as a metadiscursive mode of analysis, to allow me to articulate some of the ways in which reading is regulated by formations of discourse and power. I will argue that if reading is considered as a performative process then different paradigms of reading will name, and consequently produce, …