Browsing by Author "Connor, Geneva"
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- ItemiAnorexic : a body politics of pro-anorexia and cyborgs : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand(Massey University, 2012) Connor, GenevaThe pro-anorexia movement online is a topic of much contention in medical, psychological and public arenas. While psychology has located the source of Anorexia Nervosa within the individual, taking up a historically, socially and culturally contextual perspective enables an understanding of pro-anorexia through the genealogical examination of anorexia, women‟s embodiment, social movements and technologies. What emerges is the production of a pro-anorexic cyborg, lived both metaphorically and literally by modern Western women experiencing anorexia. Examining the textual content of online pro-anorexia communities allows for a discursive analysis of the complex pro-anorexic voice. What this voice constructs is female embodiment characterised by multiplicity, contradiction, information, connection, blurred boundaries, disrupted dualisms, non-innocence, simulated consciousness and political resistance lived through a troubled, biologically restricted female body. Through the use of cyborg metaphor, this thesis argues that pro-anorexia online is fervent resistance to patriarchal femininity in a way that produces tolerable female embodiment.
- ItemThe impossible feast of the uncanny technowoman : a plural feminist cyborg writes of the possibilities for science fiction and potent body politics : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū Campus, New Zealand(Massey University, 2019) Connor, GenevaThis research embodies Donna Haraway’s (1991) feminist cyborg as a potent political figure for women and their bodies in the 21st century West. The violences done to women all too often define them (Malabou, 2011), confining them to the heterosexual matrix characterised by their objectification and ‘excesses.’ The multiplicities and pluralities of ‘woman’ disrupt traditional psychological science that counts and categorises. Re-routing psychology through the hybridity and non-fixity of the science fiction genre, new possibilities for psychological knowledge production emerge, including figures (such as cyborgs), art installations and hyperdimensional arachnids through which to think new thoughts (Haraway, 2016). Through the figure of a feminist cyborg, ‘woman’ can be understood as politically potent through her multiplicities, partialities, simultaneities and contradictions. After rendering Haraway’s feminist cyborg through the science fiction genre, the thesis takes on a creative form to re-think the notion of apocalypse, re-theorise the uncanny, then explore a potently networked series of figures, internet users and movements (such as Human Barbies, internet folklore, pro-rape forums) that structure women’s bodies in ways that re-assert the heterosexual matrix, as well as in ways that re- build women outside of the heterosexual matrix. Re-figuring ‘woman’ outside of the heterosexual matrix could perhaps open new spaces in which to think women’s body politics differently in perpetually networked, ever-expanding technoworlds.