Schaub, Kerstin
Congratulations on passing the viva voce examination
on 21 June 2012.
Topic of the dissertation:
"As Written in the Flesh. The Human Body as Medium of Cultural Identity and Memory in Contemporary Fiction from New Zealand."
Scholarship according to the Bavarian Elite Promotion Act (1 November 2008-31 October 2010).
Contact address at the University of Würzburg:
Department of Institute of Modern Languages - English and American Studies
Email to Mrs Schaub
First supervisor: Prof. Dr Ralph Pordzik
Second supervisor:
Class in the graduate school: "Philosophy, Languages, Arts"
Doctorate in the Graduate School since SS 2008.
Abstract:
Mutilated and dismembered figures, pain, injuries, scars, tattoos and the perception of the environment through sensory impressions - in contemporary New Zealand literature, the phenomenon can be observed that many authors place the body or somatic experiences at the centre of their texts. The body is stylised as a document, a carrier of meaning and a projection surface in the sense of a postcolonial possibility of exchange and redefinition ("shaping the postcolonial body"). What role does the medium of the body play in a postcolonial context? What utopian content is associated with it? What new ways of reading and interpreting contemporary New Zealand literature open up from the perspective of neopragmatism and somaesthetics? What theories do theorists such as Foucault, Rorty and Shusterman oppose to post-structuralism and how can they be categorised in the field of postcolonial literature?
Based on philosophical theories on the transgression of political, societal and social boundaries and power structures through the emphasis on radical, non-linguistic, somatic experiences and perceptions as well as on the philosophical current of neopragmatism and somaesthetics, contemporary works of New Zealand literature will be analysed with regard to the medium of the body used in them. The philosophical theories on the effect and value of the somatic will be linked to the theoretical field of postcolonial literature in order to show that, in contrast to poststructuralist discourse approaches, the body is an effective medium in the design of postcolonial, utopian and transcultural identities as well as in the process of identity formation and cultural memory.
