Thesis / Dissertation - ReFraming - Transformations of subjectivity through writing

Abstract

ReFramingl comprises an introduction, five chapters and a conclusion. The introduction describes the inception of the project in a study of writing practiceS among'a group of fiction writers, which identifies a process of self-transformation as an experience common to members of the group. Having identified this experience as the subject of study for a thesis,it gives a rationale for a choice of the work of poet and novelist Janet Frame,in that she enacts through her writing a process of subjective change that embodies the self-transformation identified as integral to creative practice. The introduction also signals the project of reading the work of Midhel de Certeau, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari alongside that of Frame, as theorists who offer approaches to understanding subjective trasformation. Chapter One places the work of Frame alongside that of the literary theorist and philosopher Michil de Certeau as a way of reading motivation in Frames's work. This chapter conducts a thematic survey of the novels' concerns with experiences of subjective confinement, using Certeau's figuration of language structures as sites of constraint and subversion, and linking Frame's response with Certeau's ideas of tactics and strategies. Chapter Two surveys the work of the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari . . on processes of creative thought as they relate to narratorial practices in Frame's novels, and relates her project to their concept of becoming, via the genre of minor literature. The chapter presents an argument that Frame's writing enacts a double becoming in that her creation of altered subjective space for herself also creates possibilities of collective change. Chapter Three conducts a chronological survey of Frame's novels, identifying structural elements and linguistic approaches to the creation of altered subjectivity in writing. It treats Frame's body of work a written entity characterised by an elaboration of the procedures and concepts through which subjective change can be understood. Another movement of double becoming is presented in the movement by which the praxis of each successive book forms'a 'theoretical" base for further praxis in the work that follows. Chapter Four approaches the relation of a reading/writing collective to this transformative theorising of subjectivity through a writing practice. The chapter ' begins by considering ways in which Frame gives voice to the connection of writing to the collective, tracing her characters' articuilation of a responsibility to speak before those who have been unable to do so. It goes on to consider the reflex of this. doubling of Frame's becoming,through responses of the collective to herwork. Chapter Five comprises a collection of poems written as part of the thesis, enacting and meditating on ways my own theoretical and writing practices have modified one another in the process of thinking and writing. The poems are also a direct response to Frame's work, thus forming an extension of the previous chapter's considerations of collectivity in reading/writing. The conclusion summarises the movement of ideas throughout the thesis using Frame's references to-point of view as a structuring device.