CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Gonzalez, Nerea |
|---|---|
| Title | Touching the Texture of the Other: the Slimy and Queer Embodiment |
| Summary | From the contradictory materiality of viscosity as neither solid not liquid, but as an ambiguous in-between, I interrogate the ways embodiment has been theorized as a solid body to latter open a speculative slippery ground to imagine a queer and slimy phenomenology. I firstly touch-read upon the phenomenological texts of Sartre and Bachelard as symptoms of an ambiguphobic thinking, where the viscous appears depicted either as an aberrant fluid or as a fascinating state of matter - yet needing to be controlled or handled. I argue that this aversion or deceiving fascination for the slimy as part of the hegemony that solidity holds on the conceptualizations of the body of the Western phenomenological thinking. Through a queer feminist critique I expose that this aversion for the slimy signifies as threat to the borders of the solid subject, is also part of a gendered dynamic of binary exclusion where touching the Texture of the Other becomes a disgusting act. In the second part of the research I think-with the different properties of the viscous, such as its liminality, malleability and internal friction, as a playful trope to re-imagine corporeality, identity, and subjectivity from a queer perspective. As part of this speculation, I also touch upon performances, mostly focusing on the pieces Gootopia (2021) and Gootopia: the Treatment (2023) by Doris Uhlich, as sites of experimentation with other forms of (un)making and (un)doing the body. Here I imagine what a slimy body might be like, as a corporeality that thrives in encounter, vulnerability and difference, attempting to find ways towards a queer and viscous phenomenology. |
| Supervisor | Yoon, Hyaesin |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/gonzalez_nerea.pdf |
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