Login | Register

Evoking affect, becoming movement : from writing that skates to the swaggering midlife female trick skater

Title:

Evoking affect, becoming movement : from writing that skates to the swaggering midlife female trick skater

Fawcett, Linnet (2006) Evoking affect, becoming movement : from writing that skates to the swaggering midlife female trick skater. PhD thesis, Concordia University.

[thumbnail of fawcett_linnet_2006.pdf]
Preview
Text (application/pdf)
fawcett_linnet_2006.pdf - Accepted Version
10MB

Abstract

This thesis questions how bodies in movement might be written into academic scholarship in a more vital and thought-provoking way. Taking as its central figure the swaggering midlife female trick skater and focusing in on dynamics characterising the public recreational ice skating scene at Montréal's Atrium le 1000 , it draws on informal conversations conducted with skaters to create writing that skates, and develop an understanding of where communicating (through language) and skating (as and beyond writing) intersect. Adopting a visceral and sentient approach to researching, analysing and writing up the body, this thesis challenges the paradoxical absence of 'the corporeal' in the scholarly corpus, and embraces a researcher positioning which, while investigating the felt intensities of passion and pleasure, makes no apologies for its own excessiveness. Informed by poststructuralist thinking around affect and by feminist explorations of the gendered body, this thesis points to how the introduction of a truly 'alternative' sporting body into a 'disorganised' sporting environment can significantly impact how moments of self-actualisation as realised through participating in an activity like skating unfold, and how the communicatory relationships that come of joining the rink's communal flow materialise and evolve. In drawing attention to the liberatory potential opened up by this new conception of 'alternative,' this thesis raises our awareness both of the limitations inherent in those scholarly approaches that try to 'capture' moving bodies and motile activities within meaning and representation, and in those sporting and communicatory regimes that seek to 'pin down' aging female bodies.

Divisions:Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > Communication Studies
Item Type:Thesis (PhD)
Authors:Fawcett, Linnet
Pagination:ix, 231 leaves ; 29 cm.
Institution:Concordia University
Degree Name:Ph. D.
Program:Communication Studies
Date:2006
Thesis Supervisor(s):Sawchuk, Kim
Identification Number:LE 3 C66C66P 2006 F39
ID Code:9237
Deposited By: Concordia University Library
Deposited On:18 Aug 2011 18:47
Last Modified:13 Jul 2020 20:06
Related URLs:
All items in Spectrum are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved. The use of items is governed by Spectrum's terms of access.

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Downloads per month over past year

Research related to the current document (at the CORE website)
- Research related to the current document (at the CORE website)
Back to top Back to top