harris, maia 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1373-0608
(2025)
PROPRIOCEPTION IS THE CRITICAL TERM THAT KNOWS
ITS SELF AS THE MID-THING.
Masters thesis, Concordia University.
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Abstract
This thesis investigates an emerging “literary proprioceptive discourse” by connecting contemporary uses of proprioception as a critical term to Charles Olson’s 1965 poem-essay “Proprioception.” Olson’s “Proprioception” figures proprioception as a mid-thing between subject and object. Within the logic of his projective framework, the proprioceptive reader toggles between making and becoming, a modality wherein composition operates as a form of reception and vice versa. Those subject-object affordances that Olson illuminates back in 1965 anticipate contemporary usages and treatments of proprioception as a critical term in literature. In the yet to be defined proprioceptive discourse, there is little agreement in how to understand proprioception. Some scholars treat proprioception as an approach to reading while some understand it as an object of interest. But almost across the board, there is the sense that proprioception as a critical term affords a window in to understanding how text objects bear on a reading subject, and vice versa. Within these frameworks, integrating proprioception into the reading act works as a mode for understanding the slippery subject-object relationship of reading.
| Divisions: | Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > English |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
| Authors: | harris, maia |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Degree Name: | M.A. |
| Program: | English |
| Date: | 25 March 2025 |
| Thesis Supervisor(s): | Camlot, Jason |
| Keywords: | Proprioception; Projection; Charles Olson; New American Poetry; Distributed Cognition; Phenomenology; Reception Theory; Black Mountain College; Maurice Merleau-Ponty; Affect Theory |
| ID Code: | 995163 |
| Deposited By: | Maia Harris |
| Deposited On: | 17 Jun 2025 16:49 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Jun 2025 16:49 |
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