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Reading Neuroscience: Ventriloquism As a Metaphor

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Reading Neuroscience: Ventriloquism As a Metaphor READING NEUROSCIENCE: VENTRILOQUISM AS A METAPHOR FOR MULTIPLE READINGS OF SELF by DAVID CENYDD LLOYD EVANS A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Darlington College of Arts October 2006 Universltjf^of Plymouth Item no. Shelfmark . ^ . ^ , A Abstract READING NEUROSCIENCE: VENTRILOQUISM AS A METAPHOR FOR MULTIPLE READINGS OF SELF by DAVID CENYDD LLOYD EVANS This thesis argues that the consensus models of self forwarded and upheld in the fields of discourse most concerned with its description, indicate a process of ventriloquism where agency slips between dual poles of body and mind and cannot be tracked to a hiding place. Just as with ventriloquism, in these models of self it is unclear who is doing the 'talking', and the skill of performance would seem to make the distinction almost redundant. The self seems a complicity of often conflicting agents when analysed as its constituent parts, and not there at all when viewed as a whole. This thesis takes as its starting point the confusion of Edgar Bergen when struggling to justify his philosophical conversations with his dummy: who is at work here, and where would agency reside in such a dialogue? That it serves us to assume the 'theory of mind' explanation for the behaviours of others, and by extension place ourselves within a scaffold of causal motives, says more for the use value of such a theory than for the presence of * mind'. Why this 'theory of mind' rather than any other? Because that is how mind and motive are presented to us during our acquisition of a spoken language. Mediation, transformation and referral: this thesis argues that these are qualities which characterize ventriloquism, and also the human means of perception and self-perception. There are a number of unfulfilled potentialities that reach their heaven in the unified self. The 'drive' to unity culls these lost futures and condemns us to another fulfilment, that of'oneness'. Most of these resolutions regarding self are predicated on what is 'in' and what is 'out'; how does the discriminatory self establish grounds for inclusivity or exclusivity? This thesis means to provide a lexicon of other possibilities regarding the conceptualization of self. List of Contents Explanation of Methodology and Review of Literature 1 Chapter One: Ventriloquism 15 Chapter Two: Hallucinations 41 Chapter Three: Double Talk 62 Chapter Four Riven Agency 82 Chapter Five: Memories 110 Chapter Six: Other Selves 124 Chapter Seven: Making up stories 142 Chapter Eight: Change 166 Chapter Nine: Death and Unconsciousness 186 List of References 208 List of Illastrations 1. Edgar Bergen in Charlie McCarthy's shadow page 16 2. Sectional drawing of a ventriloquial head, showing the action by which the mouth is worked page 29 3. Page from contemporary teaching handbook indicating the continued relevance of Vygotsky's theories of child development and speech acquisition page 42 4. We sometimes need, in acts of private self-confirmation, an image or object to represent ourselves - Six different expressions page 55 5. One person can represent a conflict of interests: this might be the logic that defines inner speech (Harry Baer ventriloquizes for King Ludwig II in the shadow of Hitler) page 60 6. Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Living - Death ventriloquizes for Hitler page 71 7. Front cover of Coram's How to become a Ventriloquist (1900) page 83 8. The ventriloquist asks that the audience imagine the inner life of a figurative body page 95 9. Pineal gland as centre of consciousness page 99 10. The dummy performs the leading role (Image of A. C. Astor and dummy) page 108 11. Popular culture magazine page indicating contemporary representation of Phineas Gage's accident and 'transformation' and its meaning for science page 167 12. Phineas Gage's skull and the tamping iron that went through it page 171 13. Days spent at the beach: the bright and reflected light page 175 14. Advertisement for Gamage's ventriloquial figures and heads (circa 1900)...page 184 15. A phrase like 'She is not the person she used to be' could be taken literally - Puppeteer Ilka Schbnbein ventriloquizes for her own corpse page 187 16. What does death constitute in a figure which can be conceived of as vivified only by the performative act of a third party? - An Automata Autopsy page 199 Acknowledgements When I started this thesis I knew it would have to be a 'heavy' topic of study which would sustain my interest and convince me always of its worth. That this study has prevented me from entering the studio during its course is compensated for by the pure joy of having spent all day every day writing for a very long time indeed. Creative bliss. Sometimes it is not so much reasons that impel a woric but something more like affliction. 1 could think of very little else while this research and writing were at hand and consequently those who live with me deserve an apology. Sorry. I would like to thank Dartington College of Arts for providing me with a part-time fee bursary during my time as an MPhil student. I wish to thank Professor Claire Donovan for supervising my PhD work. I also wish to thank Dr. Janet Hand of Goldsmith's College for advice and assistance above and beyond her former duties as second supervisor. Author's Declaration At no time during the registration for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy has the author been registered for any other University award. This thesis was supported with a part-time fee bursary and other financial assistance provided by Dartington College of Arts. Programme of study: Research degree External contacts: Dr. Janet Hand (Goldsmith's College) Format of submission for PhD: Written thesis Word count for main body of thesis: 67, 243 Date. Explanation of Methodology and Review of Literature The real motivations for this thesis are the saccades, the automatism and the ghostlike tissues that feature in the medical case histories I quote. For me, these spectral images have such potency that they dominate the mood and tone of the whole thesis. The purpose of this thesis, my interest in it, and its real aim is to set up the occasion for a certain sort of writing, and the writing of a certain few key passages of this thesis. The nature of those passages is more subjective, is more about mood or tone than the researched academic writing surrounding them. The academically inflected writing is intended as a *scene setting' that excuses those freer passages the need of a justification to exist. This thesis is not conventionally art work linked to a contextualizing document as practice-based PhDs are more usually presented. In this thesis the written document also enacts the ^practice* component of the PhD submission. This thesis was completed within the context of the Performance Writing field at Dartington College of Arts, and in this thesis the writing performs. The thesis concems performance, it features a performance, it constitutes a performance and it enacts a performance. In this thesis writing is made to perform. It perhaps explains my decision to pursue this research through an art college if I explain my truer motives for writing this thesis. This thesis was motivated by a desire to string together a number of literary images. These images are either drawn from medical texts or their inspiration came from my having read so many medically related texts. This thesis should be seen as spreading from image to image: a narrative work which flows in opposition to the narrative self propounded in neuroscientific literature. I wanted to set up these images on a stage where my writing could perform. 1 would like to compare the intentions and methods of this thesis with the kind of critical theory exemplified by Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and his World (1971) and Raoul Vaneigem's The Movement of the Free Spirit (1986/1994). Although far apart in subject matter each book may be said to constitute a postulate of freedom. Freedom may only exist as this postulate, but the freedom exists as long as one is a reader of the book, perhaps also having an afteriife as measure or standard of all things that continue after the book has finished. Similariy I would like this thesis to indicate a kind of freedom in postulating the self; a self that would be unavailable solely from the narrower remit of neuroscience, and yet is equally discernible in the research literature of that discipline like a ghost in the glass. In many areas of writing (PhD theses, scientific and philosophical writing included) it is enough to write *about* whatever is the subject of one's study. This thesis aims to enact its argument without resorting to representation: it will do a thing rather than say a thing. This thesis is meant less to critique certain works or even disciplines than to instigate or indicate another way of thinking entirely that renders those works irrelevant. This thesis is intended to be the point that those works miss. The method of this thesis is intended to unravel through whatever reading the reader gives this thesis. The reader's feeling on conclusion of the reading is whatever this thesis was meant to suggest. The last thing intended is just to provide another idea for the reader's * encyclopaedia'. In poetry workshops one is taught that good writing should show and not tell. This thesis does not want just to tell the reader a new idea; the work has to enable the reader to see things differently or to think differently.
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