Women's Experimental Autobiography from Counterculture Comics to Transmedia Storytelling: Staging Encounters Across Time, Space, and Medium
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Women's Experimental Autobiography from Counterculture Comics to Transmedia Storytelling: Staging Encounters Across Time, Space, and Medium Dissertation Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Ohio State University Alexandra Mary Jenkins, M.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Jared Gardner, Advisor Sean O’Sullivan Robyn Warhol Copyright by Alexandra Mary Jenkins 2014 Abstract Feminist activism in the United States and Europe during the 1960s and 1970s harnessed radical social thought and used innovative expressive forms in order to disrupt the “grand perspective” espoused by men in every field (Adorno 206). Feminist student activists often put their own female bodies on display to disrupt the disembodied “objective” thinking that still seemed to dominate the academy. The philosopher Theodor Adorno responded to one such action, the “bared breasts incident,” carried out by his radical students in Germany in 1969, in an essay, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis.” In that essay, he defends himself against the students’ claim that he proved his lack of relevance to contemporary students when he failed to respond to the spectacle of their liberated bodies. He acknowledged that the protest movements seemed to offer thoughtful people a way “out of their self-isolation,” but ultimately, to replace philosophy with bodily spectacle would mean to miss the “infinitely progressive aspect of the separation of theory and praxis” (259, 266). Lisa Yun Lee argues that this separation continues to animate contemporary feminist debates, and that it is worth returning to Adorno’s reasoning, if we wish to understand women’s particular modes of theoretical ii insight in conversation with “grand perspectives” on cultural theory in the twenty-first century. I argue that the separation between theory and praxis becomes visible in the history of women’s experimental autobiography across media, in which the boundary between self and subculture can be delineated. In this project, I look at a contemporary transmedia storyworld that animates this conversation. In Felicia Day’s comedy Web series The Guild, six introverted gamers collaboratively navigate both the complex storyworld of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and daily life in suburban Los Angeles. The Web series is complemented by a series of comic books, which transform the forward-moving, third- person storytelling of the show into open-ended first-person accounts of life as a member of the guild. I argue that these comics represent the characters’ capacity for theoretical insight, and, following Adorno’s concept of the sedimented history embedded in contemporary art, I read The Guild comics as a series of invitations into the history of women’s writing since the 1960s. By excavating this history, I find a range of women writers who enact what Adorno calls “think[ing] bodily” without succumbing to the fallacies of essentialism (Lee 7). In my first chapter, I place underground comix legend Aline Kominsky-Crumb in conversation with The Guild: Codex, which uses the logic of autobiographical comics to offer an experimental künstlerroman for the digital era. In my second chapter, I place Audre Lorde’s 1982 biomythography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name in conversation with The Guild: Tink, which shows how a woman of color uses her in-game avatar to behave as a pop-culture savvy trickster in a complex media landscape. iii In my third chapter, I place Alison Bechdel’s 2012 graphic memoir Are You My Mother? in conversation with The Guild: Zaboo in order to examine the contemporary genre of the “boutique bildungsroman.” iv Acknowledgments I would like to express my deepest thanks to the individuals who made this dissertation project possible. First and foremost, I must thank my advisor, Jared Gardner, who, since 2008, has devoted endless amounts of time and energy to supporting my unconventional path through Ohio State’s doctoral program in English. He sent me to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum during my second summer in Columbus, and it was there that I fell in love with underground comix, and found the archive that would shape my dissertation research. I am doomed to underappreciate him, because wherever his discerning collector’s finger points, I find something I needed. Sean O’Sullivan has spent more hours than I can count listening to me talk about my evolving views on serial and transmedia storytelling, ethics and anti-foundationalism, and Six Feet Under’s Olivier Castro-Staal. Without his generosity, patience, and kindness, I would have abandoned this project long ago. In a single thirty-minute conversation, Robyn Warhol can tell me exactly what I need to hear to transform observations into arguments. Her encyclopedic knowledge of feminist theory and her nuanced writing feedback have been invaluable to me. v Others in the Ohio State English Department have given me crucial guidance and support, as well, especially Brenda Brueggemann, Joe Ponce, Ethan Knapp, Koritha Mitchell, Galey Modan and Frederick Aldama. Leila Ben Nasr deserves recognition for her absolute selflessness and commitment to her fellow graduate students’ successes, especially mine. Anne Langendorfer and Anne Jansen have shared their wisdom with me at crucial points during the dissertation writing process. As anyone who knows her will testify, Kathleen Griffin is the woman who makes all Ohio State English dissertations possible, and mine is no exception. I am also indebted to academic mentors from previous institutions, especially Marco Abel. In many ways, this dissertation is a direct result of my first popular culture studies course, which I took with him at Penn State in the summer of 2002. It is because of him that I have been reading Adorno for twelve years, and I cannot imagine a better anchor for my critical archive. The late Nicholas P. Spencer was instrumental in historicizing my Adorno obsession, and connecting it with a long genealogy of Marxist, anarchist and utopian thought. Barbara DiBernard and Amelia Maria de la Luz Montes introduced me to lesbian critical paradigms articulated by writers like Emma Pérez and Adrienne Rich, who changed my thinking indelibly. One of the central ideas of contemporary philosophy is friendship in thought, and, in that spirit, I must thank those who have offered me no more and no less than their genuine friendship. To Chris Lewis, Jenn and Piper Russ, Emily Strouse, Andrea Crow, Didi Ray, and Michael LaBant, I offer my sincerest gratitude. I should also thank my circle of virtual friends, who offer me stability and a sense of belonging. For sharing my joy in experimental self-fashioning, and for teaching me so much about critical reading vi and conscious living, I thank all of you. I am not exaggerating when I say that the Glen Echo Bird Club was instrumental in helping me to finish my dissertation. The gift of connecting with the most beautiful features of one’s local environment is precious, and the generosity and knowledge the club represents to me are unparalleled. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their unwavering support throughout this long process. My parents have always prioritized my education over everything else, instilling in me the belief that there is no greater gift than free thought. My sister has shared her home, her life, and her friends with me, offering me both beautiful writing retreats in the Berkeley Hills, and invigorating conversations with science geeks. The San Francisco Bay Area is a special place for anyone invested in the intertwined history of counterculture and digital culture, and I feel blessed to have spent my time there feeling at home. vii Vita May 2006……………….…..B.A. in English and German, Pennsylvania State University May 2008……………………….…M.A. in English from University of Nebraska-Lincoln 2008-2013…Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: English viii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………v Vita………………………………………………………………………………………..vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: The Afterlife of Counterculture in Women's Autobiography……………..…70 Chapter 2: The Alternative Literary Cultures of the 1980s and 1990s: Black Feminism, Girls’ Lives and Queer Comics…………………………………………………………163 Chapter 3: The Twenty-First-Century Boutique Memoir of Intellectual Development..252 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...347 References………………………………………………………………………………361 ix Introduction [P]opular culture is no longer confined to certain forms such as novels or dance music, but has seized all media of artistic expression. The structure and meaning of these forms show an amazing parallelism, even when they appear to have little in common on the surface (such as jazz and the novel). - Theodor Adorno, “How to Look at Television” (160) Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption. In a world with many media options, consumers are choosing to invest deeply in a limited number of franchises rather than dip shallowly into a larger number. Increasingly, gamers spend most of their time and money within a single genre, often a single franchise. We can see the same pattern in other media- films (high success for certain franchises, overall declines in revenue), television (shorter spans for most series, longer runs for a few), or comics (incredibly