Ahern Dissertation Final

Affect in Epistemology: Relationality and Feminist Agency in Critical Discourse, Neuroscience, and Novels by Bambara, Morrison, and Silko by Megan Keady Ahern A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English and Women’s Studies) in The University of Michigan 2012 Doctoral Committee: Professor Michael Awkward, Chair Associate Professor Tiya Miles Associate Professor Joshua L. Miller Assistant Professor Sari M. van Anders Professor Priscilla Wald, Duke University © Megan Keady Ahern 2012 The contribution that follows is greatly indebted to the groundbreaking work of Toni Cade Bambara, Barbara Christian, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – brilliant, visionary women whom cancer took from us far too soon. Their work has such instructive and inspirational force still, so much potential still to unpack, so much theoretical and cultural work still to do. In the hope of in some small way carrying forward their legacy, this dissertation is dedicated to them. ii Acknowledgements Throughout the course of this project I have been spoiled with a truly extraordinary dissertation committee. The chapters that follow would not have been possible without my marvelous chair, Michael Awkward, who combines a persistent dedication to incisive feminist literary criticism, an openness to new interdisciplinary approaches, and the patience and humor necessary to see a project as unlikely as this one through. Tiya Miles has continually astonished and inspired me with her brilliant, endlessly thoughtful and kind guidance, and taught me the meaning of “constructive criticism” through her uniquely wonderful dedication to patient, contemplative readings that coax the greatest possible power and meaning from a work, and from it build toward new insights. Josh Miller has been a dynamite advisor ever since I came in to discuss language and Bourdieu with him as a first-year graduate student: his deft analyses have helped enormously to clarify my thinking, while his practical know-how and magnanimous encouragement have buoyed me along. Sari van Anders models better than anyone I know what feminist neuroscience looks like, and what it means to critique neuroscientific practice while maintaining a stake in its potential to disrupt constrictive norms of gender and sexuality – and her patience and generosity in reaching across the considerable disciplinary distance between behavioral neuroendocrinology and literary criticism have been remarkable. Priscilla Wald’s magnanimity in adopting this project, especially given her many concurrent leadership responsibilities, was extraordinary, and I am hugely grateful for her insights. In addition to my committee, I particularly want to thank Patrick Colm Hogan, whose endlessly magnanimous advising, insightful readings, collegial guidance, and almost alarmingly prompt e-mail responsiveness have given me more over the years than I could ever measure. I would not be where I am today, intellectually or in any other sense, without his invaluable mentorship. My formation in graduate school was also facilitated in important ways by the generous shepherding of outstanding graduate directors Gregg Crane, Debbie Keller-Cohen, and Adela iii Pinch, and the thought-provoking conversations I enjoyed with Rosie Ceballo, Elizabeth Cole, Anne Curzan, Sandra Gunning, David Halperin, June Howard, Larry La Fountain-Stokes, Marjorie Levinson, Jonathan Metzl, Valerie Traub, Alan Wald, and Jennifer Wenzel. Michigan’s firm emphasis on interdisciplinarity, and its fertile combination of rigorous, progressive inquiry with a collegial culture, have been pleasure to experience and will leave a lasting impression on me. I would never have gotten to graduate school in the first place without the gentle prodding of Barbara Will, who first planted the idea in my mind, and led me through the deep and abundant pleasures of sustained theoretical analysis. Peter Travis helped me to find my passion for feminist inquiry and refine my thinking about the complexities of gender. And Ivy Schweitzer made postdisciplinary feminist scholarship come alive in a course on the literature and psychology of mothers and daughters, the questions of which continue to echo throughout this dissertation, and has been an indefatigable source of thoughtful encouragement ever since. I am enormously grateful to these and all of the other excellent teachers and role models at Dartmouth who first taught me the significance of community in knowledge production, the promise of interdisciplinarity, and the meaning of “mothering the mind.” This hybrid dissertation traverses many different types of disciplinary conversations, and it would have been utterly lost without the benefit of a large number of different scholarly communities that have given it feedback and support. I am particularly thankful for the thoughtful workshopping that earlier drafts received from the 2009 Community of Scholars graduate workshop at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and from the members of the 2010 Mellon Humanities Dissertation Seminar under the elegant leadership of Linda Gregerson, here at Michigan; and from Eric Lott’s seminar at the 2009 Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth. My understanding of neuroscience and what it’s good for was updated and advanced in indispensable ways by the 2010 Neuroscience Boot Camp at the Penn Center for Neuroscience and Society, led by the heroic efforts of Martha Farah and co-taught by wonderfully illuminating and critical teachers such as Geoff Aguirre and Anjan Chatterjee. My thinking grew by leaps and bounds thanks to them and to the conversations with my classmates then and since, especially Tara Adyanthaya, Michael Chorost, Lauren Flicker, Victoria Pitts- Taylor, and Paul Root Wolpe. Finally, I was overwhelmed by good fortune in stumbling into an iv ideal capstone experience, the 2011 Summer Workshop on Cognitive Science/Neuroscience and the Humanities at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. There Steve Kosslyn taught me what it means to combine intellectual curiosity with intellectual generosity, and Anne Harrington’s kind, ingenious, and unflagging devotion to innovative interdisciplinary dialogues modeled what it means to have patience and faith in the conversation in the face of all the challenges that attend it. The rigorous and creative analyses and enormous intellectual energy of my fellow participants created an environment that was not only exciting but transformative. This dissertation further benefitted from the chance to be circulated and discussed at a number of conferences. An earlier version of the introduction was presented at the 2010 annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, where I organized a seminar, “The Materiality of Subjectivity: Dialoguing with the Sciences.” I am grateful for the insights of all the participants who attended, especially Gretchen Braun. A section of Chapter Two enjoyed feedback at the Neurosociety conference at Oxford organized by the Oxford Institute for Science, Innovation and Society and the European Neuroscience and Society Network in 2010. Nikolas Rose’s thought-provoking address to the conference, and his generous correspondence following it, helped to further my thinking about contemporary biopolitics. Finally, a version of Chapter Three was presented on a panel of the Cognitive Approaches to Literature Division at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association in 2012, where the discussion was enriching and altogether encouraging. The highlight of my research process was undoubtedly my pilgrimage to the Schlesinger Library archives at Radcliffe, where Lynda Leahy kindly and expertly retrieved the correspondence between Toni Cade Bambara and June Jordan as well as Adrienne Rich. Despite their relative youth, as archives go, being able to hold in my hands the letters that these extraordinary women wrote to one another was a thrill I’ll not soon forget, and I am grateful to Lynda for facilitating it. I am sincerely thankful to the Rackham Graduate School, the Department of Women’s Studies, the Department of English, the Susan Lipschutz Fund for Women Graduate Students, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Center for the Education of Women at the University of Michigan for their generous funding of my dissertation through fellowships, v research funding, and conference travel grants. The majority of this funding was facilitated through the dazzling administrative expertise of Jan Burgess, Linda Deitert, Aimee Germain, Jen Sarafin, Shelly Shock, and Senia Vasquez, to whom I will be eternally grateful. Additional support from the Cephalon scholarship fund at Penn, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through a variety of channels has also been invaluable. The friends and classmates who made my time in Ann Arbor such a delight are too many to name, but I can’t resist the opportunity to thank the magnificent Molly Hatcher, Jamie Small, You-Sun Crystal Chung, Rachel Afi Quinn, Eleni Manis, David Schlitt, Steve Spiess, Dashini Jeyathurai, and Katie Brokaw, all of whom helped to shape my thinking about feminist and literary criticism while also nourishing me by their delightful and constant friendship. Tena, nataka kuwashukuru wenzangu wote walionifundisha mengi nilipokaa huko Marsabit, Mombasa, Usa River, na Dar es Salaam. Jane na Joseph Baye na wote nyumbani kwao, Carrie Dorean, Walimu

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