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Subjectivity and Embodied Experiences of Time in Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction and Film

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Subjectivity and Embodied Experiences of Time in Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction and Film Subjectivity and Embodied Experiences of Time in Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction and Film by Katherine Louise Mullins A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Katherine Louise Mullins 2014 Subjectivity and Embodied Experiences of Time in Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction Katherine Louise Mullins Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2014 Abstract My dissertation offers close readings of four literary and filmic Canadian works— Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost (2000), Dionne Brand’s short-story collection Sans Souci and Other Stories (1983), Jeff Lemire’s graphic narrative Essex County (2009), and David Cronenberg’s film Spider (2002)— to demonstrate their engagement with embodied experience. This study argues that subjective experience is inseparable from the process of thinking through and with the body. This focus on embodiment, I argue, often gives way to a privileging of present-time experience, even within accounts of the traumatic past. I connect this interest in present-time embodied experience to a larger concern in the development of Canadian criticism and suggest that Canadian criticism is in need of a corrective shift away from a focus on the past and towards an attentiveness to the present. Chapter one examines embodiment, touch, and forgetting in ii Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost. Here, I show how the novel provides a model of willed forgetting that allows characters to survive the horrors of war and to experience valuable moments of life-affirming embodied engagement and communication, often through physical touch, in the present. Chapter two shows how the body plays a fundamental and productive role in the psychological processes through which Brand’s Black female characters confront a history of oppression. I read the Sans Souci collection as a short- story cycle that is unified by a thematic focus on embodied experiences of time, racism and sexism, and Black female subjectivity. Chapter three focuses on the second book of Lemire’s Essex County, and its representation of the aging body in connection with memory and storytelling. I argue that the protagonist’s physical movement and positioning in space help him to remember his past and tell his story, and also allow him to experience positive moments of engagement with his present-time embodied experience and the external world. My final chapter, on Cronenberg’s Spider, shows how embodied experiences and gestures, such as Spider’s writing and his creation of web-like sculptures, play an integral role in the process of constructing, reviving, and engaging with past and present experiences. iii Acknowledgments First and foremost, I am immensely grateful to my exceptionally supportive supervisor and friend, Dr. Marlene Goldman, for her diligent editing and her commitment to and excitement about my research. I would like to thank her for her patience, availability, and tireless assistance as I learned what it means to cross interdisciplinary boundaries and research and write a book-length project. Her compassion and encouragement has made this dissertation possible. I am also deeply obliged to my committee members, Dr. Nick Mount and Dr. Melba Cuddy-Keane, and to my external examiner, Dr. Crystal Verduyn, whose thoughtful and extensive feedback has played a major role in the improvement and timely completion of this project. The chapters presented here are a far cry from the early drafts I submitted—I have been consistently humbled by the graciousness and meticulousness with which my supervisor and committee members have challenged my ideas and writing and encouraged my growth as an academic. Particular thanks go to Dr. Cuddy-Keane, who went above and beyond the call of duty in her remarkably conscientious readings of chapter drafts and her support in my professional development. I am also deeply grateful to my departmental examiner, Dr. Robert McGill, for his guidance, editing, and all-around generosity throughout my PhD. I owe much to the many teachers and mentors who led me to take this route in the earlier stages of my education. Faculty and friends at Red Deer College, the University of Calgary, and Queen’s University made it possible for me to reach this point. I am ever grateful for the generosity and dedication of two of the best teachers I have ever encountered, Dr. James Martens and Peter Slade, without whom I would never have considered, let alone traveled, this path. Thank you both for believing in me, and for helping me to believe in myself. Dr. Glenn Willmott at Queen’s University shaped my graduate school experience; I feel so fortunate to have benefited from his support, advice, and teaching. My colleagues at Massey College and the University of Toronto have also been invaluable. Fellow Canadianists Angelo Muredda, Sarah Carson, and Michael Collins continue to inspire me with their own remarkable work and often prevented me iv from feeling alone during the many hours of solitude spent researching and writing this project. I have such admiration and gratitude for Kaelyn Morrison, my office mate and dear friend, whose positivity and practicality kept me grounded during the most challenging times. I am especially grateful to my family—Louise, Nicholas, Anna, Lucy, and Rosie—who unconditionally supported my movement into a world so far away from the small Dorset sheep farm on which I was raised. Their openness, love, and generosity are always with me. Also, heartfelt thanks to my dear friends, especially Kaitlyn Schwan, Alexandros- Dionysios Koustas, Mary Roberts, Camila Merlano, Ashish Deshwar, Joe Culpepper, Raili Lakanen, Craig Mullins, and Jane South, who have, in different ways, listened to, consoled, congratulated, encouraged, and entertained me at every stage of this process. I am so fortunate to have you all in my life. I also feel immense gratitude for my dear friend and talented artist Lisa Visser, who passed away during the writing of this dissertation. Her creativity and courage continue to be a constant inspiration. And, last of all, thank you to my love, David Cape, who gave me hope at a time when I had so little. For you I am ever grateful. v Table of Contents ABSTRACT ii-iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv-v TABLE OF CONTENTS vi INTRODUCTION 1-18 CHAPTER ONE 19-52 Distancing Memory: Touch, Embodiment, and Forgetting in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost CHAPTER TWO 53-84 “My Body Is History”: Embodied Temporalities and Dionne Brand’s Short-Story Cycle, Sans Souci and Other Stories CHAPTER THREE 85-125 Aging in Time: (Re)Visualizing the Life Review in Jeff Lemire’s “Ghost Stories” CHAPTER FOUR 126-159 Making Memory: Art, Gesture, and the Thinking Body in David Cronenberg’s Spider CONCLUSION 160-166 Thinking in Motion: Gesturing Back, Moving Forward WORKS CONSULTED 167-179 COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 180 vi 1 Introduction Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage- whose name is self. In your body he dwells; he is your body. There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And who knows why your body needs precisely your best wisdom? --Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (146-147) “Concentrate. Think of the bones, she tells herself. A fossil of memory jumps to her consciousness like an old secret revealed.” --Francis Itani, Remembering the Bones (11) “What’s happened in the past can’t stay in the past for the same reason the future is always just a breath away. Now is what’s most important. The past and the future are present.” --Joseph Boyden, The Orenda (487) My dissertation offers close readings of four literary and filmic Canadian works—Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost (2000), Dionne Brand’s short-story collection Sans Souci and Other Stories (1983), Jeff Lemire’s graphic narrative Essex County (2009), and David Cronenberg’s film Spider (2002)— to demonstrate their engagement with embodied experience. In particular, this study argues that subjective experience is inseparable from the process of thinking through and with the body, what contemporary neuroscientists and narratologists term “embodied cognition.” I use the term “embodiment” to suggest a process of “reflection in which body and mind have been brought together” (Varela et. al 27). As it serves as a key concept in my dissertation, I expand on the definition of embodiment later in this introduction. My study is specifically concerned with embodied experiences of and thinking about time. In a 2003 article entitled “Time in Literature,” J. Hillis Miller questions literature’s ability to effectively convey the experience of time: “If time is such an enigma,” he argues, “and if the word ‘time’. does not give us any sense of what lived human time is really like, if all words for time are doomed to be catachreses, how then can literature find ways of expressing to a 2 reader this or that of the innumerable diversified experiences of human time?” (89). The question posed is a deceptively simple one, and yet would likely prompt critics and readers alike to respond with a massively diverse and perhaps contradictory set of answers. This project does not claim to definitively answer Miller’s question, but instead embraces and grapples with its scope by examining how four works of English-Canadian fiction from the last three decades have responded to the challenge it presents. Rather than consider time as a purely abstract or intellectual concept, my dissertation addresses embodied experiences of time that emerge in relation to imaginative engagements with the past and present (and occasionally the future) in contemporary Canadian fiction. Simply put, my project analyzes the relationship between the kinds of mental time travel associated with the faculty of the imagination and embodied experiences of time.
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