Metaphysics

ABSTRACT

There is a growing number of juvenile novels and picture books that mean to educate the reader about synaesthesia. The synaesthete in these texts for young readers desires to be a social agent, yet sh/e also considers synaesthesia to be a healing power and a deeply personal psychedelic form of escapism; I argue that the synaesthete in these texts `uses' their synaesthesia to dissipate emotional trauma caused by pubescent uncertainty and social isolation. In this thesis, I propose that YA and Children's texts that feature synaesthesia generally reinforce the discursive constraints of normative perception, and they also promulgate the assumption that synaesthesia is an extraordinary form of cognition instead of a legitimate subject position.

Author Keywords: Authenticity, Liminality, Repesentation, Synaesthesia, Synesthesia, Zizek

This three-part dissertation will consider both theoretical and practical implications that Baruch Spinoza's (1632-1677) immanent philosophical system holds for developing a contemporary "pedagogy of renaturalization." One of the intents of this thesis is to draw out how "intellectual slut shaming" is a naturalized part of neoliberal subjectivity.

In chapter one, we will make the case that the Cartesian and neoliberal subjects share several parallel structures, including mind-body dualism. We will look at how Spinoza's work supplies us with a powerful critique and expansion of the Cartesian subject. The intent here is to explore how we might apply a similar critique to the neoliberal subject and construct a more joyful subject that resists guilt, shame, and self-hatred.

In chapter two, we will explore how Spinoza's method of affirmation can give us a process to engage ourselves in a pedagogy of renaturalizing ourselves; in other words, to engage in the radical self-reflexivity of understanding ourselves as a part of Spinoza's Nature in order to better affect becomings of ethical joy. We will also examine the challenges and criticism of the affirmative method, and how paradoxically these criticisms serve to reinforce intellectual slut shaming.

Chapter three will explore the potential of the methodology of autoethnography and the development of what we are calling "auto-ethology" as a way to put such an affirmative method into practice. By reviewing the dissertation as a whole, we will show how it has been an engagement with Spinozist radical self-reflexivity all along and a performance of auto-ethology.

Author Keywords: autoethnography, Baruch Spinoza, Cartesian dualism, critical pedagogy, intellectual slut shaming, neoliberal subject

This thesis is an investigation of the theme of freedom in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Chapter One investigates Deleuze and Guattari's concept of becoming as it is articulated in their book A Thousand Plateaus, and seeks to resolve a problem related to their shifting descriptions of the role of agency in the process of becoming, at times described as voluntary, and at other times described as involuntary. We conclude that chapter with a defense of the claim that their shifting descriptions are unproblematic and are, in fact, attempts to illustrate the paradoxical experience of becoming. Chapter Two investigates Deleuze's earlier text, The Logic of Sense, and attempts to make sense of his use of the term destiny. Our conclusion in that chapter is that destiny is neither necessity, pure self-authorship, nor passive resignation, but rather consists of a mixture of activity and passivity, willfulness and chance.

Author Keywords: Agency, Becoming, Counter-actualization, Deleuze and Guattari, Destiny, Freedom