Date of Award

1-1-1997

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Master of Education

Faculty

Faculty of Education

First Supervisor

Tarquam McKenna

Abstract

This thesis contests the status of gender as a social construct by considering how women develop a personal ethnography when engaging in drama and expressive arts practices. There is no known research on drama praxis as a signifier to Australian women's identity, a major focus of this work will be, 'Who has the authority over women's expression and means of expression? Who has the authority to interpret the experience? Who has authority over other people's experience?' This thesis addresses the internalised- oppression which refers to the process by which women internalise the 'fictionalised' reality prescribed to them as women marked by the binary construct of gender duality, i.e., male/female, in which the male as the ascendant partner in the duality has the power to mark those on the descendant as 'other' to the norm. The limits of 'knowing' only through positivist science will be extended into multi modes of knowing and within the drama praxis the reflective processes enabled by personal engagement will be investigated within the personal, universal and analogous modes. This thesis, being written from a postructuralist perspective, is a means of giving the study group authentic voice. It proceeds from an explicit framework engaging archetype as a means to modify consciousness and is an invitation: a "call to action".

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