Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Thesis - ECU Access Only

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Writing)

Faculty

Faculty of Education and Arts

First Supervisor

Dr Marcella Polain

Second Supervisor

Dr Jill Durey

Abstract

This thesis consists of two parts: the creative work titled ‘myfriendkoolkiller’, and an accompanying text titled ‘A Discussion’.

‘myfriendkoolkiller’ grew out of a long series of spontaneous gestures and improvisations in writing, as well as various invented and consciously introduced rules, strategies and constraints. My intention was to follow the work through, beyond any overarching ideas or transcendent guiding principles, as a line of variation. I was interested in the chaotic, sometimes macabre and occasionally humourous, effects generated out of the constant struggle in the work between that which seems capable of acting and that which cannot help but be acted upon. I was concerned with the appearance of the work, with how the sculptural or graphic qualities of language on a page may affect the act of reading itself, sometimes forcing attention into more immediate states of looking, watching and noticing. Rather than express a sense of accomplishment, achievement or even performance, I was hoping that the work would take on a life of its own in emerging moments that neither overcome nor retreat from a sense of unpreparedness, uncertainty and vulnerability.

As I seem incapable of considering myself to be a poet or my work to be poetry, in ‘A Discussion’ I set about the task of finding other ways to look at and to think about the creative processes that gave rise to the experimental work. This second part of the thesis draws heavily on terms and concepts from the oeuvre of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I endeavor to find things to say here that will at least contribute to a sense of flux and possibility around the creative work. I discuss the work in terms of an autopoetic force of emergence and expression that, beyond an ordered and meaningful everyday human world, presupposes life itself as a plane of composition and a power beyond any lived experience. I look at various aesthetic and micropolitical aspects and implications of the creative work, employing concepts such as the minor, immanence, desire, becoming, deterritorialization, machine of expression, and others. While it is clearly Deleuzian, I conclude ‘A Discussion’ outlining my sense of an ethics of creativity.

LCSH Subject Headings

Edith Cowan University. Faculty of Education and Arts -- Dissertations

Creative writing

Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)

Download

Share

 
COinS