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Thinking the body transcendent
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Sierra, Erick Samuel. Thinking the body transcendent. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3NG4QP0

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TitleThinking the body transcendent
NameSierra, Erick Samuel (author); McClure, John A. (chair); Edwards, Brent Hayes (internal member); Wall, Cheryl (internal member); Wall, Cheryl A. (internal member); Cohen, Ed (outside member); Rutgers University; Graduate School - New Brunswick
Date Created2010
Other Date2010 (degree)
SubjectLiteratures in English, Self in literature, Spirituality in literature, American literature--20th century, Mysticism in literature, Religion and literature--United States--20th century, Race awareness in literature
Extentv, 196 p.
DescriptionTwentieth-century literature and theory have offered no shortage of challenges to the unity of personal identity. What these undertakings leave largely unquestioned, however, is the prevailing understanding that personal identity is sealed within the confines of the physical body—the final uncontested frontier of Cartesian identity. Emerging from a matrix of recent American literature—by Don DeLillo, Charles Johnson, Tony Kushner, Toni Morrison, among others—is a counter-argument to the notion that the materially bounded self is separate from other such selves in space. For the “individual” to take shape as such, it must locate itself within a specific social identity, disavowing its connection with those who identify themselves differently: a process, these texts suggest,
that can unleash racial and ideological violence. My dissertation explores six late twentieth-century American novels and plays (1982 to 1998) that both dramatize this violent process and propose an alternative through images of humans dislocated from
their bodies and fusing metaphysically with other open selves across space. Whereas critics have shown how global magic realist literatures use images of the non-unified self to represent the split consciousness resulting from colonial domination, my project explores how recent American texts religiously inflect such images and then through them imagine the transcendence of racial divisions. Challenging the notion of the human as a material isolate, images of the open body represent a literary vision for more expansive inter-racial identifications and more actively inclusive social solidarities for twenty-first century America.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes abstract
NoteVita
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Noteby Erick Samuel Sierra
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3NG4QP0
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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