Some nerve: invisible debilitations, explosive restraint and the in-valid
Date
2013
Authors
Thiessen Hepher, Corinne
University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Fine Arts, 2014
Abstract
Some Nerve: Invisible Debilitations, Explosive Restraint and the In-Valid engages sociological,
critical and feminist frameworks to examine the cultural and political encoding of normative human
behaviour. Through kinetic objects, drawing, photography, video and performance, my work considers
marginalized others and the subversive destabilization or appropriation of identity and subjectivity
available in theories of the grotesque, in body art, and in autobiography. Personal historiographies,
transgenerational trauma, and postmemory together form the investigative structure of collective identity
and personal narrative.
The new, embodied postmodern subject embraces identity that is unstable, open, changing, and
that blurs the lines between self and other. By drawing parallels to historical medical and psychoanalytical
treatments, I look at contemporary discursive methods that pathologize bodies and behaviours and
construct “disease.” Prosthetics and body restraints become metaphorical indicators of social constraint and
civic silencing. Inspired by literature, popular culture, science fiction, and self-help books, my work
explores physical and ideological impediments, interpersonal conflict, explosion and restraint, repression
and acting out.
A Nervous System is not only a vital system inherent in an individual body; systems of
nervousness also signal a condition of cultural anxiety produced by precarious political and institutional
power structures.
Description
vii, 71 leaves, [20] leaves of plates : b&w ill. ; 29 cm
Keywords
Collective identity , Identity , Personal narrative , Otherness , Mind/body dichotomy , Dissertations, Academic