Preparing a labyrinth : writing the self in the world ; and, The idea of gravity (a novel)

Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Webb, JL
dc.date.accessioned	2012-07-18T02:35:03Z
dc.date.accessioned	2012-12-15T03:53:50Z
dc.date.available	2008
dc.date.available	2012-12-15T03:53:50Z
dc.date.issued	2008
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/20437
dc.description	University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
dc.description.abstract	At the heart of philosophical investigation is the question of what it means to be a human being. This is not simply a matter of ontology, but a matter of definitions, language, ethics, relationships and responsibilities. What it means to be, how to live according to sound epistemological and axiological frameworks, and how to articulate this, are questions that perhaps will never be answered in a satisfactory manner. This submission constitutes my contribution to the long discussion, and is presented as three separate but related research products. The story I found myself telling, in the essay and the two creative manuscripts, is one of ambiguity and uncertainty, of the human body, and of the being that is always shifting between self and other, nature and culture, living and dead. The exegetical essay, Preparing a Labyrinth, lays out the intellectual and creative pathways I have travelled while engaging critically with questions of the body, truth and narrative. The short story collection, Ways of Getting By, addresses the pragmatics of being in a troubled world, and the material consequences of apparently abstract choices about the ‘right thing to do’, or ‘ways of getting by’. The fiction manuscript, The Idea of Gravity, similarly addresses the effects of decisions about ethical problems, and looks too to the effects on subjectivity of the workings – and the disintegration – of the body. All three works are the products of a research process that combined some of the classic formulations of early twentieth-century phenomenological thought with contemporary insights from biologists, neurologists and scholars of the virtual world of IT, and my own observation, archival and phenomenological research methods. Using this material, I have generated a mass of creative and qualitative data, and used it to examine a perspective on the nature, and the ethics, of being, that resulted in the thesis presented here. All three elements take seriously the labyrinthine properties of language and its role in constructing our sense of ourselves and of the world in which we live. All use language as material to craft a way of sensing the social and natural world. All three, too, take seriously the place of death in society as ‘the problem of the subject’ (Certeau), that which is ‘too cruel anywhere’ (Shakespeare), and is yet always there, at once the great inevitability and the great uncertainty.	en
dc.format	Thesis (DCA)	en
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/20437/3/02WholeVol1.pdf
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/20437/4/02WholeVol2.pdf
dc.relation.replaces	http://hdl.handle.net/2100/1367
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/ppc
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.subject	Labyrinth.	en
dc.subject	Death.	en
dc.subject	Creative writing.	en
dc.subject	Short stories.	en
dc.subject	Self.	en
dc.title	Preparing a labyrinth : writing the self in the world ; and, The idea of gravity (a novel)	en
dc.type	Thesis
utslib.copyright.status	open_access

Abstract:

At the heart of philosophical investigation is the question of what it means to be a human being. This is not simply a matter of ontology, but a matter of definitions, language, ethics, relationships and responsibilities. What it means to be, how to live according to sound epistemological and axiological frameworks, and how to articulate this, are questions that perhaps will never be answered in a satisfactory manner. This submission constitutes my contribution to the long discussion, and is presented as three separate but related research products. The story I found myself telling, in the essay and the two creative manuscripts, is one of ambiguity and uncertainty, of the human body, and of the being that is always shifting between self and other, nature and culture, living and dead. The exegetical essay, Preparing a Labyrinth, lays out the intellectual and creative pathways I have travelled while engaging critically with questions of the body, truth and narrative. The short story collection, Ways of Getting By, addresses the pragmatics of being in a troubled world, and the material consequences of apparently abstract choices about the ‘right thing to do’, or ‘ways of getting by’. The fiction manuscript, The Idea of Gravity, similarly addresses the effects of decisions about ethical problems, and looks too to the effects on subjectivity of the workings – and the disintegration – of the body. All three works are the products of a research process that combined some of the classic formulations of early twentieth-century phenomenological thought with contemporary insights from biologists, neurologists and scholars of the virtual world of IT, and my own observation, archival and phenomenological research methods. Using this material, I have generated a mass of creative and qualitative data, and used it to examine a perspective on the nature, and the ethics, of being, that resulted in the thesis presented here. All three elements take seriously the labyrinthine properties of language and its role in constructing our sense of ourselves and of the world in which we live. All use language as material to craft a way of sensing the social and natural world. All three, too, take seriously the place of death in society as ‘the problem of the subject’ (Certeau), that which is ‘too cruel anywhere’ (Shakespeare), and is yet always there, at once the great inevitability and the great uncertainty.

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