OCAD University Open Research Repository

Notes on an Eternal Return: Photographic Self-Portraiture and the Spectral Subject

Meleca, Amy (2016) Notes on an Eternal Return: Photographic Self-Portraiture and the Spectral Subject. Masters thesis, OCAD University.

Item Type: Thesis
Creators: Meleca, Amy
Abstract:

Focusing on the characteristics of ghostliness and haunting, my MA thesis project considers spectrality as a lens to rethink representations of otherness in photographic self-portraiture. Spectrality, a metaphor within the humanities, and now applied to visual art, foregrounds the presence of what is absent and testifies to the invisible aspects of our socially constructed subjectivities. I question how photographic self-portraiture initiates a dissociative transformation for the subject, and apply this line of questioning to an analysis of works by Claude Cahun, Suzy Lake, Eleanor Antin, and Mona Hatoum. I analyze how these artists present intentionally othered versions of themselves, by exploring and re-performing the intricacies of their identities. I support this research with a body of artistic work, where I embody the self-as-other and present myself as a spectral subject as a means to understand how we can rethink representations of the female body and female subjectivity.

Date: April 2016
Uncontrolled Keywords: spectr ality, subjectivity, self - portraiture, performance
Divisions: Graduate Studies > Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design
Date Deposited: 10 May 2016 15:23
Last Modified: 20 Dec 2021 23:45
URI: https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/649

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