Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Integrated Article

Degree

Master of Arts

Program

Theory and Criticism

Supervisor

Gardiner, Michael

2nd Supervisor

Blankenship, Janelle

Abstract

This thesis engages a ‘poetics of representation’ of socio-culturally signifying uses of material(ized) elements within ‘London’, Ontario. My model of representational meaning combines Hall’s (1997) representational diagramming, and Hjelmslev’s glossematics, via Deleuze and Guattari (1987). I claim a theoretical primacy of intersubjectivity, using Lefebvre’s (1991) idea of trialectical space; de Certeau’s idea of ‘Concept-city’/‘operational city’ is applied to social-scientific research in ‘London’. I treat local artist Jack Chambers’s work (especially his film The Hart of London) as an ‘everyday’ representational poetics, linking the local and universal, while illustrating how one’s representational poetics may develop, viz., experience. I articulate this analysis, viz., theories of found footage films, to interrogate the materiality of the subject-matter of Chambers’s work. My analysis shifts within this local scope to ultimately problematize the colonial-capitalist model of space and locality (especially placenames) through a decolonizing analysis of the land-language nexus of Deshkan Ziibing (a.k.a., the ‘Thames River’).

Summary for Lay Audience

This thesis engages a ‘poetics of representation’: a survey of socio-culturally signifying uses of material elements and modes of engagement. Its fundamental scope is ‘London’ as a locality but plumbs its depth of immanence specifically to highlight and bring into play spatial-cultural connections, along three lines.

In Chapter One, I consider representational poetics within ‘London’. The productive model of representational meaning I have constructed is a combination of Hall’s (1997) diagramming of representation, and Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) treatment of Hjelmslev’s glossematics. I critically compare Bachelard’s and Merleau-Ponty’s respective theories of space, to highlight a basic theoretical primacy of intersubjectivity. This primacy is bolstered by Lefebvre’s (1991) idea of trialectical accretion of space (physical, mental, social becomes lived-conceived-perceived). Finally, de Certeau’s idea of ‘Concept-city’/‘operational city’ is applied to social-scientific research conducted in London, to highlight the tensions and distances between the public image(s) of the city, and the city as a space of lived experience.

In Chapter Two, I treat local artist Jack Chambers’s work as an ‘everyday’ poetics of representation, which links the local and universal and acutely illustrates how an individual’s representational poetics may develop in relation to local and other experiences. Hence, I examine his 1970 avant-garde film The Hart of London, which I treat as an example of representational poetics bridging the temporal-local and universal-eternal. I articulate this analysis in terms of theories of found footage films, as an opening through which to interrogate the materiality of the subject-matter of Chambers’s work.

Finally, in Chapter Three, the analysis shifts within this local scope to ultimately problematize the colonial-capitalist model of space and locality (especially placenames) through a decolonizing analysis of the land-language nexus of Deshkan Ziibing (a.k.a., the ‘Thames River’). The river’s Anishinaabemowin name is placed in the context of Algonquian languages (for example, the grammatical gender of nominal animacy), to furnish an attempt at a more robustly (if cursorily) decolonizing historical survey of the river.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License.

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