Page 1 |
Save page Remove page | Previous | 1 of 263 | Next |
|
small (250x250 max)
medium (500x500 max)
large ( > 500x500)
Full Resolution
All (PDF)
|
This page
All
Subset |
THE LIFE OF PAPER:
A POETICS
by
Sharon Luk
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY)
May 2012
Copyright 2012 Sharon Luk
Object Description
| Title | The life of paper: a poetics |
| Author | Luk, Sharon |
| Author email | sharonlu@usc.edu;sharon_luk@yahoo.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | American Studies and Ethnicity |
| School | College of Letters, Arts And Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2011-04-25 |
| Date submitted | 2012-03-27 |
| Date approved | 2012-03-27 |
| Restricted until | 2012-03-27 |
| Date published | 2012-03-27 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Gilmore, Ruth Wilson |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Halberstam, Judith Kelley, Robin D.G. Lloyd, David |
| Abstract | ""The Life of Paper: A Poetics"" explores the role of letter correspondence in practices of social reproduction, specifically within histories of racism, mass incarceration, and social struggle in California and the West. I trace this life by fleshing out the labors that comprise letter correspondence in three case studies: ""Detained"" focuses on migrants from Southern China during the early period of U.S. Chinese exclusion (1880s-1920s); ""Interned"" focuses on people identified with Japan during the World War II period (1930s-1940s); and ""Imprisoned"" focuses on diasporas of Blackness in the post-Civil Rights period (1960s-present). ❧ Using a range of methods to analyze previously unstudied archives of letters, this project explores how targeted diasporas--facing conditions of radical alienation and confinement--engaged in practices of reading, writing, and circulating letters to sustain communal life. I study a number of these inventive practices by thematically framing each chapter. First, I historicize ""detained"" letters in relation to emerging technological, epistemological, and social infrastructures. Second, I analyze ""interned"" letters through dialectics of censorship and aesthetic production. Third, I clarify how ""imprisoned"" letters have transformed practices of collectively re-embodying the human. ❧ Situating letters within the political violence that qualifies them, I define letter correspondence in these contexts as a social response to coercion, ritually distinct from more commonly-studied epistolary social practices. I argue that such conditions radically alter how and what letters mean, and how we might better understand them. Thus, in this cultural studies project I interrogate the processes that connect paper objects to historical human identity and being. I also examine how these forms of connection--internalized in the letter--create alternative conditions of existence that both ground and animate struggles against premature death. As such, I methodologically elaborate the life of paper to re-create an ""abolitionist"" epistemology of race, space, gender, and labor. Finally then, I call the life of paper a ""poetics"": a process of both literary and social reproduction that revolves around maintaining the dynamics of creative essence. ❧ This interdisciplinary project contributes to critical thought and methodology in History, Media/Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Geography, and Political Theory by addressing gaps in each field. Typically, historians' uses of letters as evidence overlook the humanistic aspects of letters as literary works and media forms. Inversely, literary and media analyses commonly neglect the historically material contexts in which letters were written. Dominant geographic research likewise remains under-attentive to disenfranchised epistemologies, as manifest in and through ""the life of paper"" and the ways they radically transform knowledge about space and place. Lastly, both critical race scholars and political theorists take for granted categories of analysis--such as race, ethnicity, space, gender, and labor--which my sustained cultural study of letter correspondence ruptures and re-defines. By combining the strengths of each discipline, I present letters in their deeper dimensions: simultaneously as forms of historical evidence, as literary works of art, and as acts of communication that mediate power to be and become in real space-time. Hence, my project bridges discourses often viewed as separate to provide fresh insights about the human experience. |
| Keyword | ethnicity; incarceration; letters; prison abolition; racism; social reproduction |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Rights | Luk, Sharon |
| Access conditions | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@usc.edu |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume3/etd-LukSharon-556.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | THE LIFE OF PAPER: A POETICS by Sharon Luk A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY) May 2012 Copyright 2012 Sharon Luk |
Comments
Post a Comment for Page 1
