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MOVING PARTS:
RECONFIGURING CORPOREAL DIFFERENCE AND THE HUMAN
THROUGH ORGAN TRANSPLANT NARRATIVES
by
Nisha Kunte
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)
August 2012
Copyright 2012 Nisha Kunte
Object Description
| Title | Moving parts: reconfiguring corporeal difference and the human through organ transplant narratives |
| Author | Kunte, Nisha |
| Author email | kunte@usc.edu;nishaku@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | American Studies and Ethnicity |
| School | College of Letters, Arts And Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2012-05-25 |
| Date submitted | 2012-08-01 |
| Date approved | 2012-08-01 |
| Restricted until | 2012-08-01 |
| Date published | 2012-08-01 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Kondo, Dorinne |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Nguyen, Viet Thanh Moten, Fred McPherson, Tara |
| Abstract | Organ transplantation materially reconfigures the biological boundaries between bodies, but it also reshapes the social and ethical possibilities of using certain bodies as resources for the lives of others. In its physical reorganizing of the fleshy material of bodies, it conjures up vivid associations and rearticulations of the relationship between self and other, of the individualist Enlightenment subject, and of what it even means to be and have a human body. Moving Parts examines how associations and rearticulations like these are represented in literature, television, theater, and film. In examining the stories that circulate around the most fundamental questions about the organ transplant’s possibility, I argue that we can see how narrative constructs the body as knowable subject. Moving Parts contends that these modes of narrativizing the act of organ transfer are indicative of a pervasive preoccupation not simply with a technology that drastically reorganizes how bodies relate to one another in the materiality of their flesh, but also with the very strategies these stories deploy in order to narratologically negotiate this radical corporeal reconfiguration. I argue that the organ transplant should be understood as a discourse, a profound transformation of bodies where the objectified other is the very thing that allows for the continued life of the self. It is a discourse through which we may understand the self to always have been a precarious construct teetering between healthy and individual and ailing and contingent. In the face of a technology that demands a radical understanding of the borders of between self and other, the stories I examine in Moving Parts allow us to think a human subject that must begin beyond where the body ends in order to resist the liberal humanist discourses that produce debased others premised on corporeal difference. |
| Keyword | organ transplantation; narrative; subjectivity; race; corporeality |
| 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 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Kunte, Nisha |
| Physical access | 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@lib.usc.edu |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume4/etd-KunteNisha-1102.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | MOVING PARTS: RECONFIGURING CORPOREAL DIFFERENCE AND THE HUMAN THROUGH ORGAN TRANSPLANT NARRATIVES by Nisha Kunte 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) August 2012 Copyright 2012 Nisha Kunte |
