Dissertation
AUTOCORRECT: Writing Autobiografiction as Radical Transformative Practice on Gendered Violence and Social Justice
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25907/00932
Abstract
This doctoral study comprehensively explores the autobiografictional interaction between the writer and the text, involving two interrelated components: creative work and exegesis. The creative part entails writing the novel Apted Park, which focuses on gendered violence and social justice within a volatile love triangle in Fiji, Pacific Islands. The exegetical dissertation investigates this interaction to develop an autobiografictional narrative around ever-present social justice issues corresponding to gendered power, violence, and control.
The project draws on the seminal work of Jacques Derrida (2019) to lay the foundational theory practice relationship. This exegesis reviews the literature on John Searle’s (1969, 1979) Speech Act Theory and its applicability to literary expression to render the performative acts of characters’ intentions, motivations, and behaviours within the novel, thus becoming a tangible outcome of Derrida’s (2019) notion of revolutionary transformative practice. Importantly, Michel Foucault’s (2002, 2020) critical philosophical work explores the relationship between performativity and values, as defined in the novel, through negotiations of gendered power, violence, and control. It is acknowledged that the importance and longevity of Foucault’s philosophical positionings around women (i.e., the “docile body”) owe a significant debt to the work of feminist philosophers’ and gender theorists’ thinking, critiques, and writings (see Julia Kristeva 1980, 1984; Judith Butler 1990; Meredith Bagwell-Gray, Jill Messing, Adrienne Baldwin-White 2015; Chanel Contos 2023; Anastasia Christou 2018; Jennifer Fleetwood 2020; Jessalyn Keller, Kaitlyn Mendez, Jessica Ringrose 2018; Rachel Looney-Howes 2018; Lauren Porsch et al. 2023; Tanya Serisier 2018).
Details
- Title
- AUTOCORRECT: Writing Autobiografiction as Radical Transformative Practice on Gendered Violence and Social Justice
- Authors
- Ian Weber - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
- Contributors
- Paul Williams (Principal Supervisor) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Indigenous and Transcultural Research CentreSarah Casey (Co-Supervisor) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
- Awarding institution
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Degree awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Publisher
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- DOI
- 10.25907/00932
- Organisation Unit
- School of Business and Creative Industries
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991134406202621
- Output Type
- Dissertation
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