Date of Award
Summer 8-7-2018
Degree Type
Closed Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
First Advisor
Megan Sinnott
Second Advisor
Julie Kubala
Third Advisor
Susan Talburt
Abstract
This thesis engages the concept of freedom in contemporary radical philosophy, focusing on philosophers Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz, and Brian Massumi. I argue that the dominant contemporary portrait of freedom is historically anachronistic insofar as the free act is conflated with irruptive, disruptive variations in the social fabric. I draw on the work of Henri Bergson to argue that our historical present requires that we resituate freedom in the ground of singular, personal experience, against the dominant tendency to approach freedom from a lens that prioritizes social change. Key to this theoretical shift is the re-temporalization of free acts as processes that extend through time and that emerge from the consistency of an enduring self.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/12527817
Recommended Citation
Nelson, Katherine, "The Enduring Kind: Conceptions Of Freedom For An Unstable Present." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2018.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/12527817