Thesis
A Labyrinth of Grief: A Feminist Poststructural Exploration
Southern Cross University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
2006
Metrics
35 File views/ downloads
179 Record Views
Abstract
This thesis presented a feminist post structural exploration of grief. The focus of this research was grief discourse, the truth claims made about grief meaning, and the discursive practices, including counselling practices, that produce women's grief subject positions.
The principal epistemological stance in this research was subjectivism. In particular, this research identified what knowledge was brought into grief discourse, by whom, and in what context.
The theoretical or philosophical stance, which constituted my methodology, came from Feminism and Poststructuralism. Specifically, Foucault's work on discourse theory that included a focus on the "workings of power" as characterised in genealogy, as well as, Weedon's feminist practice was central in this approach. The foregrounding of feminism in this work reflected the explicit belief that gender is an issue in grief.
Academic books on grief and grief counselling, used by the author in teaching and counselling activities during the period 1992 to 2002, and representative of contemporary grief discourse, were used in this exploration. Intertextual relations that discursively produced grief truth claims were exposed, and the limits of grief discourse were identified. This research sought to expose and unsettle an academic reliance on authorial texts that severely restrict the boundaries of grief discourse, and in doing so, open the grief terrain to new ways of understanding grief.
This research explored how the rationalization discourse of the present episteme discursively produced contemporary grief discourse. Significantly, this research found that a woman's grief subject position is marginalized by a grief discourse that centres the health and wellbeing of male subjects. The unsettling of representations made in academic texts about grief eliminates the absolute truth claims of grief and therefore the supremacy of the role played by the death of a family member. Moreover, this research draws on Foucault's notion of genealogy and practices of self, to develop a strategy for resistance to the discursive practices that decentres a woman's grief subject position, and thereby, opens the way for new grief subject positions for women.
Details
- Title
- A Labyrinth of Grief: A Feminist Poststructural Exploration
- Creators
- Janet Elizabeth Gilmour
- Contributors
- Nel Glass (Supervisor) - Southern Cross UniversityKierrynn Davis (Supervisor) - Southern Cross University
- Awarding Institution
- Southern Cross University; Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Theses
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Southern Cross University
- Publisher
- Southern Cross University
- Number of pages
- xvi, 281
- Identifiers
- 991012957300002368
- Copyright
- © Janet E Gilmour 2006
- Academic Unit
- School of Health and Human Sciences
- Resource Type
- Thesis