User:Eleanorg/2.1/gradProposal1

General Introduction

"If I am struggling for autonomy, do I not need to be struggling for something else as well, a conception of myself as invariably in community, impressed upon by others[?]" (Butler 2004, p.21).

I am interested in posing a challenge to the idea of autonomous individual authorship, by looking at how people can act as transmitters or hosts for the ideas of others.

This project is informed by the feminist proposal of 'consent' as a positive alternative to a culture based on coercion (i.e. one subject overruling another). While aligning myself with this movement, I wish to contribute to it by problematizing its implicit assumption of an autonomous consenting subject. I will do this by experimenting with how people react when attempting to transmit or host others' ideas. In these experiments I will be searching for the point at which the desire to act in concert conflicts with the desire to assert our individual values. The aim is to highlight the difficulty of defining the outline of an distinct subject.

Relation to previous practice

How does your research connect to previous projects you have done? Remember to briefly explain or describe related projects as the external is not familiar with your work.

Relation to a larger context

Meaning practices or ideas that go beyond the scope of your personal work. Write briefly about other projects or theoretical material which share an affinity with your project. For example, if you are researching urban interventions, you might talk about Situationist approaches to psychogeography, urban tactical media and activist strategies of reclaiming the streets. Or, if you want to explore the way data is tracked, you might touch upon the politics of data mining by referencing concerns laid out by the Electronic Frontier or highlight theoretical questions raised by Wendy Chun or others. (Keep in mind that we are *not* expecting well formulated conclusions or persuasive arguments in the proposal phase. At this juncture, it's simply about showing an awareness of a broader context, which you will later build upon as your research progresses.)

Practical steps

Describe how you will go about conducting your research through reading, writing and practice. In other words, through a combination of these approaches, you will explore questions or interests you have laid out in your general introduction. In this section you can help us understand how your project will come together on a practical level and talk about possible outcome(s). Of course, the outcome(s) may change as your research evolves, but it's important to have some idea of how your project might come together as a whole.

References

A list of references (Remember that dictionaries, encyclopedias and wikipedia are not references to be listed. These are starting points which should lead to more substantial texts and practices.) As with your previous essays, the references need to be formatted according to the Harvard method.) See: http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/wiki/A_Guide_to_Essay_Writing#The_Harvard_System_of_referencing

Feel free to include any visual material to substantiate, illustrate or elucidate your proposal. For example use images to reference your work or that of others.