Katherine Mansfield and Conceptualisations of the Self

The thesis aims to show how Katherine Mansfield’s desire to discover aspects of the self shaped her strengths and distinctiveness as a writer, particularly in the development of her own modernist aesthetic. Mansfield’s letters and notebooks often betray a preoccupation with issues of the self. In one notebook entry she exclaims, ‘if one was true to oneself . . . True to oneself! Which self? Which of my many – well, really, that’s what it looks like coming to – hundreds of selves’ (CW4, 349). By examining this and many other scattered references to the self throughout Mansfield’s letters and notebooks, this thesis aims to uncover the relationship between Mansfield’s personal comments and questions on the self and the development of her literary techniques. The beginning of the twentieth century, when Mansfield was writing, saw many advancements in science and technology as well as new psychological theories popularised by William James and Sigmund Freud. These theories added to a discourse on the psychological make-up of the individual as modernity caused a crisis in understanding the construction of the self, calling identity into question. By examining these theories, this thesis provides a framework for the analysis of Mansfield’s writing, integrating current critical commentary on her fiction, Mansfield’s private thoughts and her experimental fiction. Whilst there have in the past been studies of Mansfield’s writing addressing aspects of the narrative techniques of her stories that construct multifarious representations of the self, particularly those by Clare Hanson (1981), Kate Fullbrook (1986) and Sydney Janet Kaplan (1991), to date no full-length study exists which coordinates notebook entries, letters and Mansfield’s fiction across her writing career. Using a chronological analysis this thesis demonstrates how her preoccupation with the self underlies the energy and liveliness of her stories and is a key influencing factor in her creation of a unique aesthetic. Using narratological theory as a guide, close textual analysis of stories from across Mansfield’s entire oeuvre informs this study, revealing how she learns to exploit literary techniques such as focalisation and free indirect discourse in order to represent the ‘hundreds of selves’ experienced by her characters. The thesis will illustrate from a selection of stories, how the spirit and uniqueness of Mansfield’s experimental fiction comes from observations about the contradictions of the self, its multiplicity, its division and its obliqueness, achieved by placing her characters in situations that cause them to misapprehend the self or discover it anew. It will focus on Mansfield’s depictions of the frustrations, dreams and passions of her female characters as they seek escape from or transgress the boundaries forced upon them, whether these are self-imposed or result from patriarchal strictures and will aim to reveal how Mansfield’s experimental fiction captures the nuances of the female self

Performing Place: A Rhythmanalysis of the City of London

Through its focus on the City of London as a particular work sector and setting, this paper emphasizes the symbolic and material significance of place to understanding the lived experiences of power relations within organizational life. The socio-cultural and material aspects of the City are explored through an analysis of the rhythms of place, as well through interview data. Using a methodological approach based on Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis in order to develop an embodied, immersive sense of how the City is experienced as a workplace, the paper makes a methodological, empirical and theoretical contribution to an understanding of the way in which rhythms shape how place is performed. Using rhythmanalysis as a method, the paper shows the relationship between rhythms and the performances of place, foregrounding a subjective, embodied and experiential way of researching the places and spaces of organizing

Crafting place: Women’s everyday creativity in placemaking processes

Amid a resurgence of domestic craft, this article contends that everyday creative practices of women are part of placemaking processes in the creative city. Specifically, the research focuses on Liverpool in the Northwest of England, the so-called (and self-proclaimed) ‘centre of the creative universe’. This article utilized in-depth semi-structured interviews with members of knitting groups and the city centre Women’s Institute to explore how women use craft practice to create a sense of self and attachment to place. The idea of women gathering to craft is enduring, and is examined here to understand affective labour and the role that creativity plays in the urban experience of women. It is argued that the groups demonstrate a lack of engagement with the wider market and official placemaking processes, but instead demonstrate an element of self-valorization. The article challenges thinking around culture-led placemaking in cities like Liverpool, where discourses of creativity have been used as a driver for regeneration by shifting the emphasis onto seemingly banal settings on the edges of the so-called creative city. While urban placemakers have been more recently concerned with developing hubs of creative industries, the role of these groups that are not producing a profitable ‘product’ should not be underestimated or exploited

Experiential Attunements in an Illuminated City at Night:A Pedagogical Writing Experiment

This article traces stories of singular footsteps taken on a collective meandering through Brisbane city, as a pedagogical experiment in writing for geographers. The diverse encounters recounted here took place as part of an extended workshop on the topic of light, beginning with an afternoon discussion, and ending in an evening walk through the illuminated city. This paper aims to do two things through the example of light: firstly, it explores the experiential attunements enacted in the event by resonating practices of talk with practices of movement, speculating on the enablements afforded by the conditions of the workshop. Secondly, presenting a range of writing that emerged out of this passage from world to word, this article is a performance of the diverse translations necessary to writing attunement. Refracted through an extended introduction by the event organisers, the vignettes that emerged from the day are then presented as something of a virtual walk in themselves: speaking to the entangled histories of the event, our bodies, and Brisbane city.</p