Fictions of the flesh, semiotic implosions: an autotheoretical diary

Medina, Brian Antonio (2022) Fictions of the flesh, semiotic implosions: an autotheoretical diary. Masters thesis, Northern Arizona University.

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Abstract

This piece of autotheoretical writing delves into queer existence, specifically that of a gay latino man with access to higher education. It is supported by the destabilization (via historicizing) of somatopolitical fictions (Preciado 2013), since revealing the synthetic (non)essence of different “economies of the body” (Foucault 1978:159) liberates our potential for creative experimentation, of becoming intentional crafters of the concepts that configurate our bodies. Nonetheless, the human flesh is not a passive semiotic container, but is actively interwoven in the mechanisms of historical inscription, this capacity to perform social ontologies (Butler 1999) is, in part, responsible for the sedimentation of significatory economies. Perhaps intentionality is the only transcultural reality we can claim, the human ability to disfigure, reduce, or elongate the circumscriptions of the bodies we are, a species that is constantly producing somatohistorical protheses. From the Hellenic Greeks in the gymnasia to the gay clones, the body is a territory of incessant trajectories of meaning, oftentimes these architectures of subjectivation (Foucault 1997) produce non-intended affects, or better, intentional subjects fuck with their signifiers by hacking their algorithms of being. An algorithm somewhat structured by the lines (Ahmed 2006) of collective survival, turning us misrecognized others (Crossley 1993) into thanatological bodies, enzymes of extinction.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Publisher’s Statement:	© Copyright is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the Cline Library, Northern Arizona University. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.
Keywords:	auto-theory; body studies; gay; gender studies; guatemala; memoir; Latino men
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
NAU Depositing Author Academic Status:	Student
Department/Unit:	Graduate College > Theses and Dissertations College of Social and Behavioral Science > Sociology and Social Work
Date Deposited:	25 May 2023 21:44
Last Modified:	25 May 2023 21:44
URI:	https://openknowledge.nau.edu/id/eprint/5902

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