Theses by Jonathon Zapasnik
Precarious Proximities: A Symptomatological Reading of Intimacy in Anglophone HIV/AIDS Life Writing
Recording the narratives of those who live with HIV, or whose lives have been subsequently taken ... more Recording the narratives of those who live with HIV, or whose lives have been subsequently taken by AIDS, has been imperative for the mediation of gay male identities in the Western world since the late 1980s. As a genre, HIV/AIDS life writing, or testimony, has been crucial as it offers a means of reflecting on the ravages of the disease by positioning authors as intimate witnesses. This thesis examines the role and constitution of intimacy in HIV/AIDS life writing. It challenges studies of HIV/AIDS life writing that declare these to be grounded in the "presumption of fatality" (Couser) and instead draws on the Spinozian formulation, later taken up by Gilles Deleuze, that we do not even know what bodies can do. Taking this further, this project argues that we do not even know what a body with HIV/AIDS is, let alone how it operates or what it can enable between bodies. I contend that intimacy, as orchestrated in my archive of texts, is an event, a process of becoming that actively contours structures of ordinariness, temporality, sociality, and corporeality embedded in the act of witnessing. Although such an account risks privileging the intensities of affect over the representational dimension of HIV/AIDS life writing, I utilise both representational and affective modes of analysis to design a model of reparative reading that suspends the need to value one mode of analysis over the other. Testimony is a genre that actively combines representational and affective modes. Thus, the innovation of this thesis is not only theoretical, but also methodological, deploying a symptomatological reading, developed from Deleuze, of HIV/AIDS life writing from North America, Australia and New Zealand to interpret and give meaning to the 'symptoms' of intimacy. A symptomatology of HIV/AIDS life writing holds 'life' and 'death' in tension, providing a framework for negotiating the dynamic intersection between illness and identity. Thus, instead of reading these texts for signs of death and mourning, a symptomatological criticism enables new ways of thinking about what a 'life' is.
Papers by Jonathon Zapasnik
‘An endless procession of catastrophes’: Reading the War on Terror in Contemporary HIV Life Writing
Somatechnics, 2020
This paper examines the shifting paradigms of language used in HIV/AIDS life writing. As a testim... more This paper examines the shifting paradigms of language used in HIV/AIDS life writing. As a testimonial genre, military metaphors have played a crucial role in mobilising communities and revealing how discourses around chronic illness inscribe themselves on the body. Through a textual analysis of three memoirs, Douglas Wright's Ghost Dance (2004) and Terra Incognito (2006), and David Caron's The Nearness of Others (2014), I argue that these texts represent a shift that instead engage metaphors of terrorism and security to convey meaning of lived experience and negotiate the precariousness of ongoing survival. Simultaneously, Wright and Caron maintain their health through protease inhibitors and reflect on the national anxieties produced by the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States of America. Both writers draw on the language of terrorism, especially the images taken from the Abu Ghraib prison, to inform their own experiences as HIV-positive white, middle-upper class, gay men. The significance of these metaphors can be found in their individual struggles with depression. What this paper contributes to is an understanding of what it means to think about HIV after the pharmaceutical turn when HIV is no longer considered a death sentence in the Western world, how discourses of terror inform public and personal understandings of chronic illness and mental health, and how embodied experience informs autobiographical modes of expression, and vice versa.
Australian Humanities Review, 2013
As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other assemblages and in relation to... more As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other assemblages and in relation to other bodies without organs. We will never ask what a book means, as signified or signifier; we will not look for anything to understand in it. … A book exists only through the outside and on the outside. A book itself is a little machine. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus VER THE PAST DECADE, THE NOTION OF ASSEMBLAGE HAS GAINED CURRENCY AS A keyword in the humanities and social sciences. Assemblage has traditionally been used in archaeology, art, and the natural sciences as a term of classification (see Anderson et al.; Marcus and Saka). More recently, however, assemblage has gained traction as a translation and appropriation of the concept designated by the French word agencement in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, especially A Thousand Plateaus. In this form, assemblage has been increasingly used to designate, not an arrangement or a state of affairs, but an ongoing process of arranging, organising or congealing how heterogeneous bodies, things or concepts come 'in connection with' one another (see Livesey; Phillips). As John Phillips notes, 'assemblage' is a less-than-ideal translation: Agencement is a common French word with the senses of either 'arrangement', 'fitting' or 'fixing' and is used in French in as many contexts as those words are used in English: one would speak of the arrangement of parts of a body or machine; one might talk of fixing (fitting or affixing) two or more parts together; and one might use the term for both the act of fixing and the arrangement itself, as in the fixtures and fittings of a building or shop, or the parts of a machine. (108) O
Book Chapters by Jonathon Zapasnik
Queer Anglophone literature
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies
Queer literature refers to writing that concerns itself with the transgression of gendered and/or... more Queer literature refers to writing that concerns itself with the transgression of gendered and/or sexual norms. It developed out the activist and scholarly climate of the late-1980s, drawing attention to the inherent limitations of identity politics and the discursive construction of sexuality categories. While it is a loaded and problematic category to define, this entry traces the emergence of queer literature through several of the key themes that have defined it as an object of study over the last few decades: anti-normative representations of family, the AIDS epidemic and its cultural legacy, the ethical commitment to transgression, and the intersection of transgender experience and subjectivity. An emphasis, where possible, will be placed on the Australian context and examples.
A labour of love: a critical examination of the ‘labour icebergs’ of massive open online courses
Edited Collections by Jonathon Zapasnik
The ANU Undergraduate Research Journal - Volume Six, 2014
This ANU Undergraduate Research Journal presents outstanding essays taken from numerous ANU under... more This ANU Undergraduate Research Journal presents outstanding essays taken from numerous ANU undergraduate essay submissions. The breadth and depth of the articles chosen for publication by the editorial team and reviewed by leading ANU academics demonstrates the quality and research potential of the undergraduate talent being nurtured at ANU across a diverse range of fields.
Teaching Documents by Jonathon Zapasnik
Uploads
Theses by Jonathon Zapasnik
Papers by Jonathon Zapasnik
Book Chapters by Jonathon Zapasnik
Edited Collections by Jonathon Zapasnik
Teaching Documents by Jonathon Zapasnik