Arts/Culture :: Psychosocial Studies Network

Forthcoming Events:

The Psychosocial Special Interests Group (Institute of Education)

The Arts/Culture Group (Psychosocial Network)

Maria Tamboukou

Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London, UK

My dear master: of love and other signs

Friday 4th December 2009, 2‐4 pm

Room 822, Institute of Education

20 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAL

In this talk Maria Tamboukou examines Gwen John’s love letters. Addressed to ‘the

master’ but going beyond submission, despair and fear, John’s letters to her beloved

inscribe forces of desire, deterritorialize her from striated regimes of signs and reveal a

matrix of multileveled and complex technologies deployed in making sense of herself and

her world. By examining the intricacies of John’s epistolary archive, Tamboukou makes

intertextual connections with the amorous discourse of the epistolary novel and suggest

a narrative approach informed by Foucauldian analytics of power and Deleuzo-Guattarian cartographies of desire. This approach, she argues, throws new light on the constitution of the female self in art: power relations surrounding love dance together with forces of desire and

open up nomadic paths of becomings.

Dr Maria Tamboukou is Reader in Sociology and Co-director of the Centre of Narrative

Research, University of East London. Her research interests and publications are in the

sociology of gender and education, gender and space, the exploration of foucauldian and

deleuzian analytics and the use of auto/biographies in research. She is the author of

Women, Education, the Self: a Foucauldian Perspective (Palgrave, 2003) and co-editor

with Stephen J. Ball of Dangerous encounters: genealogy and ethnography (Peter Lang,

2003) and with Molly Andrews and Corinne Squire of Doing Narrative Research (London,

Sage, 2008). Her current research focuses on fin-de-siècle women artists’ letters and

paintings, exploring power/desire connections in the interface of visual and textual

narratives.

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This event is free but places are limited, so please register by contacting Angie Voela: a.voela@uel.ac.uk

Arts Culture Thematic Group

The Arts/Culture Group is an interdisciplinary endeavour within the Psychosocial Network. The Group wishes to create a forum for the exploration of the links between Art/Culture and the Psychosocial, inviting contributions from academics, practitioners and artists who engage with Art and Culture with psychoanalytic, sociological and political awareness.

The Arts/Culture Group aims to be inclusive and attract the interest of those with whom words like Theories, Arts, Health, Performance, Community, Artist, Consumption, Psychoanalysis, Education, Media and Humanities resonate.

Its profile is ultimately determined by the interests of its members.