A Part of it All. (Original writing);

This work is a collection of stories about my encounters with celebrity, fame, and the culture industry. It is intensely autobiographical. Through writing about various critical moments in my life as a writer/producer of theatrical movies, I interpret my obsession with becoming a part of the motion picture and television industries. Using myself as exemplar, I examine the associated social phenomena from various points of view, including looking at the pursuit of celebrity as addiction and at celebrity itself as a third space, invoking Homi Bhabha's spatial metaphor. The collection of stories is heavily informed by critical theory and the post-colonial discourse, although not always overtly so. After Raymond Carver, the style of writing is minimalist, and much is said in the silent spaces between words--I employ silence as an evocative tool in the manner of such feminist and post-colonial writers as Trinh Minh-ha and Gayatri Spivak. And, while working within the form of the short story, I fight against that form, hoping to find not symmetry and closure, but polyphonic voices and astounding juxtapositions. Mingling spare dialogic interactions with thick description and coincidental popular culture texts, I promote a verisimilitude that encourages readers to enter the world I am creating while it presents them with new critical tools for exploring their own worlds in ways that matter. And, after Norman Denzin, I enter the texts through epiphanic moments of realization or sudden inspiration and use the process of writing about those moments to explore how I go about coming to terms with my various, ever-changing incarnations. Unanchored and free floating in a postmodern world, I reach no conclusions.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communications

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Kohn, Nathaniel Herman

Contributors dc:contributor

• Denzin, Norman K.

• Sociology, Theory and Methods
• Literature, American
• Mass Communications
• Cinema

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1995 Kohn, Nathaniel Herman

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9543632
(UMI)AAI9543632

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/21978