ABSTRACT
The Kafkaesque in Susan Scott’s Description
of a Struggle: Identity, the Other and an Amenable Interaction
Joanne Latimer
1994
Susan Scott’s series of eleven painted canvases
called Description of a Struggle its title from a short story by Kafka. Like Kafka,
Scott lays bare the mechanics of identity and gender, questioning how gender roles are
informed and conditioned by popular culture. This thesis will investigate how gender roles
are at play in Description of a Struggle, while examining how Scott’s art
relates to its literary source. At discussion will be how Scott has created a series of
paintings that is predisposed to a multidimensional viewing process with various
"readings" of the art work: a literary reading of the Kafkaian source, a
psychological reading and a mass-media reading of pop cultural influences. The convergence
of these standpoints, or positions, complicates the act of viewing and creates the
critique of gender roles and identity formation that is at the heart of Scott’s Description
of a Struggle.
Return to the Main Listing
of Theses or
use your browser's BACK button to return to the previous page
