A Feminist View of the Body in Resistance

This dissertation argues for a feminist practice of liminal laughter, a bodily laughter that

cements a critical engagement. Liminal laughter is formed in the margins, across various

disciplines and genres; it is a subversive and parodic laughter that radically challenges the

hegemonic narratives of patriarchy and heterosexuality. To contend that feminism

benefits from this practice of liminal laughter, I expand on poststructural and

phenomenological feminisms and their conceptualizations of the body. Subsequently,

using the nineteenth century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche and his concepts of the

transvaluation of all values, overcoming, and affirmation, I create a conceptual frame for

thinking liminal laughter. To provide examples for this theory, I look to the Mickee

Faust Club, an eclectic theater troupe in Tallahassee, Florida and the works of the theorist

and novelist Hélène Cixous. Liminal laughter is a practice that revalues the body's

capacities of sensing feeling to disrupt and destabilize the mind / body, masculine /

feminine, natural / unnatural, and subject / other binaries. By doing so, liminal laughter

not only displaces the dominant terms, but it is also creates alternative narratives.