By Dr Katy Anyasoro
Abstract PhD Thesis Dr Katy Anyasoro
CIRCL PhD student Katy Anyasoro (nee Corderoy) passed her viva on 28-01-2026 with her thesis: ‘Reading Writing, Writing Reading: Identity, structure, movement, translation and discipline’. External Examiner: Dr Johanna Motzkau (Open University; Internal Examiner: Professor Neil Cocks; supervisor: Professor Karin Lesnik-Oberstein. Many congratulations, Katy!
Abstract of thesis
This thesis is an interdisciplinary exploration of how different perspectives on ideas of writing are constituted, following the theoretical arguments of the French philosopher and critical theorist Jacques Derrida in Limited Inc, where he considers writing:
If we take the notion of writing in its currently accepted sense- one which should not – and that is essential- be considered innocent, primitive, or natural, it can only be seen as a means of communication… (p.3)
My communication must be repeatable- iterable- in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. (p.7)
Derrida’s arguments, then, also raise the question of what the writing of a (this) thesis in and of itself can be and therefore this thesis is by necessity self-reflective in following the implications of this thinking about writing: what ‘this thesis’ is, as ‘means of communication’ is a reading of texts, collected to be ‘repeatable’ and ‘iterable’, by the frame of a contents page and headings.
The focus of this thesis is not on specific texts read as involving particular qualities or arguments, but instead includes, for instance, a reading of ‘common sense’ (Martin Heidegger) a reading of the self and statistics (Libby Schweber) and readings across disciplines like mathematics (Euclid, Donal O’shea, Albert Einstein) and anthropology (Clifford Geertz, Bronislaw Malinowski).
The thesis, then, is itself constituted as a reading of this as ‘process’ in its ‘iterability’. Framing a reading of process further in readings, for example, of ‘illness’ (Michel Foucault, Oliver Sacks), ‘grammar’, (Noam Chomsky) ‘secrets’ (James Baldwin) and ‘absence’ (Ian Parker). The thesis ends with an Epilogue to read the collecting of these readings as a ‘means of communication’ in the Derridean sense.