Nomadic becomings : narrative accounts of predictive genetic testing for Huntington's disease : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis constructs three narratives of my experiences of Predictive Genetic Testing (PGT) for Huntington’s Disease. Not content with ideals of normative thought, illustrating the unitary subject of representation navigating the challenges of a testing process, I write how one might undertake the PGT process, if only to provide further possibilities unimaginable to me outside the limits of this thesis. Informed with Rosi Braidotti’s nomadic theory, the narratives are written with a multiplicity of dispersed selves forming with the molecular possibilities of human, non-human, and more-than-human forces and flows, tracing non-normative subjectivities of becoming-other. Privileging intensive differences of affective change and motion, nomadic narrative creates rhizomatic figurations able to traverse the limits of normative thought with non-linear thinking. Written with affective memories of my experiences of difference, narratives of the PGT process form multiplicities of nomadic subjects inhabiting the time of Aion, embodied with the mindless, generative and affirmative vitality of Braidotti’s Life as Zoe. Addressing issues of sustainability and endurance with nomadic ethics, nomadic narratives escape binary dialectics and excluded-other of representational thought, affirming a multiplicity of empowering witness-able accounts of the PGT process. I engage political philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, amongst other theoretical ontologies, providing understandings of processes I experience writing with nomadic subjects. I explore the limits of nomadic narrative, in the creation of smooth space that challenges normative social, cultural, and academic practices exceeding past the confines of this thesis.