Far from water: Fly fishing and the ethics of pleasure

Grant Snider, Purdue University

Abstract

The literature of fly fishing has been described as a literature of self-awareness. In this regard, the concerns of fly fishing literature resemble the concerns of philosophy. This project explores the awareness that has been found and the concepts of identity that have been assumed in both the literature of fly fishing and in recent continental philosophy. In the process of this exploration, the dissertation clarifies the subjectivity constructed in the works of Julia Kristeva, Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault, and Emmanuel Levinas. Specifically, the dissertation argues that fly fishing, both in its practices and in its literary expressions, can be seen as an example of caring for the self as conceived by Foucault. That is, the angler is able to elbow out from among the pressures of society momentary states of freedom and pleasure otherwise denied. This pleasure, however, comes at the expense of the pleasure of the trout. In the end, the care of the self must be trained, through a revision of Levinasian ethics, into the ethical care for human beings and nonhuman beings alike. The responsibility that such caring entails leads to unsettled environmental and ethical questions confronting the author as an angler.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Dienst, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Literature|Philosophy|Recreation

COinS