Abstract

This project explores the inadequacies and failures of community, specifically through definition, exploration, and advancement of a new community role: the Outlier. This work also posits possible solutions for three major community problematics that surfaced in the review of the literature. Because of the enormity of the literature that documents community-forms and theoretical constructions on community, it was necessary to limit my study. I chose three specific sites from which to investigate both the nature of community and the Outlier: Roman Catholic women's religious community, Mujerista theology, and cyberspace. ;The three community problematics which emerged in the review of the literature, and which I address through the Outlier role, are the following: the continued problematic association of community with place, including the idealization of the historical; the inability to locate, tolerate, and negotiate differences among members; and inadequate and unsuccessful management of change within community-forms. ;The Outlier, a role which I posit, is an identity which locates itself at any particular point in any given time in spaces defined as inside, outside, or as part of the border culture of a community. The Outlier can confront and resolve absences and failures of community, and functions in a number of ways within community-forms. The following are five functions which I suggest that the Outlier serves in community: The Outlier as Member of Outlaw culture; Mutant/Hybrid; Border Guard; Explorer; and Prophet. ;In this work I examine past definitions of community, and offer a definition of my own which incorporates the need for less fixity and control, the indispensability of openness to difference, and the necessity of negotiating internal and external changes into the community. ;In asking why community has failed and in addressing the absences of community, I seek to support the ongoing passion for community in suggesting the Outlier as a beneficial role/function in community-forms as diverse as women's religious, Mujerista, and cyberspatial relations