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Cinema's Poetic Function: Creating An Amorous Distance, William Yonts
Cinema's Poetic Function: Creating An Amorous Distance, William Yonts
Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses
The aim of this thesis is to examine how cinema can embrace its poetic function to avoid its assimilation into preexisting hermeneutic structures, which would leave it vulnerable to myth as defined by Roland Barthes, and instead be a generative force, encouraging its viewer to engage with the full potential of the text. This mode of spectatorship is termed the “amorous distance,” which Barthes describes as his simultaneous fascination with the film and that which exceeds it. The amorous distance finds further articulation through the work of Roman Jakobson and Julia Kristeva. Jakobson’s schema of six language functions describes the …
Kierkegaard And The Assumptions Of Philosophy, Ryan K. Shea
Kierkegaard And The Assumptions Of Philosophy, Ryan K. Shea
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
This thesis explores the philosophy of early existentialist Søren Kierkegaard as implicitly critiquing the assumed essence of objectivity both directly understood as Absolute Truth in a classically Hegelian sense, but also in a more oblique meta-textual fashion in the presence of his varied pseudonymity. The first chapter takes on classical readings of Kierkegaard as a philosophy of stages—sometimes as aesthetic-ethical-religious, or otherwise despairing-anxious-faithful—and offers the alternative comprehension of a philosophy of moods which encompasses all these same “stages” as existing in and through each other in subjective existence. In the second chapter, I take the traditional reading of stages and …
You Unseen Cathedrals: A Study Of The Conceptual Conditions Of Negativity, Anda Pleniceanu
You Unseen Cathedrals: A Study Of The Conceptual Conditions Of Negativity, Anda Pleniceanu
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
This dissertation addresses a gap in contemporary negativity studies by examining twentieth-century texts that engage with negativity beyond the subject. Starting with the premise that the concepts of negativity and subjectivity are intertwined, I argue that the predominant tendency in scholarship has been to conceptualize subjectivity as a circular structure that incorporates negativity as its dynamic foundation. However, when negativity is defined in subordination to the subjective circle, its radical features are diminished, resulting in “weak negativity.” In Chapter 1, I exemplify my arguments using the works of Alexandre Kojève, Jean Hyppolite, and Judith Butler. In contrast to weak negativity, …
Ethical Anxiety: Establishing Morals In An Amoral World, Gabriel Jay Hummel
Ethical Anxiety: Establishing Morals In An Amoral World, Gabriel Jay Hummel
Senior Projects Spring 2023
This is a project founded on uncertainty. How can we ever judge anyone else when we can never know them as we do ourselves? How can we say that someone does wrong when they believe themselves to be doing right? Since at least the nineteenth century ethics, and philosophy as a whole, carved a new path without the aid of stabilizing pillars of objective, eternal truths. The following work demonstrates how a sense of vertigo descends on one who is forced to question the existence of those objective truths and how that fearful confusion can lead to dangerous refuges, yet …
The Gay Science: Power On The Body, Population, And Psyche, Nicola Augustyn
The Gay Science: Power On The Body, Population, And Psyche, Nicola Augustyn
CMC Senior Theses
Michel Foucault is a philosopher of power who left behind a legacy of ideas that continue to inspire scholars today. His conceptualization of power is not limited to the figures of kings, monarchs, or the sovereign state. Rather, he regards power as a productive force that shapes subjectivity, manufactures knowledge, and engenders the truth in a particular historical context. In this thesis, I aim to provide a comprehensive account of Foucault’s analysis of power, starting with his refutation of the “repressive hypothesis” that challenges the predominant view of centralized top-down power. Then, I present Foucault’s proposal for redefining power as …
'Bleeding-In-The-World': A Qualitative Study Of Self-Cutting And Blood, Sadie Mohler
'Bleeding-In-The-World': A Qualitative Study Of Self-Cutting And Blood, Sadie Mohler
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation is an existential, phenomenological study of the role and meaning of blood in self-cutting. Using in-depth, open-ended interviews with participants who self-cut, the author gathered data on the multisensorial experience of blood and bleeding in self-cutting. Data analysis was organized around the lifeworld existentials of corporeality, temporality, spatiality, communication, and relationality. The impact of blood and bleeding across each lifeworld dimension emphasized highly relevant, and previously unstudied, aspects of the lived experience of self-cutting. The six themes identified and explored are (a) blood as an animate abject; (b) bleeding and control; (c) bleeding is a process and the …
How Is It That Anything Matters?: A Defense Of Metaethical Constructivism Against Nihilism, Sierra Whitney
How Is It That Anything Matters?: A Defense Of Metaethical Constructivism Against Nihilism, Sierra Whitney
Philosophy
A contemporary view of nihilism about values asserts that there is no way to rationalize one normative assessment over another. Metaethical constructivism holds that this is mistaken, seeing that values are non-objective and our standpoint from the practical point of view supplies us with our own set of substantive values. As long as our normative assessment about a given situation follows logically from the practical point of view, then we can say that we have a true and justified normative assessment. The contemporary view of nihilism holds that our values and judgements are arbitrarily ranked, but this is mistaken for …
Topics Of The Sky: Ashbery's Involving Search For The Poem, Tom M. Carlson
Topics Of The Sky: Ashbery's Involving Search For The Poem, Tom M. Carlson
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
An essay lived by John Ashbery's Three Poems with special attention to the possibility of cosmic relevance. This paper attempts to imagine priorities and needs proper to celestial bodies. Three Poems is the consciousness that gives possibility to the text, while Blanchot, Nietzsche, and other thinkers ground its exploration in philosophical analysis.
The Criterion Collection, Mackenna Finley
The Criterion Collection, Mackenna Finley
Honors Projects
The Criterion Collection is an examination of truth in fiction and poetry. The goal of this project is not to create truth that is absolute, but instead to allow for the experience of its subjectivity. The interplay between fiction and poetry, reader and author illuminates the subtle warping of truth through human experience.
Toward A New Conception Of Human Subjectivity For The Age Of Globalization: Revisiting The Hegelian Vision Of “Spiritual Subjectivity”, Yun Kwon Yoo
CGU Theses & Dissertations
My major argument in this dissertation is that Hegelian spiritual subjectivity can and should serve as a philosophical basis for envisioning a new conception of human subjectivity for the age of globalization. Why, then, does globalization demand a new conception of human subjectivity at all? What constitutes the Hegelian spiritual subjectivity such that it is not only relevant and but also necessary to the contemporary, postmodern context of globalization? My dissertation largely addresses these two questions. As for the first question, it requires my critical analysis of the context in which we are living. We are living in an era …
Affect And Critique: Negative Dialectics And Massumi's Politics Of Affect, Heidi Ann Rhodes
Affect And Critique: Negative Dialectics And Massumi's Politics Of Affect, Heidi Ann Rhodes
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Brian Massumi's concept of affect offers a model of change that relies on sensory-affective modes of resistance to neoliberal power relations. Influenced by Bergson's concepts of time and space, Massumi develops an account of perception as the capacity to entrain with ontological, affective flows of becoming before they are captured and reduced to quantifiable forms. This requires a radical reconfiguration of the body as a zone of indetermination between the virtual field of unformed potentialities and the realm of determined existence. I argue that affect theory cannot fulfill its promise to open new political possibilities without the negativity of critique …
Discarnation: Expounding On Marshall Mcluhan's Critique Of Modern Subjectivity, Amanda Sevilla
Discarnation: Expounding On Marshall Mcluhan's Critique Of Modern Subjectivity, Amanda Sevilla
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This project presents Marshall McLuhan’s work as an explication of discarnate subjectivity in mediated environments, with special focus on the consequences of technological environments in society. The first and second chapters focus on McLuhan’s ground, sensibilities, and practice to shed light on his intricate discussions of social perceptions emerging in modern times—i.e., communal awareness propels perceptual and cultural shifts. The third chapter attends to people’s perceptual compass, or their ability to interpret the world around them. Chapter four considers some of the phenomenological aspects of McLuhan’s probes. The ideas show disconnects between time and space that contribute to discarnation in …
"I Have A Seat In The Abandoned Theater": Post-Foundational Subjects, Inoperative Teleologies, And The Aesthetics Of Dispossession, Averil L. Novak
"I Have A Seat In The Abandoned Theater": Post-Foundational Subjects, Inoperative Teleologies, And The Aesthetics Of Dispossession, Averil L. Novak
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
What is the nature of political ‘reality,’ and in what ways are we capable of affecting it? Who (or what? and where?) is the subject of democratic politics? Of revolutionary politics? Are they opposed to one another? The grand narratives that ‘ground’ this project and the resistances that unground them form the basis for a post-foundational analytic of the subject of politics, of identity, and of community, which constitutes a mobilization of democratic resistance as a commitment to persistent (and in some cases, relentless) contestation, interruption, and disruption. These questions are explored through the argument that modern politics is …
Subjectivity, Passion, And Mystical Intuition: Nietzsche's Early Writing, Joseph Leivdal
Subjectivity, Passion, And Mystical Intuition: Nietzsche's Early Writing, Joseph Leivdal
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
For Nietzsche, the subject is aesthetically creative, meaning that the subject is a dynamic process of self-transformation that involves not only the subject’s sense of self, but the meaning of their world. In my first chapter, I look at "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense" to show how Nietzsche deconstructs rationalist epistemology in order to show that knowledge and meaning are an aesthetic activity. In my second chapter, I look at "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" to argue that Nietzsche sees creativity as a passionate, sublime overflow, a rupture with the present that artistically …
The Zombie Apocalypse Has Already Happened: Queering Subjectivity In Zombie Film, Jessica Dunn
The Zombie Apocalypse Has Already Happened: Queering Subjectivity In Zombie Film, Jessica Dunn
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation traces the encounter between psychology as a human science and the viral zombie film genre using the collaborative works of Deleuze and Guattari in conjunction with the queer anti-humanist theories of Colebrook and Halberstam. I interwove thematic (i.e. plot, dialogue, character development) and cinematographic (i.e. shot composition, editing, lighting, musical score) analyses of fourteen viral zombie films with theoretical arguments regarding the deterritorialization of the human subject and its relevance to psychology as a human science. The films were selected from the plethora of viral zombie films released after the turn of the 21st century. The selection was …
The Parable As Mirror: An Examination Of The Use Of Parables In The Works Of Kierkegaard, Russell Hamer
The Parable As Mirror: An Examination Of The Use Of Parables In The Works Of Kierkegaard, Russell Hamer
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation focuses on an exploration of the use of parables in the works of Soren Kierkegaard. While some work has been done on Kierkegaard’s poetic style, very little attention has been paid to his metaphors, despite their prevalent use in his works. Much of the scholarship instead treats his parables as mere examples of philosophical concepts. In this work, I argue that Kierkegaard’s parables function primarily to cause the reader to see him or herself truly. The parables work like mirrors, reflecting our true selves back onto ourself. In this way, the parables prompt Kierkegaard’s readers to overcome the …
"Betwixt The World Destroyed And World Restored": Subjectivity And Paradisal Recovery In John Milton's Late Poems, Chihping Ma
"Betwixt The World Destroyed And World Restored": Subjectivity And Paradisal Recovery In John Milton's Late Poems, Chihping Ma
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This study focuses on the discovery of subjectivity through the recovery of lost paradise in Milton’s late poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. This theme revolves around the tension between the affective and the empirical, which also configure the spheres of the sacred and the profane. I explore how the irresistibly emancipatory impulse of recovering lost paradise compels Miltonic subjects to seek ways to return to their originary state or the divine ensemble. During this process, the subject is engaged with his own incapacity or privation while reaching into the sphere of unknown potentiality. In …
The Tapestry Of Memory, Kathryn M. Lawson
The Tapestry Of Memory, Kathryn M. Lawson
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Rationality points to the complete annihilation and end of a life when the body perishes, and yet when a loved one dies we continue to experience that person in a myriad of ways. The focus of this thesis will be a phenomenological exploration of the earthly afterlife of those we have loved and lost. By positing the subject as always intersubjective and as temporal in nature, this thesis will investigate how we continue to create and interact with the deceased upon the earth. In the introduction, this work will be placed in the context of the phenomenological tradition. The first …
The Social And Historical Subject In Sartre And Foucault And Its Implications For Healthcare Ethics, Kimberly Siobhan Engels
The Social And Historical Subject In Sartre And Foucault And Its Implications For Healthcare Ethics, Kimberly Siobhan Engels
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation explores Jean Paul Sartre’s and Michel Foucault’s view that subjectivity is socially and historically constituted. Additionally, it explores their corresponding ethical thought and how these viewpoints can be applied to ethical issues in the delivery of healthcare. Sartre and Foucault both hold the view that human beings as subjects are not just participants or spectators in social practices, rather, they become subjects with ontological possibilities through their interaction with these practices. In Chapter One, I trace Sartre’s views on subjectivity in his two major works Being and Nothingness and The Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume 1, showing how …
Is There A Secular Tradition? On Treason, Government, And Truth, Ali M. Uğurlu
Is There A Secular Tradition? On Treason, Government, And Truth, Ali M. Uğurlu
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
“Because the secular is so much part of our modern life, it is not easy to grasp it directly,” writes Talal Asad, in the introduction to his Formations of the Secular. This thesis attempts to obliquely engage with secular power through a concept that has been at the center of much contention in our political present: treason. Taking the failed coup of July 16and the ensuing purge against the Gülen movement in Turkey as its points of departure, it seeks to broach some of the constitutive and operative logics of the modern nation-state. Inquiring into the State’s perennial presupposition …
In Theory, There's Hope: Queer Co-(M)Motions Of Science And Subjectivity, Cordelia Sand
In Theory, There's Hope: Queer Co-(M)Motions Of Science And Subjectivity, Cordelia Sand
Masters Theses
Given the state of the planet at present —specifically, the linked global ecological and economic crises that conjure dark imaginings and nihilistic actualities of increasing resource depletion, poisonings, and wide-scale sufferings and extinctions—I ask What might we hope now? What points of intervention offer possibility for transformation? At best, the response can only be partial. The approach this thesis takes initiates from specific pre-discursive assumptions. The first understands current conditions as having been produced, and continuing to be so, through practices that enact and sustain neoliberal relations. Secondly, these practices are expressive of a subjectivity tied to a Cartesian worldview, …
Narrative And The Reconfiguration Of The Humanist Subject In Robbe-Grillet, Ballard, And Ligotti, Zachary L. Acosta-Lewis
Narrative And The Reconfiguration Of The Humanist Subject In Robbe-Grillet, Ballard, And Ligotti, Zachary L. Acosta-Lewis
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines the utility of the novels, short stories, critical writing, and generically indistinct work of Alain Robbe-Grillet, J.G. Ballard, and Thomas Ligotti in developing a critique of the contemporary manifestations of liberal humanist social, economic, and political subjectivities. To this end, the concurrence of formal fragmentation and sublime aesthetics in early Gothic fiction models the manner in which narrative structures can appropriate structural tropes of dominant institutions, critically reflecting ideological fracture. Read according to the assemblative approach outlined by Deleuze and Guattari, these authors serve as a productive and incisive response to the hegemony of capitalist territorialization with …
The Radical Possibilities Of Being Human: Exploring The Risk, Violence, And Rewards Of Knowing And Being Known (A Survival Guide For Liminal Feminists), Parvoneh Shirgir
The Radical Possibilities Of Being Human: Exploring The Risk, Violence, And Rewards Of Knowing And Being Known (A Survival Guide For Liminal Feminists), Parvoneh Shirgir
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Within this liminal feminist survival guide I present a collection of personal experiences and analysis of these moments in order to elucidate how and when violence occurs. I foreground my thought process and the ideas and figures that keep me hopeful, help remind me that our world is not concrete but instead changing, shifting, and malleable. What follows is a necessarily partial (and somewhat useless, somewhat useful) survival guide for liminal feminists, those who exist on the edges of boundaries and encounter all of the possibilities and fears that come with such a position. I present not so much a …
A Space Without Memory: Time And The Sublime In The Work Of Janet Cardiff And George Bures Miller, Margherita N. Papadatos
A Space Without Memory: Time And The Sublime In The Work Of Janet Cardiff And George Bures Miller, Margherita N. Papadatos
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
The central question of my investigation is: how do artists present the unpresentable when presentation itself is impossible? Concentrating solely on Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s artworks Opera For a Small Room (2005) and The Killing Machine (2007), I redevelop Jean François Lyotard’s concept of the sublime as put forth in his The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, in order to ask how Cardiff and Miller give shape to the unpresentable in their work. Opera and Killing are works that dynamically problematize and play with ideas of presentation, subjectivity, memory, and time. Thus, I explore my central question of …
Transcending Subjects: Hegel After Augustine, An Essay On Political Theology, Geoffrey J.D. Holsclaw
Transcending Subjects: Hegel After Augustine, An Essay On Political Theology, Geoffrey J.D. Holsclaw
Dissertations (1934 -)
From where do political reformers and radicals come who are willing and prepared to challenge the status quo? Where are people formed who are capable of initiating change within a political system? Some worry belief in transcendence closes off authentic political engagement and processes of transformation. Others think that a transcendent orientation is the only means to protect and promote a more free and just society. Some see a positive commitment to transcendence as inimical to democratic practices, while others see such a commitment as indispensable for such a project. These general issues concern transcendence, immanence, and subjectivity as they …
The Paradox Of Nature: Merleau-Ponty's Semi-Naturalistic Critique Of Husserlian Phenomenology, Shazad Akhtar
The Paradox Of Nature: Merleau-Ponty's Semi-Naturalistic Critique Of Husserlian Phenomenology, Shazad Akhtar
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation deals with Merleau-Ponty's critical transformation of Husserl's phenomenology through a rethinking of the concept of "nature," which Husserl, Merleau-Ponty argues, fails to integrate or explain successfully in his philosophical system. The first chapter reconstructs Husserl's "transcendental-phenomenological" project in Ideas I, while the second widens the investigation to cover the ontologically-centered Ideas II and III. In my third chapter, I chart what I call Merleau-Ponty's "organic appropriation" of Husserl and the unique hermeneutical challenges it poses. Here the ambiguity of Ideas II, which both grounds subjectivity in the lived body and separates nature from "spirit" (Geist), plays …