Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Machine Automation And The Critique Of Abstract Labor In Hegel's Mature Social Theory, Matthew J. Delhey

Philosophy Theses

This thesis examines Hegel’s critique of abstract labor in the Philosophy of Right and the sections on objective spirit in the Encyclopaedia. Against both Frederick Neuhouser’s and Marxist interpretations, I argue that abstract labor, for Hegel, characterizes the specific kind of mechanical labor undertaken in the nineteenth-century factory. Such repetitive labor, Hegel claims, leads to the deadening (Abstumpfung) of the worker through the deforming of her ethical subjectivity, a social pathology he hopes will be resolved by machine automation. By developing two key aspects of Hegel’s social theory—that labor produces ethical subjectivity or education (Bildung) and …

"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

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

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 …

Information Freedoms And The Case For Anonymous Community, Rachel Melis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What we have witnessed in the last decade in the context of social upheaval, social activism, and resulting social movements is testament to the need for a re-evaluation of what constitutes community in a networked world, and what role the individual subject plays within social networks, systems of social, corporate, and state control, and networks of resistance. New processes of subjectivation are emerging and rather than being grounded in identity, sociality is being reconfigured, and it is in this process that this dissertation focusses on anonymity as a means of working through these new configurations. This integrated article dissertation explores …

Alien Nation, Adam Hoole

Masters Theses

Can we (re)write our own subjectivity? What is lost in translation when we attempt to remake ourselves through speech acts? These questions are perhaps the most unsolvable and fundamental to inquiries into the operations of subjectivity. Nevertheless, they are questions I am to encounter and explore in this paper through a singular case study of the Manus Island Regional Processing Center. Founded in 2001, the Manus Island Processing Center served as a place for Australia to indefinitely detain refugees off-shore. The Processing Center was also a contentious site of violence and protest, of stillness and chaos, of love and despair. …

Plurality Through Film: Subjectivity In Yoko Tawada's Das Nackte Auge, Anna M. Adams

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis undertakes an examination of the subject formation of the nameless protagonist and first-person narrator of Yoko Tawada’s novel, Das nackte Auge. Situated and framed by poststructuralist theorists such as Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, this thesis argues that the protagonist’s plurality of subject positions is established through her encounters with film, particularly in relation to the French actress Catherine Deneuve, in a process that reveals the overlapping networks of social, historical, and political structures that intersect to express her subjectivity as formed under systemic racism and sexism. Tawada’s novel provides an opportunity to examine how the protagonist …

In The Presence Of Suffering: Toward A New Understanding Of Evil, Kristina Lebedeva

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

The present dissertation addresses the question of evil and suffering as intrinsically intertwined, linked by the notion of affective temporality, as distinct from ‘clock time.’ Following Adi Ophir, I define evil as superfluity, as what ought not to be, thus divorcing it from any idea of necessity, and its social production that must be reduced or disrupted. The catastrophes that are still happening take precedence over past ones, since the former are still open to reduction, intervention, and alleviation. Here time becomes a key notion that alerts us to the possibilities of responding morally to present disasters. Time reappears again …

Invisible Labour: Support-Service Workers In India’S Information Technology Industry, Indranil Chakraborty

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dissertation investigates the life, working conditions and urban experience of support-service workers in the Information Technology (IT) sector of India: the janitors, security guards, fast food delivery service professionals and car pool drivers who work in and around technology parks that develop software applications for a world-market. The common experiences of these employees are migration from rural contexts to a radically modern employment setting, where they work long hours with minimal benefits in informal conditions that often violate basic labour laws. The thesis draws on quantitative and qualitative research, and in particular on analysis and interpretation of hundred and …

Rescuing The Individual From Neoliberalism: Education, Anarchism, And Subjectivity, Gabriel Keehn

Educational Policy Studies Dissertations

"Individualism" is a term that evokes a wide range of responses, particularly when deployed in the context of American history and society, with its supposed (and purportedly objectionable) tradition of so-called "rugged individualism." The images of the cowboy, frontiersman, and lone entrepreneur spring readily to mind, along with a long list of virtues embodied in these figures: self-sufficiency, drive, courage, gumption, and the like. It is the project of this dissertation to rehabilitate the concept of individualism as tool of the Left for resisting the ongoing assault of neoliberalism, particularly with respect to our educational institutions. I argue that the …

Relanzamiento Of Nicaragua’S Christian Base Communities: Forging New Models Of Church And Society For The Twenty-First Century, Lara M. Gunderson

Anthropology ETDs

How do narrative practices used by members of Christian Base Communities (in Spanish, CEBs) construct particular Catholic-political subjectivities within the Church, the nation-state, and the larger global institutions? Christian Base Communities, the vehicle by which liberation theology is put into practice, played a significant role in Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution. Their proclaimed renewal is happening under dramatically different contexts from which they first emerged. Their religious beliefs continue to justify and place a moral thrust on their struggle for a more egalitarian society despite the reduction of social programs on the part of neoliberal governments, including the current Sandinista party administration. …

The Quest For World-Class Universities In China: Examining Faculty Members’ Subjectivities Under The Logics Of Neoliberal Globalization, Bailing Zhang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study provides a deeper knowledge and understanding about the ways in which multiple local and global discourses shape the policies that emphasize the building of world-class universities in China. As such, it examines the influence of neoliberal forces of globalization on institutional and individual responses to these policies, with attention to their transformational impact on the subjectivities of the faculty members. This qualitative case study (Creswell, 2009; Stake, 2005; Thomas, 2011a) was informed by an engagement with a number of interrelated and complementary critical social theories, namely, a Foucauldian analytical framework (Foucault, 1980a, 1980b, 1987, 1993), critical policy theories …

Examining Chinese International Secondary School Students In Transnational Spaces: Becoming Flexible Citizens?, Xi Wu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years, an increasing number of Chinese international secondary school students have come to study in Canada. Upon arriving in their international context, their school and out-of-school lives are influenced by socio-economic, political and cultural forces circulating in and connecting across the home and host spaces of China and Canada. As the overarching frame, the study employs Ong’s (1999) notion of ‘flexible citizenship,’ examining the cultural logics mediating students’ lives and how they flexibly and not-so-flexibly engage in their learning and self-making in their transnational spaces.

This research is a qualitative ethnographic field study conducted in and around a …

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

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 …

Undoing Giftedness: Considering Adolescent Latina Identity Performativity In United States Public Schools, Jenna Nelson

Dissertations

This dissertation employs a series of literary genres to navigate the reader through the importance of complicating normalized notions of giftedness and Latina identity as well as the interrogating the complexity of subjectivities. Using post qualitative inquiry (St. Pierre, 2014), I blend writing practices typically used in fiction and in theoretical inquiry. Fiction writing such as narratives, scriptwriting, poetry, visual-art, journaling, and poetry are implemented to analyze and represent the individuals in this inquiry. This dissertation consists of three Acts and an Intermission to carry the reader through the various stages of my inquiry. Through writing the dissertation in this …

Gambling Platforms And Sporting Masculinities: Place, Performance And The Negotiation Of Subjectivities, Hayden Cahill

Social Sciences - Honours Theses

The gambling industry has moved online through a profusion of sports gambling platforms and young men are a key target market. Sport gambling platforms may be used anywhere and anytime, extending gambling beyond its conventional spatial limits and capitalising on the affordances of the smart device. Yet, little is known about the spaces where sport gambling platforms are used and what they enable young men to achieve. This thesis draws on the related concepts of assemblage, territory, affective atmospheres and subjectivity to offer new understanding of the places where young men use sport gambling platforms and where they usually do …

The Power Of Resurrection: Early Christian Resistance Through The Rise Of Disciplinary Power, Patrick G. Stefan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an analysis of the spread of Christianity in the first three centuries and the commensurate activation and development of what Michel Foucault calls disciplinary mechanisms of power. It sets out to explore two questions, first, what were the theoretical conditions that led to Christianity's rapid expansion? And second, what were the historical precursors to the mechanisms of disciplinary power? It then seeks to put these two questions together to propose that early Christianity was successful in overtaking the Roman Imperial government because it activated underlying disciplinary mechanisms of power in a world governed and controlled by sovereign …

A Mexican American's Passage: An Autoethnographic Exploration Of Identity And Self-Empowerment, Corina Lerma

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis presents a critical autoethnography that explores how an understanding of political and cultural events have contributed to my conflicted sense of identity. The purpose of the study was to identify genealogical and historical patterns that manifest in the traumas that have influenced and problematized the construction of my reality and to discover if personal traumas and conflicted senses of identity as a Mexican American in the United States finds any source in the social and political events that took place during the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s. The autoethnography was conducted both through research of Mexican American history, …

(Un)Packing The Natural: Exploring Tactics Of Empowerment For Girls Through Outdoor Education, Avalon Blue Qian

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Homage To Cube, Ken Lu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

No abstract provided.

Deleuze: Un Análisis Del Concepto De Sujeto En La Obra Empirismo Y Subjetividad, Johan Andrés Ramos Marentes

Filosofía y Letras

No abstract provided.

Literacies Of The Disaster Zone: New Media Genres And Participatory Rhetorics After The 2010 Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill, R. J. Lambert

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

On April 20, 2010, explosions at the British Petroleum (BP) Macondo Project in the Gulf of Mexico initiated what would become the world's largest accidental release of oil into the ocean. This ecological disaster, a unique combination of natural and human causes, is one of many significant traumas over approximately the last two decades that various stakeholders have documented, participated in, and responded to largely through the expanding and increasingly ubiquitous media of the internet, computers, cell phones, and other networked communicative technologies, which both enable and constrain the variety of responses to traumatic events.

This Dissertation improves our understanding …

Prácticas Docentes Referidas A La Capacidad De Subjetividad Con Estudiantes En Etapa De Pubertad Del Colegio Dios Es Amor, Localidad 19 De La Ciudad De Bogotá D.C, Jhoan Esteban Benavides Daza, Daniel Andrés Contreras Ospina, Jaime Ramiro Cardona Torres, Lady Dayan Wilches Toro

Maestría en Docencia

El enfoque de capacidades desde Martha Nussbaum define «capacidad» como lo que la persona puede hacer o ser, centrándose en el ejercicio de los derechos fundamentales y la promoción de una vida digna. Desde esta perspectiva se plantea el fortalecimiento de la subjetividad como capacidad central del ser humano en reconocimiento del ser para sí y para los demás, permitiendo analizar la práctica docente al describir y caracterizar los rasgos que promueven su fortalecimiento. La investigación se llevó a cabo mediante el método etnografía educativa y se usaron como técnicas de investigación la observación no participante, bajo el diseño de …