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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Power Of The Influencer: Old Gods, Rejected Elites, And Secular Idols, Laura Brenalvirez Jan 2022

The Power Of The Influencer: Old Gods, Rejected Elites, And Secular Idols, Laura Brenalvirez

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the phenomena of influencers in America, and what makes their power distinct from institutional forms of authority. As we are disillusioned by the establishment, we turn to influencers, since we have greater exercise of autonomy and agency in our deference. Our parasocial relationships demonstrate an anti-elitist desire to feel truly represented by our authorities. I aim to open scholarship about celebrities through a more charitable lens than many condescending takes.


Pheneticism As A Cultural And Literary Critique Of Human Interaction, Richard Dew Sep 2018

Pheneticism As A Cultural And Literary Critique Of Human Interaction, Richard Dew

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 2010, Wayde Compton proposed, as an experiment, replacing the term ‘passing’ with ‘phehenticizing’ in relation to critical race theory and in conjunction with the manner in which we interpret the relationship racialized subjects possess with agents of the state. Pheneticizing, co-opted as a theoretical term from the branch of taxonomy called phenetics, when it comes to human interaction, has been demonstrated from a Eurocentric position of power from the time of European colonial expansion; through the era of the African slave trade of Europe and the Americas; into the time of American reconstruction; and persists within our current reality. …


Is There Less Bullshit In For Marx Than In Reading Capital?, William S. Lewis Jun 2017

Is There Less Bullshit In For Marx Than In Reading Capital?, William S. Lewis

William Lewis

This paper explores G. A. Cohen’s claim that Althusser’s Marxist philosophy is bullshit. This exploration is important because, if we are persuaded by Cohen’s assertion that there are only three types of Marxism: analytic, pre-analytic, and bullshit and, further, that only analytic Marxism is concerned with truth and therefore “uniquely legitimate” then, as political philosophers interested in Marxism’s potential philosophical resources, we may wish to privilege its analytic form. However, if Cohen’s attribution is misplaced, then we may wish to explore why Cohen was so insistent in this ascription and what this insistence reveals about his own political philosophy. The …


The Lens That Sees Itself: Fruitful Interactions Of Film And Philosophy, Travis Wheeler Dec 2015

The Lens That Sees Itself: Fruitful Interactions Of Film And Philosophy, Travis Wheeler

Cinesthesia

Much of film theory holds that film is primarily an act of communication, whose message the audience understands. While this allows us great insights into the ideological and subconscious functions of a great many films, it falls short of this success with more enigmatic films. In instances such as these, where films are not easily understood, a different paradigm is necessary. Using philosophical texts as comparative tools in film analysis provides the answer to this "blindspot" in film criticism.


Is There Less Bullshit In For Marx Than In Reading Capital?, William S. Lewis Nov 2015

Is There Less Bullshit In For Marx Than In Reading Capital?, William S. Lewis

Philosophy

This paper explores G. A. Cohen’s claim that Althusser’s Marxist philosophy is bullshit. This exploration is important because, if we are persuaded by Cohen’s assertion that there are only three types of Marxism: analytic, pre-analytic, and bullshit and, further, that only analytic Marxism is concerned with truth and therefore “uniquely legitimate” then, as political philosophers interested in Marxism’s potential philosophical resources, we may wish to privilege its analytic form. However, if Cohen’s attribution is misplaced, then we may wish to explore why Cohen was so insistent in this ascription and what this insistence reveals about his own political philosophy. The …


Philosophy's Rarified Air: On Peden's Spinoza Contra Phenomenology, Steven Swarbrick Jan 2015

Philosophy's Rarified Air: On Peden's Spinoza Contra Phenomenology, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.


Crossing The Law: Trans Activism, Aleatory Materialism, And The Analyst's Discourse, Christopher M. Bomba Sep 2014

Crossing The Law: Trans Activism, Aleatory Materialism, And The Analyst's Discourse, Christopher M. Bomba

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines contingency to elucidate transgender activism’s leadership in radical politics. I take up Louis Althusser’s theory of aleatory materialism to politicize everyday encounters. Trans activists gain a parallax view through gendered (mis)recognition that reveals the structure of ideology’s vanishing points. By contrast, I criticize a cisgendered viewpoint and demonstrate the logical errors that result in transphobic behavior through Jacques Lacan’s version of the prisoner’s dilemma. I conclude to theorize trans activism’s engagement with the state through Lacanian analytic technique. This technique does not result in traditional “treatment,” but instead fuels activism with knowledge of the structures that must …


Post-Marxism After Althusser: A Critique Of The Alternatives, Ceren Ozselcuk Feb 2009

Post-Marxism After Althusser: A Critique Of The Alternatives, Ceren Ozselcuk

Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014

This dissertation provides a particular Marxian class analytical political economy critique of post-Marxism. The dissertation demonstrates the ways in which different positions within post-Marxism continue to essentialize the conceptualizations of class and capitalist economy. What distinguishes this dissertation from other dominant critiques of post-Marxism is the anti-essentialist epistemological and ontological position it adopts. By adopting an anti-essentialist epistemological position the dissertation is able to demonstrate the discontinuities and continuities between post-Marxism and the Marxian tradition. The dissertation does this by reading the heterogeneous and disparate post-Marxian approaches as so many different ways to "resolve" the central tension of the Althusserian …


Spinoza And Marx, Eugene W. Holland Jan 1998

Spinoza And Marx, Eugene W. Holland

Eugene W Holland

This essay explores what replacing Hegel with Spinoza as a philosophical source might do for contemporary Marxism.