Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Philosophy Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo Oct 2022

Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I advance a political ethnography of critical infrastructure to better understand terminal capitalism, in which the waste products of commodification and resource depletion are destroying the ecological systems that support life. My object of study is the massive disjuncture between individual knowledge and intention, and these catastrophic collective planetary outcomes. Theoretically, I develop critical infrastructure theory to diagnose these destructive structures. By “infrastructure,” I mean systems of material and discursive flows fundamental to sedentary human organization, connecting local actions with global systems. Such infrastructure is “critical” in three senses: A) denoting the most important forms of infrastructure …


Stop Making Sense: Hegel’S Critique Of Common Understanding, Daniel A. Burnfin Sep 2020

Stop Making Sense: Hegel’S Critique Of Common Understanding, Daniel A. Burnfin

Masters Theses

This thesis presents Hegel’s account of abstract ‘understanding’ (Verstand) and asserts that his thought is to be read as primarily presenting a critique of abstract understanding. Verstand involves the methodological supposition of a self-subsistent fundament of what it speaks of, and hence the critique of understanding is the critique of the supposition of self-subsistent fundaments. Grasping his account and reading him in its critical light yields a very different image of Hegel than the caricature of ‘totalizing systems’. The dimension of the Verstandeskritik has been relatively neglected in Hegel-reception and misunderstandings result from trying to ‘understand’ Hegel, by …


Time To Leave Uchronia: Queer Eco-Temporalities For A Livable World, Claire S. Brault Nov 2015

Time To Leave Uchronia: Queer Eco-Temporalities For A Livable World, Claire S. Brault

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation is a Feminist contribution to Environmental Political Theory focused on temporality. My research investigates the tension between the urgent need to act fast in a fast-changing world, and the necessity for time to pause and think through such radical and rapid changes. As it signals our nearing the planet’s limits, the emergence of the “anthropocene” crisis challenges growth-driven “progress.” I begin this dissertation with a survey of Environmental Thought that helps situate my contribution to the ongoing debates in this field, underscoring that as ecosophers pose the question of the nonhuman, in so doing they also are confronted …


"The Imagination And Construction Of The Black Criminal In American Literature, 1741-1910", Emahunn Campbell Nov 2015

"The Imagination And Construction Of The Black Criminal In American Literature, 1741-1910", Emahunn Campbell

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation examines the origins of the perception of black people as criminally predisposed by arguing that during eighteenth and nineteenth-century America, crime committed by black people was used as a major trope in legal, literary, and scientific discourses, deeming them inherently criminal. Furthermore, I contend that enslaved and free black people often used criminal acts, including murder, theft, and literacy, as avenues toward freedom. However, their resistance was used as a justification for slavery in the South and discrimination in the North. By examining a diverse set of materials such as confessional literature, plantation management literature, (social) scientific studies, …


Antigone Claimed, "I Am A Stranger": Democracy, Membership And Unauthorized Immigration, Andres Fabian Henao Castro Nov 2014

Antigone Claimed, "I Am A Stranger": Democracy, Membership And Unauthorized Immigration, Andres Fabian Henao Castro

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation offers a new framework through which to theorize contemporary democratic practices by attending to the political agency of unauthorized immigrants. I argue that unauthorized immigrants themselves, by claiming their own ambiguous legal condition as a legitimate basis for public speech, are able to open up the boundaries of political membership and to render the foundations of democracy contingent, that is to say, they are able to reopen the question about who counts as a member of the demos. I develop this argument by way of a close reading of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone[1], which allows me to …