Empathetic Humanism and Multiethnic Narratives

This dissertation uncovers how select multiethnic American literatures imagine minoritarian subjectivity that is not premised on categories of nationalism or American mythos of agency, but rather privilege non-Western humanist subject-formation processes. Given their outlying position in the American literary canon, multiethnic, interracial texts have the capacity to engage not only alternative frameworks of subject formation, but also specifically humanist frames – meaning, encounters of inclusion that occur because of a reciprocal recognition of a shared condition of being. Investigating narratives of interethnic reception, this project illuminates how some modes of being, such as suffering and joy, illustrate a new humanism predicated on radical empathy. Employing an archive of narrative works that range from Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father (1995) to Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth (2010), alongside texts such as Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rainforest (1990), this dissertation shows how minority subjectivities can be cultivated beyond the domain of settler agendas: how, for example, ethnic difference incites cross-cultural dignity, not racial subjugation; or how militaristic violence heralds guardianship amongst its victims, not reactive hatred. Ultimately, this narrative methodology works to undermine mechanisms of agency that create subjects only to control, condition, and constrain them. Exploring how multiethnic literature expresses underexamined humanist encounters between minoritized peoples, this dissertation demonstrates the potential to destabilize the exclusionist nationalism that first marginalized them, without engaging or relying on said national codes of subjectivity. To that end, this project concludes by exploring how a methodology of empathetic humanism can be put into praxis. Providing examples of partnerships with local disenfranchised groups to co-create public-facing projects that expand the frame of “who counts” as a viable subject, this dissertation closes by demonstrating how empathetic humanism as a theory and methodology can be employed to benefit the public, common good

Allegories of walking in the modern age.

In The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Walter Benjamin presents the allegory as monadic in shape. Borrowing from Gottfried Liebniz, Benjamin sees the allegory as having similarities with the monad in that both are singular yet whole: the entire is condensed within the particular. In Benjamin\u27s schema, the truth can only be gained piecemeal; the whole can only be grasped through the minutiae. Accordingly, that which previously remained out of reach---the whole---becomes graspable through the fragment. Employing Benjamin\u27s understanding of the monadic properties of the allegory, this paper follows three allegorical figures of walking: Benjamin\u27s flaneur, Louis Aragon\u27s surrealist stroller, and Guy Debord\u27s situationist drifter or deriver. By studying these three city-walkers an entire world is brought into view: France of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This paper seeks to explain how revolutionary fervour dissipated in a country rife with revolutionary history. By inductively examining the three incarnations of the Paris stroller, the undulations of critical consciousness are rendered transparent, from the barricade-fighting of 1848, the dissipation after 1871, and the re-emergence in the month of May, 1968. The flaneur explains the disappearance of revolutionary desire with the rise of the consumer, while the surrealist stroller demonstrates the strength of phantasmagoric desire. By exposing capital\u27s inequalities, however, the situationist drifter paves the way for the return of revolutionary desire.Dept. of English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .A444. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 43-05, page: 1565. Adviser: Stephen Pender. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004

Architecture of surface : the significance of surficial thought and topological metaphors of design

In the early twentieth century, the modernists problematized ornament in their refashioning of architecture for the industrial age. Today, architects are formulating different responses to image and its (re)production in the information age. In both discourses of ornament and image, surfaces are often the perpetrators: visual boundaries that facilitate false appearances, imprisoning humanity in a shadowy cave of illusion. Such views follow a familiar metaphysical model characterized by the opposition between inside and outside and the opaque boundary that acts as a barrier. This model determines the traditional (Platonic) philosophical approach that follows a distinct hierarchical order and a perpendicular movement of thought that seeks to penetrate appearances in order to arrive at the essence of things. This thesis deploys Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy to advance a different understanding of surface, image and appearance in architecture. Using the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum as a catalyst, the thesis argues that many of the concepts with which commentators and critics analyse contemporary architecture follow models of thought that consider surfaces and their effects as secondary categories. Given the significance of visual (re)production and communication for contemporary society, the thesis proposes a different model based on surface as that which simultaneously produces, connects and separates image and reality. This non-hierarchical approach is inspired by surficial philosophy, which relates to Earth, to geology and topology, conjuring up a diversity of concepts from the thickness of the crust to the smooth fluidity of the seas. The result is an unfamiliar, polemical model of thought that does not define surface as a limit or barrier, rather a medium, a pliable space of smooth mixture. In this model, difference is not in the opposition between the two sides of a boundary line, rather it occurs upon and within the surficial landscape that consumes categories, promoting nomadic movements of thought that offer greater flexibility towards creativity and new possibilities. In surficial thought, images and appearances are not artificial copies of an originary reality, rather they possess a unique reality of their own. This approach allows architectural imagery to be theorised as a positive surfacing of architecture beyond disciplinary lines and the locality of a specific time and place

Mereological nihilism: quantum atomism and the impossibility of material constitution

Mereological nihilism is the philosophical position that there are no items that have parts. If there are no items with parts then the only items that exist are partless fundamental particles, such as the true atoms (also called philosophical atoms) theorized to exist by some ancient philosophers, some contemporary physicists, and some contemporary philosophers. With several novel arguments I show that mereological nihilism is the correct theory of reality. I will also discuss strong similarities that mereological nihilism has with empirical results in quantum physics. And I will discuss how mereological nihilism vindicates a few other theories, such as a very specific theory of philosophical atomism, which I will call quantum abstract atomism. I will show that mereological nihilism also is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that avoids the problems of other interpretations, such as the widely known, metaphysically generated, quantum paradoxes of quantum physics, which ironically are typically accepted as facts about reality. I will also show why it is very surprising that mereological nihilism is not a widely held theory, and not the premier theory in philosophy

Airport Aura – A Spatial History of Airport Infrastructure

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the emergence of airports as gateways for their cities has turned into one of the most important architectural undertakings. Ever since the first manned flight by the Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright on December 17th 1903, utilitarian sheds next to landing strips on cow pastures evolved into a completely new building type over the next few decades – into places of Modernism as envisioned by Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright (who themselves never built an airport), to eventually turn into icons of cultural identity, progress and prosperity. Many of these airports have become architectural branding devices of their respective cities, regions and countries, created by some of the most notable contemporary architects. This interdisciplinary cultural study deals with the historical formation and transformation of the architectural typology of airports under the aspect of spatial theories. This includes the shift from early spaces of transportation such as train stations, the synesthetic effect of travel and mobility and the effects of material innovations on the development, occupation and use of such spaces. The changing uses from mere utilitarian transportation spaces to ones centered on the spectacular culture of late capitalism, consumption and identity formation in a rapidly changing global culture are analyzed with examples both from architectural and philosophical points of view. The future of airport architecture and design very much looks like the original idea of the Crystal Palace and Parisian Arcades: to provide a stage for consumption, social theatre and art exhibition

Women Walking: The Flâneuse and Urban Tourist in Cinema

This thesis looks at representations of female mobility and the female gaze in films set in Paris and Tuscany. It primarily looks at these representations in terms of female participation in flânerie. It looks for the classical example of flânerie in early cinema beginning with Les Vampires before moving on to mid- century representations and the struggle with the feminine masquerade in Cléo 5 a 7 and Funny Face. The final two chapters look at the female tourist and the window shopper as the flâneuse in more recent examples: A Room with a View, Stealing Beauty, and Midnight in Paris. Ultimately, this thesis looks at women walking and traveling the urban landscapes in their home city and on tour