Kognitive Interpretationen mehrdeutiger visueller Reize

Unser Gehirn muss zu jeder Zeit relevante Signale von irrelevanten Informationen trennen. Dazu müssen diese als spezifische Einheiten erkannt und klassifiziert werden. Mehrdeutigkeit ist ein wesentlicher Aspekt dieses Verarbeitungsprozesses und kann durch verrauschte Eingangssignale und durch den Aufbau unserer sensorischer Systeme entstehen. Beispielsweise können Reize mehrdeutig sein, wenn sie verrauscht oder unvollständig sind oder nur kurzzeitig wahrgenommen werden. Unter solchen Bedingungen werden Wahrnehmung und Klassifikation eines Reizes deutlich erschwert. Bereits vorhandene kognitive Repräsentationen werden somit möglicherweise nicht aktiviert. Folglich müssen Rückschlüsse über die Reize aufgrund von Kontext und Erfahrung gezogen werden. Ein und derselbe Reiz kann jedoch unterschiedlich repräsentiert und im sensorischen System kodiert werden. Da nur eine Repräsentation die Basis zukünftigen Handelns bilden kann, entsteht eine Art Konkurrenz innerhalb der Wahrnehmung. Derartige Wahrnehmungsphänomene, die mit der Mehrdeutigkeit von Reizen in Verbindung stehen, bilden den Mittelpunkt der vorliegenden Dissertation. Wenn einem physikalisch konstanten Reiz mehrere Interpretationen zugeordnet werden, entsteht ein Wechsel zwischen diesen Einordnungen, den man wahrnimmt und Rivalität ("rivalry") nennt. In dieser Dissertation werden diverse neue Erkenntnisse zu diesem grundlegenden Phänomen der sensorischen Verarbeitung beschrieben. So wird gezeigt, dass Übergänge zwischen drei wahrgenommenen Interpretationen – ein vergleichsweise selten untersuchtes Phänomen, da Rivalität meist mit zweideutigen Reizen untersucht wird – vorhersehbaren Mustern folgen (Kapitel 2). Darüber hinaus zeigt sich, dass derartige Übergänge spezifische Eigenschaften aufweisen, welche die Geschwindigkeit und die Richtung ihrer räumlichen Ausbreitung im visuellen Feld bestimmen (Kapitel 3). Diese Eigenschaften der Mehrdeutigkeit werden weiterhin stark von Aufmerksamkeit und anderen, introspektiven Prozessen beeinflusst. Um die der Rivalität in der Wahrnehmung tatsächlich zugrundeliegenden Prozesse und die damit verbundenen Änderungen des Bewusstseins von derartigen subjektiven Prozessen abzugrenzen, müssen letztere kontrolliert oder sogar vollständig umgangen werden. Ein objektives Maß der Rivalität in der Wahrnehmung wird zur Lösung dieser Aufgabe vorgeschlagen und bietet eine wertvolle Alternative zu introspektivem Berichten über den Wahrnehmungszustand (Kapitel 4). Übergänge in der Wahrnehmung entstehen entlang einer bestimmten Merkmalsdimension des Reizes, wie beispielsweise der Orientierung des berühmten Neckerwürfels. Zudem kann auch eine Änderung in der Merkmalsdimension der Luminanz eine unterschiedliche Interpretation des Reizes hervorrufen. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Pupille kleiner wird, wenn eine Interpretation mit hoher Luminanz die Wahrnehmung übernimmt, und umgekehrt, dass die Pupille größer wird, wenn eine Interpretation mit niedriger Luminanz die Wahrnehmung übernimmt. Folglich kann die Pupille als ein zuverlässiges und objektives Maß für Änderungen in der Wahrnehmung verwendet werden. Durch die Verwendung solcher objektiven Maße konnten neue Eigenschaften der Übergänge in der Wahrnehmung aufgezeigt werden, welche die Theorie unterstützen, dass Introspektion die der Verarbeitung mehrdeutiger Situationen zugrundeliegenden Prozesse merklich beeinflussen kann. Als Nächstes wurden mehrdeutiger Reize im Zusammenhang mit der Wahrnehmung von Objekten eingesetzt (Kapitel 5). Am Beispiel der Kippfigur des "bewegten Diamanten" wird dabei die Bedeutung von mehrdeutigen Reizen veranschaulicht. Beim bewegten Diamanten werden zwei Interpretationen wahrgenommen, die sich entlang der Dimension der Objektkohärenz abwechseln. Das bedeutet, dass die Wahrnehmung zwischen einem einzelnen zusammenhängenden Objekt (Diamant) und mehreren unzusammenhängenden Komponenten kippt. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Interpretation des Reizes als ein einziges kohärentes Objekt, verglichen mit der Interpretation als mehrere Komponenten, zu einer Erhöhung der visuellen Empfindlichkeit innerhalb des Objektes führt. Diese Ergebnisse sind ein Beleg dafür, wie die Aktivierung einer Interpretation eines Reizes als Einzelobjekt (im Vergleich zur Komponentenwahrnehmung) dazu führt, dass die Aufmerksamkeit top-down zu den relevanten Bereichen des Gesichtsfeldes gelenkt wird. Es wird weiter untersucht, welche Eigenschaften des Reizes zu einer bottom-up Aktivierung der Interpretation solcher Objekte beitragen (Kapitel 6). Die Mehrdeutigkeit von Objekten kann erfolgreich aufgehoben werden, indem man einen starken Kontrast in Luminanz oder Farbe zwischen dem Objekt und dem Hintergrund erzeugt. Auch die Größe und die Form haben einen großen Einfluss auf die Detektion und Identifikation von Objekten. Des Weiteren sind die Eigenschaften eines Objektes nicht nur bestimmend für die Erfolgsquote bei der Objekterkennung, sondern ebenso bedeutend für die Speicherung der Repräsentation im Gedächtnis, beispielsweise von neu wahrgenommenen Objekten. Das Klassifizieren von Objekten durch die Versuchsperson wird ebenfalls durch Mehrdeutigkeit beeinflusst. So kann ein Objekt der Versuchsperson einerseits als neu erscheinen, obwohl es bereits bekannt war, weil es beispielsweise der Versuchsperson schon einmal gezeigt worden ist. Andererseits kann auch ein eigentlich unbekanntes Objekt der Versuchsperson dennoch vertraut vorkommen. In dieser Arbeit wird gezeigt, dass solche subjektiven Effekte einen Einfluss auf die Pupillengröße haben (Kapitel 7). Außerdem verkleinert sich die Pupille der Versuchspersonen beim Betrachten neuer Bilder stärker als bei bekannten. Ein ähnlicher Effekt wird gefunden, wenn das Bild vorher erfolgreich im Gedächtnis gespeichert wurde. Daher ist es wahrscheinlich, dass die Pupille die Verfestigung von neuen Objekten im Gedächtnis widerspiegelt. Abschließend wird untersucht, ob sich kognitive Prozesse, wie Entscheidungsfindung – ein wichtiger Prozess, falls mehreren Optionen zur Verfügung stehen und Mehrdeutigkeit aufgehoben werden soll – auch in der Pupille widerspiegeln (Kapitel 8). Es wird zunächst bestätigt, dass die Pupillen sich erweitern, nachdem man eine Entscheidung getroffen hat. Neu wird gezeigt, dass diese Pupillenausdehnungen erfolgreich von anderen Personen erkannt und verwendet werden können, um ein interaktives Spiel gegen die erste Person (den "Gegner") zu gewinnen. Insgesamt wird in dieser Dissertation untersucht, wie mehrdeutige Reize die Wahrnehmung beeinflussen und wie Mehrdeutigkeit verwendet werden kann, um Prozesse des Gehirns zu studieren. Es hat sich gezeigt, dass Mehrdeutigkeit vorhersehbaren Mustern folgt, sie objektiv mit Reflexen gemessen werden kann, und Einblicke in neuronale Prozesse wie Aufmerksamkeit, Objektwahrnehmung und Entscheidungsmechanismen liefern kann. Diese Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Mehrdeutigkeit eine zentrale Eigenschaft sensorischer Systeme ist, und Lebewesen in die Lage versetzt, mit ihrer Umwelt flexibel zu interagieren. Mehrdeutigkeit macht das Verhalten vielfältiger, ermöglicht es dem Gehirn, mit der Welt auf verschiedenen Wegen zu interagieren, und ist die Basis der Dynamik von Wahrnehmung, Interpretation und Entscheidung.Brains can sense and distinguish signals from background noise in physical environments, and recognize and classify them as distinct entities. Ambiguity is an inherent part of this process. It is a cognitive property that is generated by the noisy character of the signals, and by the design of the sensory systems that process them. Stimuli can be ambiguous if they are noisy, incomplete, or only briefly sensed. Such conditions may make stimuli indistinguishable from others and thereby difficult to classify as single entities by our sensory systems. In these cases, stimuli fail to activate a representation that may have been previously stored in the system. Deduction, through context and experience, is consequently needed to reach a decision on what is exactly sensed. Deduction can, however, also be subject to ambiguity as stimuli and their properties may receive multiple representations in the sensory system. In such cases, these multiple representations compete for perceptual dominance, that is, for becoming the single entity taken by the system as a reference point for subsequent behavior. These types of ambiguity and several phenomena that relate to them are at the center of this dissertation. Perceptual rivalry, the phenomenal experience of alternating percepts over time, is an example of how the brain may give multiple interpretations to a stimulus that is physically constant. Rivalry is a very typical and general sensory process and this thesis demonstrates some newly discovered properties of its dynamics. It was found that alternations between three perceptual interpretations – a relatively rare condition as rivalry generally occurs between two percepts – follow predictable courses (Chapter 2). Furthermore, such alternations had several properties that determine their speed and direction of spatial spread (suppression waves) in the visual field (Chapter 3). These properties of ambiguity were further strongly affected by attention and other introspective processes. To demarcate the true underlying process of perceptual rivalry and the accompanied changes in awareness, these subjective processes need to be either circumvented or controlled for. An objective measure of perceptual rivalry was proposed that resolved this issue and provided a good alternative for introspective report of ambiguous states (Chapter 4). Changes in percepts occur along a specific feature domain such as depth orientation for the famous Necker cube. Alternatively, luminance may also be a rivalry feature and one percept may appear brighter as the other rivaling percept. It was demonstrated that the pupil gets smaller when a percept with high luminance becomes dominant, and vice versa, gets bigger when a percept with low luminance gets dominant during perceptual rivalry. As such, the pupil can serve as a reliable objective indicator of changes in visual awareness. By using such reflexes during rivalry, several new properties of alternations were discovered and it was again confirmed that introspection can confound the true processes involved in ambiguity. Next, the usefulness of ambiguous stimuli was explored in the context of objects as entities (Chapter 5). Some ambiguous stimuli can induce two percepts that alternate along the feature domain of object coherency, that is, whether a single coherent object or multiple incoherent objects are seen. In other words, an ambiguous stimulus can induce two cognitive interpretations of either seeing an entity or not. It was reported that being aware of a single coherent object results in the increase in visual sensitivity for the areas that constitute the object. These results are evidence of how the activation of a representation of a single and unique object can guide and allocate attentional resources to relevant areas in the visual field in a top-down way. It was further explored which features help to bottom-up access such object representations (Chapter 6). Ambiguity of objects can be successfully resolved by adding strong contrasts between the object and its background in luminance and color. The size and variability of the object's shape was also found to be an important factor for its successful detection and identification. Furthermore, the characteristics of objects do not only determine the rate of success in a recognition task, but are equally important for the storage of their representations in memory if, for instance, the object is novel to the observer. The subjective experience of a novel object is also subject to ambiguity and objects may appear novel to the observer although they are familiar (i.e., previously shown to the observer), or vice versa, they appear familiar to the observer although they are actually novel. It was here shown that such subjective effects are reflected in the pupil (Chapter 7). In addition, if novel images were presented to observers, their pupils constricted stronger as compared to if familiar images were presented. Similarly, if novel stimuli were shown to observers, pupillary constrictions were stronger if these stimuli were successfully stored in memory as compared to those later forgotten. As such, the pupil reflected the cognitive process of novelty encoding. Finally, it was tested whether other cognitive processes, such as decision-making – an important process when multiple options are available and ambiguity has to be resolved with a conscious decision – were also reflected in changes of pupil size (Chapter 8). It was confirmed that the pupil tends to dilate after an observer has made a decision. These dilations can successfully be detected between individuals and further used to gain the upper hand during an interactive game. In sum, this thesis has explored how ambiguous signals affect perception and how ambiguity inside perceptual systems can be used to study processes of the brain. It is found that ambiguity follows predictable courses, can be objectively assessed with reflexes, and can provide insights into other neuronal mechanisms such as attention, object representations, and decision-making. These findings demonstrate that ambiguity is a core property of the sensory systems that enable living beings to interact with their surroundings. Ambiguity adds variation to behavior, allows the brain to flexibly interact with the world, and lies at the bottom of the dynamics of sense, interpretations, and behavioral decisions

The Irresistible Animacy of Lively Artefacts

This thesis explores the perception of ‘liveliness’, or ‘animacy’, in robotically driven artefacts. This perception is irresistible, pervasive, aesthetically potent and poorly understood. I argue that the Cartesian rationalist tendencies of robotic and artificial intelligence research cultures, and associated cognitivist theories of mind, fail to acknowledge the perceptual and instinctual emotional affects that lively artefacts elicit. The thesis examines how we see artefacts with particular qualities of motion to be alive, and asks what notions of cognition can explain these perceptions. ‘Irresistible Animacy’ is our human tendency to be drawn to the primitive and strangely thrilling nature of experiencing lively artefacts. I have two research methodologies; one is interdisciplinary scholarship and the other is my artistic practice of building lively artefacts. I have developed an approach that draws on first-order cybernetics’ central animating principle of feedback-control, and second-order cybernetics’ concerns with cognition. The foundations of this approach are based upon practices of machine making to embody and perform animate behaviour, both as scientific and artistic pursuits. These have inspired embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended notions of cognition. I have developed an understanding using a theoretical framework, drawing upon literature on visual perception, behavioural and social psychology, puppetry, animation, cybernetics, robotics, interaction and aesthetics. I take as a starting point, the understanding that the visual cortex of the vertebrate eye includes active feature-detection for animate agents in our environment, and actively constructs the causal and social structure of this environment. I suggest perceptual ambiguity is at the centre of all animated art forms. Ambiguity encourages natural curiosity and interactive participation. It also elicits complex visceral qualities of presence and the uncanny. In the making of my own Lively Artefacts, I demonstrate a series of different approaches including the use of abstraction, artificial life algorithms, and reactive techniques

Fantastic in Form, Ambiguous in Content: Secondary Worlds in Soviet Children’s Fantasy Fiction.

Siirretty Doriast

Negativity in Painting

This combined theory/practice research project investigates and mobilises negativity in painting. The written thesis does so by developing an interpretive method which identifies two de-subjectifying signifying processes in paintings, called poetic ambiguity and sublime irresolution. The thesis proposes that these signifying processes structure an aesthetic practicing of negativity which disaggregates meaning. An investigation of philosophical texts (by Kristeva, Merleau-Ponty, Kant, Nietzsche, Adorno, Lyotard, Derrida and Irigaray) and art historical interpretations (by Koerner and Marin) of certain poetic and sublime paintings, services an understanding of these sublime and poetic practices of negativity. The thesis explores the tensions and correspondences between negative aesthetics and philosophical deconstruction. It explores the irreducible inter-relation between experiencing aesthetic negativity in painting and understanding the discursive implications of practices of negativity. Such a dialectics enables a critique of philosophical deconstruction which degrades the autonomy of aesthetic experience, and of the feminist deconstructions of ecriture feminine which conflate textual practices of negativity with a politics of the feminine. This research project is a contribution to a revival of negative aesthetics after the impact of philosophical deconstruction. As an applied investigation into aesthetic negativity, this thesis explores how selected paintings by C.D. Friedrich, Nicholas Poussin, J.M.W.Turner and Mark Rothko invite poetic or sublime practices of negativity. These insights are extended into a discussion of how the contemporary painting and visual art practices of Glenn Brown, Jeremy Wafer, Rosa Lee and Therese Oulton, invite a double register of interpretation. This doubling records the experiential impact of aesthetic practices of sublime and poetic negativity, and an understanding of the deconstructive significance of these painting practices. I suggest that my own paintings likewise engage a dialectical relation between the negativity of sublime experience, and the positivity of understanding their discursive and political significance

Masks praxis: theories and practices in modern drama

Mask Praxis is an investigation of the theories and practices behind the uses of the mask in modern drama from 1896 to 2004. The study traces the crisis in humanism through the use of idealist and materialist masks by theatre practitioners and explains how the search for a unified field was overlaid by fractured identities and a slide into dissonance. How important are the masks that people adopt on the stage for understanding their actions in society? How does the metaphorical power and perceptual ambiguity of the mask correlate with intentions of its maker and performer? What is the relationship between the mask and the face of the actor, and what does the mask do that cannot be done unaided? What are the main approaches to actor training that have used masks, and how are these training systems connected to wider belief systems? What do we learn from the act of masking about self-perception and social being, and what are the principal considerations that this gives rise to? This investigation proceeds from a consideration of major theories and practices. Chapter 1 examines mask performance theories, conventions, and typologies. Chapter 2 analyses the specificity of the mask, materials and methods, representative mask-makers and provides casebook studies on the Sartori family and the Masks for Menander Project. Chapter 3 evaluates actor-training under the mask from Copeau to Lecoq. Chapter 4 assesses the masks of idealist modernism and Chapter 5 considers the masks of materialist modernism. The final chapter is dedicated to transnational flows, multinational productions and the notion of connectivity. It brings new evidence to bear on the emergent field of masks, puppets and performing objects and sets down a major overview of the mask as a primary iconographic tool and as a liminoid instrument from which to mediate and direct the flow of power in a system

A Voice of Disturbance - Robert Coover and mythos

Diese Monographie über das Werk Robert Coovers legt dar, dass sich für ihn Mythos nicht erschöpft in der Benennung, der Thematisierung oder dem Spiel mit Mythen, sondern dass vielmehr das Beschäftigtsein mit Mythischem sein Gesamtwerk grundsätzlich und auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen durchdringt, dass sein Unterlaufen von vorgegebenen Systemen und deren Formen in einer Gegeninszenierung ihn von anderen Autoren seiner Zeit abhebt und ihm eine Sonderstellung zuweist. Nach einer Einführung, der Vorstellung und der Strukturmerkmale des Gesamtwerks, untersuchen die folgenden sechs Kapitel (Mythos, Film und Filmisches, Sex und Eros: Funktion und Metapher, Religion, Geschichte und Naturwissenschaften, Spiel) die Thematik, Form und Funktion mythischer Systeme der Sinnstiftung und Wirklichkeitserfahrung im Werk Coovers. Das achte Kapitel liefert die Detailanalyse und Interpretation der Romane John’s Wife und Pinocchio in Venice, beide aus den 1990er Jahren, um an ihnen Robert Coovers gelungene Verwirklichung seines ästhetischen Vorhabens zu belegen. Das Schlusskapitel behandelt einen Aufsatz aus dem Jahr 2007, denn nirgendwo zuvor hat er seine Schreibstrategie, Thematik und Stilmittel treffender und witziger auf den Punkt gebracht. Die ausführliche Bibliographie am Ende der Arbeit stellt ein unschätzbares Archiv für die Coover-Forschung dar, denn bislang wurden nirgends alle Veröffentlichungen Coovers und die Literatur über ihn so flächendeckend zusammengetragen.This monograph about Robert Coover demonstrates that myth in his works is played out not in merely in naming, or as theme, or recycling of symbols, but rather that his preoccupation with myth(s) pervades his entire work, and does so on multiple levels. Coover’s undermining of inherited systems and their forms in a counter-production differentiates him from his contemporaries and grants him an exceptional position. Following an introductory determination of Coover’s literary significance, and an outline of the presentation and features of Coover’s oeuvre, six chapters—Myth; Film and Cinema; Sex and Eros: Function and Metaphor; Religion; History and Science as Systems of Meaning; Game and Play—investigate theme, form, and function of mythic systems as means to create meaning and comprehend reality. Chapter eight offers an in-depth analysis and interpretation of two novels from the 1990s, John’s Wife and Pinocchio in Venice, in order to demonstrate the full realization of this writer’s aesthetic undertaking. The conclusion features an essay from 2007, in which, as never before or since Coover most fittingly and humorously detailed his compositional strategy. Finally, an extensive bibliography represents an invaluable archive for Coover research, since nowhere before have both primary and secondary sources been so comprehensively detailed

The political uses of identity an enthnography of the northern league

This is a thesis about the Northern League (Lega Nord), a regionalist and nationalist party that rose to prominence during the last three decades in the north of Italy Throughout this period the Northern League developed from a peripheral and protest movement, into an important government force. In the last political elections (April 2008) the Northern League gained more than 20% of the votes in the North, guaranteeing in this a way an important role in the new conservative coalition guided by Silvio Berlusconi. In particular, I set out to explore the ways in which the Lega press for the construction of a northern national identity and offer this as a case study through which we might further our understanding of the social and political uses of identity in the context of modem Europe. The success of the Northern League has been largely explained, up until now, in terms of its capacity to represent, politically, the material conflicts between the industrialized but politically peripheral North and the central state. For this reason, the League's attempts to reconstruct a local ethnic identity and later on the creation and imagination of a northern nation (Padania) has been mainly analysed as a rational and pragmatic invention, used as part of the struggle for political power. Such an approach, however, can overlook the extent to which non-material circumstances (habits, beliefs, social practices, and moral ideas) influence individuals' political choices. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Northern League activists in the region of Veneto, and more precisely in the provinces of Belluno and Treviso, these aspects were analysed in the following way. After establishing the historical and methodological context, I go on to consider the disaffection of the Northern League with the Italian state, its history and its institutions. I then investigate the Northern League's model of identity construction through the study of public ceremonies, political speeches, and ritual practices. I continue to draw on ethnographic fieldwork in order to make visible the relationship between the imagination of the Northern Identity and local social practices. I then go on to examine, at the micro level, a number of local economic practices and their connections with the League's ideology. The last chapter focuses on the role of gender, linking the self-representation of local men with the League’s concept of authority. I conclude that in order to understand the economy of identity, its production, exchange and circulation, identity has to be seen in the light of social actors' practices and direct experiences of everyday life. For this reason, I argue that leghismo ought to be understood not just as a subject of political representation, but also as a strategy through which local actors try to make sense of, and adapt to - or more importantly transform - their own social world

You Can\u27t Get There from Here: Movement SF and the Picaresque

This dissertation examines the crisis of authenticity in postmodern culture and argues that contemporary science fiction, specifically the subgenre of Movement SF, has evolved a unique answer to this crisis by adopting, perhaps spontaneously, the picaresque narrative structure. Postmodern fiction has a tenuous relationship with the issue of authenticity, such that the average postmodern subject is utterly without true authenticity at all, alternately victim to the socioeconomic conditions of his or her culture and to the elision of the self as a result of the homogenizing effects of advertising, television, etc. Postmodern SF also carries this bleak perception of the possibility of agency; William Gibson\u27s Sprawl and Bridge trilogies are rife with negations of human agency at the metaphorical hands of various aspects and incarnations of what Fredric Jameson terms the technological sublime. This dissertation puts forth the argument that a group of post-Eighties SF texts all participate in a spontaneous revival of the picaresque mode, using the picaresque journey and related motifs to re-authenticate subjects whose identity and agency are being erased by powerful social and economic forces exterior to and normally imperceptible by the individual. This dissertation is organized around three loosely connected parts. Part 1 attempts to define Movement SF by separating the various, often confusing marketing labels (such as cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, etc.) and extracting a cluster of core characteristics that have shaped the genre since its inception in the early 80s. Part 1 further examines how these core characteristics (or premises) of Movement SF provide fertile ground for picaresque narrative strategies. Part 2 describes in detail the picaresque as it appears in Movement SF, examining worldbuilding strategies, the persistence and evolution of tropes and motifs common to the traditional picaresque, and the generation of new tropes and motifs unique to Movement picaresques. Part 3 examines the spatial tactics used in Movement picaresque narratives to enable picaresque marginality in totalized, globalized environments. Furthermore, Part 3 examines the use of psychological plurality as an internal tactic to escape closed environments

Synesthetic Landscapes in Harold Pinter’s Theatre: A Symbolist Legacy

In the light of recent interdisciplinary critical approaches to landscape and space, and adopting phenomenological methods of sensory analysis, this dissertation explores interconnected or synesthetic sensory scapes in contemporary British playwright Harold Pinter\u27s theatre. By studying its dramatic landscapes and probing into their multi-sensory manifestations in line with Symbolist theory and aesthetics, I argue that Pinter\u27s theatre articulates an ecocritical stance and a micropolitical critique. Chapter One explains the dissertation\u27s theoretical framework (landscape theory, Symbolist theory, ecocriticism, phenomenology, and sensory analysis), while arguing for an ecophilosophical reading of Pinter\u27s landscapes that engages not only with spatial patterns but also with the bodyscapes and psychic ecology of his characters. Chapter Two examines the theoretical/aesthetic Symbolist qualities of Pinter\u27s dramaturgy. Chapter Three connects Pinter\u27s sensory scapes to the theories of space and time developed by Henri Bergson, revealing how they are concerned with subjective time as it is lived, with the spatiotemporal circularity of past, present, and future (related to the ouroboros symbol), and with the way one can imaginatively re/create one\u27s own self through life. Chapter Four discusses how Pinter\u27s apocalyptic landscapes evoke the horror of the Holocaust, and denounce the tradition of oppression (or the structures of uncontrolled violence) that repeatedly produces new social and ecological catastrophes. Chapter Five draws upon feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray\u27s concepts of sexual difference to demonstrate the negative ecological effects of a monological patriarchal system of moral values upon family and conjugal life, as expressed in Pinter\u27s oppressive and abusive homescapes. Throughout this study I activate an interdisciplinary dialogue between Pinter\u27s landscapes and those found in works by Symbolist (and Decadent) artists/thinkers (Mallarmé, Rilke, Briusov, Maeterlinck, Rachilde, Patricio, Yeats, Munch, Sacher-Masoch, and Kafka.). Adopting phenomenological views of subjectivity (suggested by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, and Stanton Garner, among others), I invoke Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari\u27s notion of micropolitics, as well as the latter\u27s concept of a combined ecology--mental, social, and environmental--to discuss how a study of sensory scapes reveals the presence of ecophilosophical and political concerns all through Pinter\u27s dramatic oeuvre