The Digital Affect: A Rhetorical Hermeneutic for Reading, Writing, and Understanding Narrative in Contemporary Literature and New Media

The Digital Affect is an exploration of ways to improve the teaching of reading and writing using digital media and technology. This requires a fundamental reexamination of digital narratives, building on and updating Espen Aarseth's seminal work in Cybertext and N. Katherine Hayles' recent work in Writing Machines. It also requires a critical appraisal of the technology of the personal computer as an environment in which writers compose - an environment that introduces possibilities while imposing constraints that materially influence the writer's efforts. This exploration is best undertaken, I argue, from the perspective of literacy studies, not literary theory. Rather than assuming the literary nature of digital narratives, my examination of the literacy requirements and effects of digital media and digital environments allows for the construction of a more nuanced and precise typology and genealogy of digital narrative. Focusing on the hermeneutical demands of digital media and environments reveals a narrative tradition that extends back to the earliest days of oral storytelling and that manifests itself not as a generic or historical formation, but rather as a poetical and rhetorical mode in which the narrative material is fragmented and distributed across media and throughout the virtual space of the story. Probing the hermeneutical act of interpreting digital narratives suggests the operation of what I term the "distributed mode" of composing narrative, an authorial mode I examine in works as varied as Stuart Moulthrop's hypermedia story Reagan Library, Italo Calvino's novel If on a winter's night a traveler, Godfrey Reggio's film Koyaanisqatsi, and Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy. This attention to the hermeneutical requirements of works composed in the distributed mode reveals two important features: first, the inadequacy of the widely-used term "digital literacy" to describe the range of activities undertaken by the interpreter of such works; and second, the inextricability and simultaneity of "reading" and "writing" during the interpretation of digital and non-digital works alike. Throughout The Digital Affect, I argue that digital media disrupts and reconfigures our standard literacy practices, presenting an invaluable opportunity to make those practices visible and teachable in literature and composition classrooms

Psychology and the research enterprise: Moving beyond the enduring hegemony of positivism

Almost since its inception, psychology has embraced the positivist orientation of the natural sciences. The research enterprise in psychology has reinforced this through its insistence that psychological science is objective, generalisable, and value free (or neutral). Consequently, experimental designs are privileged over other forms of enquiry and alternate epistemologies, methodologies, and methods remain marginalised within the discipline. We argue that alternate methodologies, and the philosophies that underpin the research endeavour, should be included in mainstream psychology programmes so that the existing imbalance is rectified. Achieving this balance will mean that psychology will be better positioned to address applied research problems and students will graduate with the skills and knowledge that they will need in the multidisciplinary workforce they will enter. We discuss recommendations for how psychology in Australia can move towards embracing methodological and epistemological pluralism. Breen, L. & Darlaston-Jones, D. (2008). Psychology and the research enterprise: Moving beyond the enduring hegemony of positivism. Australian Journal of Psychology, 60 (S1), 107-208. doi:10.1080/0004953080238555

Communicating the Unspeakable: Linguistic Phenomena in the Psychedelic Sphere

Psychedelics can enable a broad and paradoxical spectrum of linguistic phenomena from the unspeakability of mystical experience to the eloquence of the songs of the shaman or curandera. Interior dialogues with the Other, whether framed as the voice of the Logos, an alien download, or communion with ancestors and spirits, are relatively common. Sentient visual languages are encountered, their forms unrelated to the representation of speech in natural language writing systems. This thesis constructs a theoretical model of linguistic phenomena encountered in the psychedelic sphere for the field of altered states of consciousness research (ASCR). The model is developed from a neurophenomenological perspective, especially the work of Francisco Varela, and Michael Winkelman’s work in shamanistic ASC, which in turn builds on the biogenetic structuralism of Charles Laughlin, John McManus, and Eugene d’Aquili. Neurophenomenology relates the physical and functional organization of the brain to the subjective reports of lived experience in altered states as mutually informative, without reducing consciousness to one or the other. Consciousness is seen as a dynamic multistate process of the recursive interaction of biology and culture, thereby navigating the traditional dichotomies of objective/subjective, body/mind, and inner/outer realities that problematically characterize much of the discourse in consciousness studies. The theoretical work of Renaissance scholar Stephen Farmer on the evolution of syncretic and correlative systems and their relation to neurobiological structures provides a further framework for the exegesis of the descriptions of linguistic phenomena in first-person texts of long-term psychedelic selfexploration. Since the classification of most psychedelics as Schedule I drugs, legal research came to a halt; self-experimentation as research did not. Scientists such as Timothy Leary and John Lilly became outlaw scientists, a social aspect of the “unspeakability” of these experiences. Academic ASCR has largely side-stepped examination of the extensive literature of psychedelic selfexploration. This thesis examines aspects of both form and content from these works, focusing on those that treat linguistic phenomena, and asking what these linguistic experiences can tell us about how the psychedelic landscape is constructed, how it can be navigated, interpreted, and communicated within its own experiential field, and communicated about to make the data accessible to inter-subjective comparison and validation. The methodological core of this practice-based research is a technoetic practice as defined by artist and theoretician Roy Ascott: the exploration of consciousness through interactive, artistic, and psychoactive technologies. The iterative process of psychedelic self-exploration and creation of interactive software defines my own technoetic practice and is the means by which I examine my states of consciousness employing the multidimensional visual language Glide

In what ways can the concept of holy or sacred leisure inform a renewed theological understanding of work and leisure in the twenty-first century?

Arising out of a perceived need to update a theology of leisure and its relationship with work, this thesis examines the ways in which the concept of holy or sacred leisure, dating from the early Christian centuries, can inform a renewed theological understanding of work and leisure in the 21st century. Adapting the Theological Action Research Model of the “Four Voices of Theology” (see "Talking about God in Practice," SCM, 2010), by Cameron et al, this thesis has four parts. Parts One and Two, the Normative and Formal Theologies, form the literature survey. Adopting Jean Leclercq’s fourfold definition of leisure, otia, quies, sabbato and vacatio, (see Jean Leclercq, "Otia Monastica: Études sur le Vocabulaire de la Contemplation au Moyen Âge," Studia Anselmiana (Rome: Pontificium Institutum S Anselmi, 1963), the Normative Theology examines firstly the meaning and purpose of leisure as described by key authors in the Classical Greek and Roman Periods. It then moves to Holy Scripture, the Patristic Period and the Early Christian monastic rules highlighting the religious, cultural and spiritual context in which the understanding and practice of leisure flourished and developed. Moving ahead to the nineteenth century, Catholic Social Teaching is surveyed, starting in 1891 with Rerum Novarum, examining the ways in which the Catholic Church adapted to new patterns of leisure and work. The Formal Theology provides a twentieth century commentary on the theology of leisure drawing its inspiration from three Catholic authors, the German philosopher and theologian, Josef Pieper, the Benedictine Jean Leclercq and the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Using their contributions it examines how both old and new ideas, together with new approaches can enhance our Christian understanding of holy or sacred leisure, and its relationship with work, in the modern world. Moving from the literature review Part Three of the thesis, the Operant Theology, uses a thematic analysis of twenty-two semi-structured interviews. During these interviews participants were asked to describe how they understood and used their leisure time, especially in regard to a meditative or contemplative practice. Additional topics such as silence, solitude, mindfulness, the Sabbath, holiday time and the ways in which each of these contributed to their overall well-being and happiness are also covered. The final part of the thesis, the Espoused Theology, forms the synthesis and conclusion. Incorporating the voice of the author of the thesis, it draws its inspiration from the Normal, Formal and Operant Theologies and formulates a Theology of Leisure and its relationship with work, appropriate for the twenty-first century