Relational Interreligious Dialogue: Interdisciplinary Arguments from Creator/Creature Theology and Quantum Entanglement

Globalization, technological advances, and worldviews that perceive religious others with suspicion, all intensify society’s awareness of religious plurality and the subsequent necessity for effective interreligious dialogue. Engaging in interreligious dialogue through daily encounters, conversations, common concerns, and shared religious experiences advances religious pluralism. Nevertheless, the current state of interreligious dialogue is at an impasse; its existing substantive ontological approaches introduce, perpetuate, or worsen challenges of hegemony, elitism, and marginalization, as well as tensions between the diametric goals of religious unity versus unique religious identity. Substantive ontological models emphasize religious autonomy instead of any relational connections between religious traditions. These prevalent methods hinder effective interreligious dialogue. In response, this project proposes relational ontology as a constructive method to address existing issues within interreligious dialogue. Relational ontology asserts that reality is being as being–in–relation. By employing relational ontology, interreligious dialogue participants recognize their fundamental interconnected unity while respecting each religious tradition’s particularity. Moreover, relationality assists in neutralizing power inequalities and marginalization. To illustrate relational ontology and explain its advantages for interreligious dialogue, this project evaluates the models of quantum entanglement and Christianity’s Creator/creation relationship. Placing interdisciplinary perspectives from science and religion in dialogue essentially instantiates the project’s methodology, it validates relational ontology as an effective method for improving the effectiveness of interreligious dialogue

Simultaneous Diversity: Discontinuity, Entanglement, and Contemporary American Fiction

At its broadest conceptual level, "Simultaneous Diversity: Discontinuity, Entanglement, and contemporary American Fiction" investigates how the rhetoric of discontinuity entangles contemporary evolutionary theory, social theory, science studies, and literary fiction. The dissertation's main focus is a partial taxonomy of the heterogeneous field of contemporary American fiction emphasizing the differences between selected individual novels and novelists along with their commonalities. Rather than attempting to describe a unifying zeitgeist or articulate a particular formal or thematic interest as constitutive of contemporary authenticity or now-ness, dismissing non-conforming works as anomalies or residual slag, "Simultaneous Diversity" affirms that everything in the present is of the present. The result is a dynamic taxonomy of "contemporary American fiction" that interrogates the significance of each of these three terms with respect to each of the texts examined. This taxonomy remains "partial" in both the sense of being necessarily incomplete, and in the sense of being a subjective, or necessarily arbitrary, selection of texts and authors. All the novels discussed herein are in my opinion accomplished works of literary fiction that merit more critical attention, but they do not constitute even a personal "canon", much less a prescriptive one; moreover, while the examined nine fictions by six authors amply demonstrate the simultaneous diversity of contemporary American fiction, they by no means fully encapsulate that open-ended field in microcosm

Sexuated Topology and the Suspension of Meaning: A Non-Hermeneutical Phenomenological Approach to Textual Analysis

This study assumes the subject's pursuit of meaning is generally incapacitating and should be suspended. It aims to demonstrate how such a suspension is theoretically accomplished by utilizing Lacan's formulae of sexuation integrated with his work in discourse theory and topology. Part I places this study into context by examining scholarship from the established fields of hermeneutics, phenomenology, (post)structuralism, aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis in order to extract out their respective theory of meaning. These theories reveal that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation and reaches near crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand this crisis is mollified by the rise of Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneutical phenomenology which questions traditional epistemological approaches to the text using a new ontological conceptualization of meaning and a conscious rejection of methodology. On the other hand this crisis is exacerbated when the ubiquitous nature of meaning is itself challenged by (post)structuralism's discovery of the signifier which inscribes a limit to meaning, and by the domains of sense and nonsense newly opened up by aesthetic theory. These historical developments culminate in the field of psychoanalysis which most consequentially delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity. Part II extends these findings by rigorously constructing out of the Lacanian sexuated formulae a decidedly non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach useful in demonstrating the sexual nature of meaning. Explicated in their static state by way of an account of their original derivation from the Aristotelian logical square, it is argued that these four formulae are relevant to basic concerns of textual theory inclusive of the hermeneutical circle of meaning. These formulae are then set into motion by integrating them with Lacan's four discourses to demonstrate the breakdown of meaning. Finally, the cuts and sutures of two-dimensional space that is topology as set down in L'étourdit are performed to confirm how the very field of meaning is ultimately suspended from a nonsensical singular point known in Lacanian psychoanalysis as objet a. The contention is that by occupying this point the subject frees himself from the debilitating grip of meaning

Auto-biographing Caribbeanness: re-imagining diasporic nation and identity

This thesis undertakes a multidisciplinary study of the construction of nation and identity in the context of the Caribbean and its diaspora in Britain. Taking Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Britain as the countries for comparative analysis two primary research questions are addressed: How can Caribbean nation and identity be re-conceptualised to represent its complex, heterogeneous societies? How have Caribbean identities resisted, metamorphosed and been re-constituted in the diasporic context of Britain? While current scholarship on nation and identity is interrogated, the principle guiding the methodology has been to engage with the specificities of the region's history and culture with a view to arriving at new interpretations that reflect the contemporary Caribbean situation. It is argued that Caribbean auto-biographical practice, prevalent in much of its artistic production, provides a conceptual tool for interpreting the Caribbean nation. As a site of resistance to received knowledges, Caribbean autolbiography has facilitated inter alia the re-inscription of histories and the imagining of nation spaces. Since as a genre it IS inherently democratic, multiple imaginings of nation emerge and coalesce from the wider range of voices accommodated by auto-biographical practice. The prismatic creolisation model is proposed as a re-visioning of Caribbean identity. This model modifies and augments Kamau Brathwaite's creolisation thesis with relevant scholarship from Stuart Hall and the artistic philosophy of the painter Dunstan St Orner, Prismism. Prismatic creolisation suggests a polycentric, more inclusive perspective from which Caribbean identity, culture and language might be interpreted. These theoretical tools - auto-biographical practice and prismatic creolisation - are applied to the examination of how Caribbean identity and culture are translated and re-constructed in the diaspora situation. The Windrush generation, it is argued, began negotiating Britishness by auto-biographing Caribbean transitional identities into the national imagination. Succeeding generations have been renegotiating these terms by creating new cultural forms and ways ofbeing that resist and inflect Britishness

Actes du séminaire Contradictions et Dynamique des Organisations - CONDOR - X

La campagne 1997-1998 du séminaire CONDOR a connu une innovation. Trois séances ont été consacrées à la question des marchés. Dans la tradition de Condor, celle-ci a été abordée dans une perspective pluridisciplinaire: un sociologue -Michel Callon-, un chercheur en gestion -Arrnand Hatchuel- et un chercheur en science politique-Mark Tilton- ont chacun animé une séance. Une sociologue -Christine Musselin-, un anthropologue -Philippe Descola-, et des économistes -Eric Brousseau, Benjamin Coriat, Roger Guesnerie, Jean-Louis Rullière ont discuté leurs approches. Le tout constitue un débat ouvert et riche que l'on trouvera dans les pages suivantes. Le séminaire a également accueilli Yves Doz, John Child et François [ullien.

Auto-biographing Caribbeanness : re-imagining diasporic nation and identity

This thesis undertakes a multidisciplinary study of the construction of nation and identity in the context of the Caribbean and its diaspora in Britain. Taking Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Britain as the countries for comparative analysis two primary research questions are addressed: How can Caribbean nation and identity be re-conceptualised to represent its complex, heterogeneous societies? How have Caribbean identities resisted, metamorphosed and been re-constituted in the diasporic context of Britain? While current scholarship on nation and identity is interrogated, the principle guiding the methodology has been to engage with the specificities of the region's history and culture with a view to arriving at new interpretations that reflect the contemporary Caribbean situation. It is argued that Caribbean auto-biographical practice, prevalent in much of its artistic production, provides a conceptual tool for interpreting the Caribbean nation. As a site of resistance to received knowledges, Caribbean autolbiography has facilitated inter alia the re-inscription of histories and the imagining of nation spaces. Since as a genre it IS inherently democratic, multiple imaginings of nation emerge and coalesce from the wider range of voices accommodated by auto-biographical practice. The prismatic creolisation model is proposed as a re-visioning of Caribbean identity. This model modifies and augments Kamau Brathwaite's creolisation thesis with relevant scholarship from Stuart Hall and the artistic philosophy of the painter Dunstan St Orner, Prismism. Prismatic creolisation suggests a polycentric, more inclusive perspective from which Caribbean identity, culture and language might be interpreted. These theoretical tools - auto-biographical practice and prismatic creolisation - are applied to the examination of how Caribbean identity and culture are translated and re-constructed in the diaspora situation. The Windrush generation, it is argued, began negotiating Britishness by auto-biographing Caribbean transitional identities into the national imagination. Succeeding generations have been renegotiating these terms by creating new cultural forms and ways ofbeing that resist and inflect Britishness.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceOverseas Research Students Awards Scheme (ORSAS)University of Warwick (UoW)GBUnited Kingdo

Grade retention - subjectivating, disciplinary and affective forces: an ethnographic case study in Chilean primary schools

For millions of students worldwide, the end of the school year entails definitions of success and failure. In many countries, those students who do not fulfil certain requirements and academic expectations are not promoted to the following grade; this means they must do the same class once again. In theory, repeating a grade is a new opportunity for learning and developing. However, most of the research on this topic suggests that the practice has adverse academic, emotional and behavioural effects on those who are retained, promotes educational inequality, and negatively impacts overall performances. This project emerges from the apparent contradiction between the pervasiveness and persistence of grade retention and its harmful effects on students and educational systems. The research addresses this area of concern by interrogating the productive forces that create grade retention and the forces generated by it through a post-structural, ethnographically oriented case study conducted in Chilean primary schools. Educational subjectivities, knowledge, practices, affectivities, material arrangements, relations and structures of power are examined. The theoretical contributions of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, Sarah Ahmed, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – and the work of scholars who have enlivened their concepts within the educational field – are used as analytic tools to explore grade retention as a complex, heterogeneous, interactive, productive and plastic ensemble of these components and the dynamics they form. The analysis of the evidence challenges sanctioned narratives defining grade retention as an educational strategy that safeguards students’ academic development. Instead, it argues that grade retention is a technology that protects and reinforces accepted school and educational orders and identities by defining those who are not aligned with them as legitimate objects of academic, social, affective, symbolic and physical dispossession. The negative connotations usually attributed to grade retention by research often overlook its productive force. Grade retention, with its reliance on the presumed deficit and deviation of individuals, creates a fiction in which traditional neoliberal educational discourse can continue to be enforced ignoring its inevitable conflict with the more recent introduction of progressive inclusive ideas and goals. In this scenario, in Chile alone, thousands of young students are made impossible/abject subjects of education every year. Moreover, all children are submitted to a coercive education, in which from a very early age, joy, success and belonging are sustained by disgust, fear and pain. However, this state of things is neither necessary nor fixed. New sensibilities and political responsibilities could open a field of possibility in which primary education might seek justice and human flourishing instead of resting on the harmful distinctions of success and failure

THE TAIWAN STRAIT CRISES, 1954-1958: CHINA, THE UNITED STATES AND TAIWAN

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (FASS

Myth-making and Reality: A Critical Examination of Human Rights-Compliant Counterterrorism in the Philippines and Indonesia

This thesis explores the relationship between counterterrorism and human rights. Its primary contention is that the promotion of the ideal of human rights-compliant counterterrorism has undermined rather than strengthened human rights. Drawing on fieldwork-based case studies in the Philippines and Indonesia, the thesis demonstrates that greater recognition for the role of human rights in achieving security has not prompted a positive transformation of counterterrorism practices. Instead, proponents of counterterrorist action have been able to frame their action as a necessary, human rights-sensitive, and rational response to unnecessary, human rights-insensitive and irrational political violence. The challenge therefore is how to devise strategies to resist human rights abuses in the name of counterterrorism that do not entangle human rights in the perpetuation and legitimation of the counterterrorism agenda. The thesis proceeds in eight chapters besides the Introduction. Chapter 1 sets the stage for analysis, introducing the normative discourse of human rights-compliant counterterrorism at the international level, and proposing a theoretical framework for analysing this discourse that draws from the insights of Critical Terrorism Studies and critical approaches to international law and human rights. Utilising this theoretical framework, I examine the extent to which counterterrorism practices undermined rather than advanced human rights in two case studies: the Philippines and Indonesia. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 develop the Philippine case study. Chapter 2 presents the local counterterrorism discourse during the government’s alignment with the United States’ “War on Terror”, showing that the government characterised complex armed struggles as “terrorism” with devastating consequences for human rights. Chapter 3 analyses the responses of local human rights advocates to this counterterrorism discourse, describing how their resistance strategies cannot be reduced to a clamour for human rights-compliant counterterrorism. Chapter 4 shows how official policies have incorporated human rights-friendly rhetoric; and why despite this, they are failing to transform the practices of security forces that lead to extrajudicial killings and other serious abuses. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 develop the Indonesian case study. Chapter 5 reviews the local counterterrorism discourse developed during the Suharto regime, showing that the threat of Islamic “terrorism” was likely fostered by it, benefiting the regime at the expense of human rights. Chapter 6 shows how, after the Bali bombing of 2002, Indonesia’s approach to counterterrorism has incorporated human rights, much more than in the Philippines, and how local human rights advocates have accordingly adjusted their perception of the Islamic “terrorist” threat and the acceptability of counterterrorism. Chapter 7 analyses how Densus 88, the main counterterrorism actor, enjoys impunity for extrajudicial killings, demonstrating that the legal framework has failed to restrain serious abuses and in fact inoculated the counterterrorism agenda from further scrutiny. Chapter 8, the concluding chapter, brings together the main findings of the thesis and emphasises the need for more critical human rights scholarship and advocacy that are disentangled from the counterterrorism agenda

Texas Law Review

Journal containing articles, notes, book reviews, and other analyses of law and legal cases