A study of pipe dreams in the last plays of Eugene O'Neill

The characters in four of Eugene O'Neill's last plays--A Touch of the Poet, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten--have inherited aspirations for an ideal world which cannot be satisfied in the realm to which they are doomed to exist. The confines of their environment exasperate them, so they dream into an imaginative world where all is beautiful and good. Because they are living in two worlds--one of reality, the other of imagination—they are continually tortured by the deep longing of their dreams and by the harsh reality of their surroundings. The result is mounting despair. The aim of this thesis is to study the dilemma and the answer O'Neill gives through the words of Larry Slade in The Iceman Cometh, namely, that "it is the lie of the pipe dream that gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober." This illusion brings order out of the chaos of the present but incapacitates man for meaningful action. The only alternative is death

The Ill Which Remains Within: Exploring the Limits of Hope as a Philosophical Basis for Education

Being particularly at home in critical theories of education, hope is invoked widely by theorists to render bearable perspectives of the politics and practices of education which leave the reader with little reason for optimism in education. Despite much knowledge from critical pedagogues and theorists on the threat of neoliberal ideologies to systems and subjects of education, one is hard-pressed to find cited research that would suggest educationists ought to be anything but hopeful in their teaching. In this paper, I use the theoretical tools of psychoanalysis as interpreted by the philosopher Slavoj Zizek to critically examine how hope, rather than freeing us from the present, traps us in a version of the future. Working with Freirean theories of subjectivity in education, I argue that hope holds us captive to our potential future enjoyment, and that it is thinking on and bearing the miseries of the present that can offer greater freedom for the subject

I Blog e la politica: l'agorà virtuale per la formazione del consenso

Quelle forme di comunicazione chiamate blog stanno avendo di recente un incremento in termini di numero e di contenuto. Da semplici mezzi di dialogo generalista, sono divenuti dei veri e propri strumenti di formazione ed indirizzo del consenso in vari ambiti (politica, economia, giornalismo), «costituendo una fonte analoga alle testate giornalistiche (con le quali talvolta collaborano, mantenendo però il carattere dialogico con i lettori)» e trasformandosi in «a space of specific attention, dialogue, argument, and persuasion»

Cyber Humanitarian Interventions: The viability and ethics of using cyber-operations to disrupt perpetrators’ means and motivations for atrocities in the digital age

In the contemporary digital age, mass atrocity crimes are increasingly promoted and organised online. Yet, little attention has been afforded to the question of whether proactive cyberspace operations might be used for human protection purposes. Beginning with the framework of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), this thesis asks: How might cyber-operations be used ethically to protect populations from mass atrocity crimes? To answer this question, I introduce the concept of ‘cyber humanitarian interventions’, and argue that such measures can be used to disrupt potential perpetrators’ means and motivations for atrocities. Specifically, I contend that cyber humanitarian interventions can be used to frustrate potential perpetrators’ communication channels, logistical supply chains, and funding, as well as to stymie potential perpetrators’ desire for violence via online, targeted, tailor-made campaigns based on their big data. These capabilities can be used in an ethically acceptable manner, and thus ought to be pursued prior to the resort to other more forceful measures to protect. Moreover, and perhaps more controversially, I argue that, in some circumstances, there is a qualified responsibility to deceive potential perpetrators – via online disinformation – in order to fulfil responsibilities to protect. This thesis seeks to make three key contributions. First, it contributes to extant literatures on R2P, atrocity prevention, and cyberspace by offering cyber humanitarian interventions as a hitherto neglected tool for human protection. Second, it furthers ethical debates on atrocity prevention by providing an in-depth analysis of how cyber humanitarian interventions can be deployed ethically. Third, it challenges prevailing conceptions of disinformation by arguing that that there is, in fact, a qualified responsibility to deceive potential perpetrators into not committing atrocities via online disinformation. In sum, this thesis aims to bring 21st century capabilities to bear on centuries-old crimes, and highlights cyber humanitarian interventions as a more peaceful, cost-effective, and politically palatable tool to protect vulnerable populations from mass atrocity crimes

Rewriting the Masculine: The National Subject in Modern American Drama.

This dissertation traces the development of an American masculinity, using the concept of the national subject (borrowed from Frantz Fanon), through three different stages of the American capitalism: mercantile, or market, monopoly, and corporate, or late-capitalism. It constructs a genealogy of American maleness and then examines how this genealogy was altered and reconstituted during times of economic crisis and technological innovation. It argues that successive technological revolutions in the symbolic apparatus of American culture allowed elite political and economic interests to gain consensus by deploying the national subject using various media. In the early national period Franklin and Crevecoeur used the national subject to encourage immigration and expansion; in the Jacksonian era, Jackson and his supporters used the national subject to sanction Manifest Destiny; and in the late 1880s, Andrew Carnegie and Horatio Alger, Jr. used the national subject to valorize the practices of industrial capitalism. In the forties, the national subject was resurrected to sanction the emergent structure of corporate capitalism, or what Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno called late-capitalism. The final three chapters of this dissertation examine the relationship between the writings of Eugene O\u27Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller and the advent of late-capitalism. Specifically, I examine how O\u27Neill, Williams, and Miller challenge the dominant version of the national subject by offering a counter-discourse to the consumerism and nationalism advocated by popular conceptions of American masculinity. Using the writings of Jacques Lacan and the Frankfurt School, I attempt to situate the drama of O\u27Neill, Williams, and Miller in a broader historical context, a context which has thus far been either ignored or repressed

The digital citizen: in worship of an echo

This column critically examines the hypothesis that the Internet is responsible for creating echo chambers, in which groups can seal themselves off from heterodox opinion, via filtering and recommendation technology. Echo chambers are held responsible by many for political polarization, and the growth of extremism, yet the evidence doesn't seem to support this view. Echo chambers certainly exist, and can be detrimental to deliberation and discussion, but equally have a role to play in group formation, solidarity, and identity. The case for intervening in Internet governance to suppress echo chambers is not proven