The science of crisis: modernity, complexity theory and the Kosovo

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Overkill : the sexualised body in violent identity politics

PhD ThesisThis thesis seeks to understand the nature of a particular kind of sexualised, abject violence that emerges in and through identity politics. This violence is practised against or through the body. I refer to this type of violence as ‘overkill’ and contend that it performatively constitutes identity in abject and sexualised ways through the weaponisation and brutalisation of the body. The thesis is situated within the literature on ethnic identities in conflict, which tends to under-theorise how this violence emerges and what this violence accomplishes by viewing violence as the outcome of pre-existing identity divisions. To address this gap, I introduce two theoretical approaches to the examination of violent identity politics. The first of these is the concept of performativity as formulated by Judith Butler (1990), which views identity as an iterative process constitutive of political subjectivity. The second is a theory of abjection as discussed by Julia Kristeva (1980), in which she argues that the constitution of identity is an exclusionary process that requires the simultaneous production of an other. Taken together, these theoretical approaches allow for an understanding of extreme violence as constitutive of a new kind of subjectivity that renders the other abject through sexualised discourses. There are two dynamics of overkill that this thesis explores: the brutalisation and the weaponisation of the body. Using an empirical study of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, I highlight the brutalisation of the sexualised body; through a second case study of the prison protests in Northern Ireland (1976-1981), I draw out the weaponisation of the sexualised body. I conclude by demonstrating the need for an understanding of identity as contingent upon markers of difference that are sexualised through abjection to establish a better explanatory framework for examining political violence

Unpacking identities: performing diasporic space in contemporary Taiwanese theatre

My thesis interrogates the complex and indeterminate nature of Taiwanese identity as it is articulated in post- I 980s Taiwanese theatre productions. I argue that Taiwanese identity is negotiated in a 'diasporic space' that has manifestations through cultural hybridity, spatio-temporal disruption and homing in travelling. Initially, I establish the conceptual framework of diasporic space through critical investigations of the sociality of modem diaspora, post-dolonial notions of cultural difference and hybridity (Homi Bhabha) and space-time dynamics as elaborated in Foucault's conception of heterotopias. The subsequent chapters consist of performance analyses and provide dramatic illustrations of these theories as they are imbricated in diasporic space. Subsequently, I examine the appropriation of Beijing Opera aesthetics in a Taiwanese context, and argue that it engenders a hybrid identity by defying the totalising force of Chineseness. I also consider how national space and its attendant essentialist identity is attempted via a sacralised home of homogeneous constitution, thus arguing for the impossibility of identifying a stable national cultural identity due to infracultural differences in the diasporic community of. Taiwan. To fully account for the lived experience of the Taiwanese, I then explore the dialectic force of history that shapes the cultural imaginary of home and identity in ten theatrical productions. I argue that, rather than being bound to a fixed home/land, Taiwanese identity is mediated in the spatio-temporal difference between the homes in the past in China and the present in Taiwan. In addition, I examine the internal conflicts in present-day Taiwan that are unfolded through stories depicting everyday life. The Taiwanese constantly travel in and out of the present locality, and each journey in its own particularity touches upon broader cultural politics of locating home identity. Probing the various manners in which these chosen performances locate Taiwanese identity, I evaluate their achievement in presenting a multiplicity of theatrical possibilities and alternative perspectives of cultural reality that helps envision a 'new' 'diasporic' understanding of homing through travelling, inhabiting shifting moments and movements when/where identity is always being re-configured

State, power, administration: Marxist and Foucauldian perspectives on state development in Britain, 1832-1918

This thesis seeks to contribute an original account of state power by reconceptualising the state-civil society distinction through the category of political administration. Through an analysis of the development of the state in Britain between 1832 and 1918 it seeks to show why such a reconceptualisation is necessary and the features which distinguish it from other accounts. This task is performed via an immanent critique of the work of Hegel, Marx and Foucault. It is argued that historical materialism has lost the recognition of the constitutive power of the state found in Hegel and Marx, a recognition which needs to be recuperated in order for an adequate theoretical account of state power to be sustained. From 1832 in Britain this constitutive power was expressed in the development of new administrative mechanisms through which the state ordered and structured civil society. The threefold function of political administration - the fashioning of labour power, the subsumption of struggle and the constitution of legal subjects - place it with law at the heart of the operation of state power, and it is this that political theory in general, and historical materialist theory in particular, need to recognise. The category of political administration is developed through a critique of Foucault's account of administration which, it is argued, lacks an understanding of the political. It is argued that political administration emerges as a response to class struggle and that from 1832 the British state was shaped through this struggle; this use of struggle is counterposed to Foucault's category of resistance

Science, professionalism and the development of medical education in England : a historical sociology.

Education lies at the very epicentre of professional formation, professional behaviour, and professional values. Far-reaching institutional and curricular changes occurred in the education of doctors in the nineteenth century. These changes were related, I argue, to two long-term historical processes - the 'professionalisation' and the 'scientification' of medicine. England is the main geographical focus, but the thesis also encompasses a brief comparative historical sociology of the emergence of 'hospital' and 'laboratory' medical education in France and Germany respectively. Doctors were the first occupational community to claim that their 'professional' status rested on the sure foundation of 'scientific' knowledge and expertise; but the thesis adopts an attitude of anthropological scepticism towards both the alleged cognitive supremacy of 'scientific' medicine and its assumed role in conferring 'professional' privileges. Nevertheless, the rhetorical appeal of scientific culture proved strategically useful to doctors in their collective pursuit of upward social mobility in three particular contexts: the efforts of rank-and-file practitioners to usurp the professional privileges of elite consultants; regular doctors' attempts to eliminate professionally damaging competition from a variety of alternative and irregular healers conventionally labelled as Oquacks'; and the emergent relationship being forged between the medical profession and the modern state. A finely-textured analysis of intra-professional conflict is necessary to account for the politics of medical reform and for prolonged disputation over the future direction of medical education. There were two principal axes of internal conflict between medical interest-groups: the first between general practitioners and consultants; the second between traditional clinicians, many of whom actively opposed the introduction of experimental procedures into medical education, and those who vigorously promoted progressive scientific reform. The latter conflict, which has often been underestimated, is characterised in terms of a structural opposition between the scientific 'word' and the clinical I ward'. Such an explanatory framework offers the historian a more valuable resource than the simple antithesis between 'empiricism' and 'rationalism'. At the end of the Victorian period, apprenticeship had been eliminated and all aspiring doctors were educated in a university. It was through education that doctors were imbued with a set of professional value-orientations, and forged feelings of common identity and solidarity. The instance of Victorian doctors suggests that the historic role of the professions in English society is far less marginal and peripheral than has often been supposed

Radical reflexivity: Assessing the value of psycho-spiritual practices of self as a medium for the professional development of teachers

This thesis discusses a case study of a psycho-spiritual retreat programme\ud comprising an eclectic bricolage of technologies of self, ranging from the\ud contemplative, to the artistic and the psychotherapeutic. It explores the possibility\ud that such practices can be understood as a Foucauldian care of self, enabling\ud teachers to participate in a radical reflexivity around subjectivity. It is argued that\ud such reflexivity, whilst not directly concerned with teachers' professional identity,\ud is transformative within their professional practice. Evidence to substantiate this\ud hypothesis is sought in semi-structured interviews with participating Spanish and\ud Mexican teachers. These interviews explore the teachers' understandings of their\ud 'before', 'during' and 'after'. What had they experienced? How had it affected their\ud understandings of themselves? How had these new understandings affected the\ud ongoing construction of their identity as teachers?\ud Interview data is organized and analysed through three complementary areas of\ud problematization; Questions of Purpose, Questions of Order, and Questions of\ud Performance. Evidence in and around these fields is embedded in a debate around\ud subjectivity, teacher identity and education informed by thinkers of becoming\ud including Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze and Britzman. Assessment of the value of\ud the experience is also made using the psycho-spiritual referents of the retreat\ud programme itself, as elaborated by its founder Claudio Naranjo.\ud The empirical-theoretical analysis of narrative evidence poses questions about the\ud established limits of traditional teacher development opportunities and of the\ud 'service' oriented paradigm of professional ethics. The care of the self as a radical\ud reflexivity, in which the teacher examines their constitution as human beings,\ud might provide 'a way out' for teachers stuck uncreatively in their own historical\ud subjectivities and the dominant educational paradigms. In such a way concrete\ud examples of radical reflexivity in action could usefully contribute to debates\ud occurring around alternatives in teacher identity discourse

Disrupting boundaries : rethinking organisation and embodiment

This thesis attempts to disrupt the boundaries of how we think about organisation and embodiment. From an investigation into five organisational regimes of Western public health, it argues that the body is a problem for organisation. The body does not come ready organised, but is a nonorganisational, messy and carnal matter of flesh and blood, pains and pleasures, habits and desires. Although modem discourses and institutions seek to organise how we live with our bodies in everyday life, they never do so fully and completely. Bodies are powerful, creative and unpredictable and disrupt the boundaries of organisation. Asking how organisation theory deals with the problem of the body, the thesis seeks to take the discipline further by developing an approach to how it should deal with the body, and by identifying what implications this might have for our thinking about organisation. Utilising the conceptualist philosophy of Canguilhem, Foucault and Deleuze, this is done by analysing the concept of "organisation" and the concept of the "body" across organisation theory and related fields. Five ways of dealing with the body are identified: (i) not dealing with it at all, which is mostly the case with mainstream research on formal organisations and more radical research on organisational processes; (ii) reducing the body to an organismic metaphor, which is what much classical and some contemporary mainstream research does; (iii) studying how embodiment enables the successful management of formal organisations; (iv) studying how bodies are organised within and without formal organisations; and (v) studying nonorganisational embodiment, i.e. how bodies disrupt and exist independently of organisation. Whereas the third and fourth themes have been investigated in some organisation theory, little attempt has been made to think about nonorganisational embodiment. Using material in Deleuze, Foucault, feminism and current organisation theory, this thesis appreciates the ways in which bodies disrupt the boundaries of organisation and the ways in which bodies live under the conditions imposed by these boundaries. From this perspective, organisation is less powerful, less stable and more fragile than we often think, and bodies are more powerful, more dynamic and more creative. This conceptualist interest in organisation, nonorganisation and the body gives rise to a theory and philosophy of organisation that might provide the underpinnings of a radical approach to everyday problems of organisation and embodiment, such as aesthetic labour and impression management; virtual organisations; culture, subcultures and resistance at work and in public space; health and safety; and gender, race and sexuality