Electronic lexical resources and tools for natural language processing of Serbian and their improvement via crowdsourcing

Овај докторски рад бави се истраживањем најбољег начина да се унапреде језички ресурси и алати за обраду српског језика, са нагласком на обради фигуративног језика, то јест језика који је богат реторичким фигурама. У раду су представљени језички ресурси и алати за обраду српског језика, нарочито Ворднет и Српски ворднет, чија доградња је централни део овог истраживања. Та доградња је спроведена путем модела такозване групне расподеле рада, како смо за потребе израде овог рада превели енглески термин crowdsourcing...The research presented in this doctoral thesis deals with finding the best way to enhance lexical resources and tools for natural language processing of Serbian language, with a focus on processing of figurative language, i.e. language in which plenty of rhetorical figures are used. The thesis presents lexical resources and tools for natural language processing of Serbian language, especially WordNet and Serbian wordnet, whose enhancment and building via the crowdsourcing model are the central part of the presented research results..

Examining Irish Nationalism in the context of Literature, Culture and Religion. A Study of the Epistemological Structure of Nationalism

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Postmarxism and Postsocialism: A Theoretical and Historical Critique

This thesis aims to critically examine the relationship between post-socialism and post-Marxism, between a historical context opened by the collapse of 'really existing' socialist states in Eastern Europe, and a theoretical shift fashioned upon the idea of the immanent demise and overcoming of Marxist theory. The thesis is split into two parts. In the first part, my aim is to trace, through a detailed assessment of the writings of Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser - and also via the examination of the relationship between the two thinkers - a specific development of the problem of the 'superstructures' in Marxist theory, of questions of politics, the State and ideology. If Gramsci, in his conceptualisation of the politics of hegemony, and in his attempt to reformulate Marxism as a 'philosophy of praxis', pushes the issues of the theoretical and practical autonomy of revolutionary politics to the very limits of Marxism, then Althusser represents a further radicalisation of Gramsci. Arguing against a post-Marxist call for a 'return from Althusser back to Gramsci', and especially against the attempt, such as can be found with Laclau and Mouffe, to reinterpret the Gramscian problematic through a revalorisation of the fundamental concepts of the liberal-democratic tradition, I argue for a need to reassess the singularity of Althusser's philosophical contributions to Marxism, and for their importance for a contemporary reinvigoration of Marxism. In this sense, I place particular stress on two moments in the theoretical apparatus of Althusser: a) his conception of philosophy as an act, or an intervention - which seems as a powerful solution to the question of 'practicality of thought', to the injunction to 'change the world' philosophically, without a reduction of philosophy to a simple servant of political practice and its immediate ideological objectives; and b) his theorisation of politics, or, more exactly, of the specificity of revolutionary politics, which Althusser is at pains to extract and separate from the 'autonomy of the political', that is, to render heterogeneous to the general, 'autonomous', sphere of the Law, of the State and of ideology. With Althusser, the true question of the autonomy of politics can only come via a radical negation of the 'autonomy of the political', and, at the same time, through an affirmation of an irreducible singular dimension of political practice. In the second part of the thesis, I focus more concretely on the historical context of post-socialism, whilst drawing from the field of theoretical problems opened by the previous discussions of Althusser, Gramsci and post-Marxism. In this, I attempt to demonstrate that a certain rethinking and revitalisation of Marxism, and namely, of Althusser's contributions, seems as a necessary part of a critical confrontation with the post-socialist political, ideological and socio-economic realities. In the three analyses of the second part, I focus on some of the symptomatic moments of what I call the post-socialist political reason: a) the precise historical role of post-Marxist theory in the genesis of post-socialist reality, which I read via an examination of the political significance of Laclau and Mouffe's notion of hegemony in the context of the Slovenian Spring of the late 1980s; b) the relationship between liberal-democracy and nationalism, and in this, the specific structural dialectic of violence internal to the liberal State as a historical form, which I read against the paradoxes of 'democratisation' in the context of the break-up of Yugoslavia; and c) the effects of the fetishism of legal categories and of the general tendency to reduce politics to Law in the post-socialist ideological spectrum, which I contrast to the singularity of the revolutionary politics of Yugoslavia

Assessing the EU’s ‘new approach’ to enlargement policy: The case of rule of law reform in Serbia

Rule of law is an important European Union (EU) principle. The EU aspires to promote it externally, particularly in the context of EU enlargement. In new Member States such as Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, problems with rule of law ‘backsliding’ indicate that the rule of law was poorly embedded during previous accessions. Consequently, the EU’s ‘new approach’ has made rule of law reform central to the accession processes of Candidate States in the Western Balkans. Despite this policy shift, it remains unclear whether this new approach supports the construction of both formal rule of law institutions and corresponding norms and practices, or whether formal compliance is decoupled from a change in practice. This thesis analyses the EU’s new approach and its capacity to enact change by focusing on rule of law reforms in the Candidate State of Serbia. This thesis addresses two research questions: What are the key logics, imaginaries and interactions driving the delivery of rule of law reforms in Serbia? How effective is the EU’s approach for ensuring the institutionalisation of the rule of law in practice? To answer these questions, this thesis adopts a Cultural Political Economy approach. It analyses how key actors interact, understand, interpret and construct rule of law reforms. This analysis demonstrates the multiple understandings of rule of law that emerge and draws attention to the different political visions these understandings represent. The central argument of the thesis is that while the EU’s new approach increasingly draws actors’ attention to rule of law issues, it remains driven by a strategic logic. This reinforces the reproduction as opposed to contextualisation of its rule of law criteria, generates contestation and reinforces existing power relations. This leads to the partial institutionalisation of the rule of law in practice, while simultaneously creating contestation and resistance to reforms

Religious Tones and Overtones in the Human Sufficiency Arguments of Marx and Nietzsche

It is often assumed that since Marx and Nietzsche were both anti-religious thinkers, religion played no part in the formulation of their philosophical outlooks. With this assumption, the influence of historical religions on rhetoric has received a subordinate role, if at all, in the discourse on 19th century German critiques of those very religions. Although differing fundamentally in the debate on inclusiveness versus individuality, this essay asserts that Marx and Nietzsche, both from families of religious scholars, broke with previous philosophical tradition and utilized a religious form of rhetoric in their writings to combat doctrines of human deficiency inherent in previous European thought. Through an analysis of passages of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality and Thus Spoke Zarathustra and of Capital, The Communist Manifesto, and other writings, this paper will demonstrate the appropriation of religious rhetoric of human sufficiency in such works. Secondly, this essay posits the necessity of “slave morality,” as described by Nietzsche, to the awakening of the proletariat in Marxist political theory, and characterizes Marx as the final “priest” figure who redirects ressentiment back onto oppressors. This analysis ultimately shows the effectiveness of the tradition of religious rhetoric of oppression/liberation, in spite of its simultaneous harsh critiques, and the emotional power of persuasion inherent and necessary in such language to restore human sufficiency. This essay further displays the intersections of the works of Nietzsche and Marx as products of 19th century German cultural criticism