Chaotic Topography in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature

Chaos theory proposed by Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers illuminates new conclusions about narrative structures in contemporary French and Francophone literature. Espousing an order-out-of-chaos paradigm, my tutor texts by Annie Ernaux, Frankétienne, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint demonstrate how the contemporary notions of identity, gender and genre are innately chaotic but simultaneously offer innovative insights into how these entities are being (re)conceived and (re)presented. Scientific, philosophical, and cultural models of chaos described by Prigogine, Deleuze and Glissant respectively, offer a means to understand the world in order to frame a contemporary cultural topography. Liberated limits of the novel, poetry, and diary genre, viewed through the concept of chaotic "noise", represent richness of information rather than a dearth in order. With Prigogine's Arrow of Time, identity is found in the future not in the past suggesting a non-linear development that is plagued with uncertainty but possibilities. Consequently, identity in contemporary literature is located in others and not in the self challenging traditional notions of this concept. Bifurcation points serve as nodes of "textual instability" revealing themes and trends questioning the function of language, identity and generic transitions in contemporary literature. Through the concept of strange attractors, women, men, language and places within these chaotic tutor texts serve as points of order to which chaotic narratives consistently return advocating the creative force of non-gendered chaos. Accordingly not only can the notion of identity, love and language be viewed as fractal within their own textual space, but the texts themselves transcend generic boundaries. Finally, the contemporary cultural topography is expanding to include electronic literature as an area of critical study. Due to the medium of transmission, i.e., the computer code, electronic literature presents chaotic form and content and challenges traditional notions of `reading' a text. Consequently, the reader interacts with the computer code causing the `narrative' to bifurcate resulting in multiple, unpredictable reading experiences. Chaos theory thus offers a pertinent tool through which to read and interpret this genre. Electronic literature's literariness, viewed through chaos theory, is defined as what changes instead of what remains constant

Dyskurs konfliktu jako gatunek polityczny

This dissertation approaches the discourse of conflict as a cluster of conventionalized goal-oriented discursive forms, which inherently links it theoretically with the linguistic scholarship on genres in communication and, in particular, with the most recent theoretical developments in this domain that advocate the need to seek perspectives capable of grasping novel and/or constantly evolving structures of political communication (cf. Cap and Okulska 2013). For these purposes, in this research I list and analyze specific and (more or less) stable structural, content-related and functional characteristics of the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s speeches discourse about – and in the context of – the Middle East conflict as typical for political genres and, thus, as features that enable to classify, analyze and interpret this discourse as a (potentially new) genre in political communication. Also, this entails that in my study I take these regularities as constitutive of a potentially new generic category in political communication, which is oriented at achieving specific goals in the context of this conflict. In consequence, this research project has strong foundations in Critical Discourse Studies, linguistic pragmatics and cognitive linguistics, and entails a critical perspective on the ‘micro’ considerations of the cognitive-pragmatic properties of the (Israeli political) discourse of conflict, and the ‘macro’ considerations of the larger social motivations and consequences (cf. Fairclough 1995; van Dijk 2001; Wodak and Chilton 2005; Wodak and Meyer 2009) behind producing and negotiating specific conflict-related meanings in various settings.Rozprawa doktorska napisana w ramach projektu "Międzywydziałowe Interdyscyplinarne Humanistyczne Studia Doktoranckie – Kształcenie kadr dla potrzeb rynku flexicurity i gospodarki opartej na wiedzy - Oferta kierunków nauk humanistyczno-społecznych UŁ". Projekt współfinansowany ze środków Unii Europejskiej w ramach Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego

Why wasn’t capitalism born in China?: Deleuze and the philosophy of non-events

In this paper, I will address Deleuze and Guattari’s consideration of capitalism’s aborted birth in China by approaching the problematic from within their philosophy of history. To begin with, I will set out Deleuze and Guattari’s immediate answer, canvassing their machinic ontology and the significance that they place on immanence to the emergence of capitalism. In doing so, the question of history and historical interpretation will be raised. Following, I will investigate the status of such questions and inquire as to why Deleuze and Guattari ontinually pose them. From this analysis I will suggest that a critical philosophy of non-events can be found in Deleuze and Guattari’s work that is related to but distinct from their philosophy of the Event

An Analysis of Moral Values in "Amat Rhang Manyang"Legend

This thesis is entitled “An Analysis of Moral Values in “Amat Rhang Manyang” Legend”. The purpose of this study is to analyze and identify the moral values depicted in “Amat Rhang Manyang “ legend. The writer collected the data by using qualitative contents analysis. Qualitative contents analysis method is analyze about paragraph, word, sentences in documents. The object of qualitative content analysis can be all sort of recorded communication, for example transcripts of interviews, discourses, protocols of observations, video tapes and documents. The resources of the data is the legend of Amat Rhang Manyang in the book entitled “Cerita Rakyat Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam” published by Department of Culture Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam 2004. From this analysis the writer found three moral values. The first is the actions of main character to himself, as individual moral. The second is the actions of main character to his environment, in this case includes the action of main character to the people around him, like the family and friends, as social moral. The third is about the actions of main character to his God or the main character religion, as religious moral. After analyzing these moral values, the writer found some contents of each moral. The first individual moral such as confidence, bravery, responsibility, hard work ,and patience. The second is social moral the contains are caring, helpfulness, and loving . The third is religious morals like gratitude, and pray to Allah. the contents of legend are more dominance to bad social moral values. In that case, Amat did not have good attitude and relationship with his mother. It was showed in the plot of the story. From the beginning until the ending of Amat Rhang Manyang legend, the character of Amat had been continually changed. The containment was about the morality of main character, Amat Rhang Manyang. In the beginning of story, Amat was known as a person who has a good attitude to all of people around him especially to his mother. Nevertheless, at the end of the story, his character changed to be arrogant. It was because he became a rich person then he did not admit his mother. Furthermore, he un-heartedly said that his mother crazy since his mother’s appearance was ugly and poor. Amat’s characters and his moral values in the legend were depicted badly, in addition, his manner to his mother was so bad. In this research, it showed us that how moral values depicted in Amat Rhang Manyang legend about good and bad moral values

Indigenous Impositions in Contemporary Culture: Knotting Ontologies, Beading Aesthetics, and Braiding Temporalities

This work covers Indigenous philosophy, history, aesthetics, ethics, axiology, pedagogy, temporality, and language. This is the necessary result of a central but implicit claim made throughout the project, which is that any exploration of Indigenous culture that does not work within such a multi- and inter-disciplinary approach and instead parses and isolates these elements from each other runs the risk of attenuating the complex-systems features of the Indigenous culture it examines. Indigenous cultures are a processual holism. I offer here a piece of cultural analysis/synthesis that is Indigenous from the inside and, as such, does not neglect philosophical foundations. Rather, I endeavor to show how interconnected and interrelated these various elements are to any exploration of Indigenous culture. By describing a shared Indigenous orientation toward what I call “universal sacrality” and “universal relationality,” this project builds from these assumptions described in Chapter One by tracking them across aesthetic modalities (Chapter Two), temporal and narrative constructions (Chapter Three), and performative epistemologiesand pedagogies (Chapter Four). In so doing, I explore the ways in which this universal sacrality/relationality servse as a blockaded awareness of Indigenous interiority: the sacrality that inheres in all things even while it remains on the move in its ineffable transit across time and space. Centrally, this project is about Indigenous temporalities: expressions of Indigenous futurism, the near proximity of our Indigenous past, and the milieu of both that compose our enduring present, and why these conceptualizations remain different from broader American culture and important for us. What makes Indigenous culture different and important is that Indigenous peoples are different and important. It is the self-determination that inheres in tribal collectivity—that is, within the particularities of tribal community as such—that generates the difference and importance. What binds together Indigenous culture is orientation toward sacrality and our intimate relationship to the experiential particularities of place, which necessarily includes an orientation toward complex systems since, unless the abstractive/extractive project of settler-colonial capitalism is completed, lived place is always necessarily imbricated within the complex-system dynamics of experiential, concrete reality itself—in all its beauty, ugliness, pain, and pleasure

IndieBook

Ausgehend vom Wunsch als Leser und Leserin Geschichten mit zu gestalten, präsentiert diese Diplomarbeit das theoretische Konzept IndieBook für ein System zur Generierung fiktiver Welten für individualisierte Bücher. Die ideelle Basis von IndieBook bildet das kollaborative Einwirken von Autor, Leser und Computer in den Generationsprozess: Der einzigartige Stil des Autors bestimmt die statischen Voreinstellungen. Über interaktive Wahlmöglichkeiten und personalisierte Informationsquellen bringt sich der Leser ein. Das System fügt dies zusammen und generiert daraus Narrationen. Voraussetzung dafür ist eine grundlegende Formalisierung fiktiver Welten. Dafür wurden Modelle aus der Narratologie, Kognitionswissenschaft und Soziologie herangezogen und mit Techniken der Informatik formalisiert. Nach allgemeinen Voreinstellungen werden die Weltmodelle über die Realitätsrelationen und den daraus resultierenden Fiktivitätsgrad generiert. Die eigentlichen Bestandteile der Welt sind das Setting, die Charaktere und die Ereignisse. Das sozial-historisch-räumliche Setting konkretisiert die Relationen zu einem Rahmen für die Charaktere und Ereignisse. Die Charaktergeneration erfolgt in einem 6-stufigen Modell, das in einer detailierten, strukturierten Datenbank für jede einzelne Figur resultiert. Nach der Formalisierung der verschiedenen Formen von Ereignissen, wurde deren Narrativität und Struktur diskutiert.Based on the wish of many readers to co-create a story, this diploma thesis presents a theoretical concept called IndieBook to generate fictive worlds for individualized books. The idea behind IndieBook is the collaboration of author, reader, and computer in the generation process: The unique style of the author provides the static defaults. Then, the reader interacts through a range of possibilities and personalized information is integrated. Finally, the system merges these inputs and defaults and generates narrations. One major condition for this concept is a fundamental formalization of fictive worlds. Therefore, models were adopted from Narratology, Cognitive Science, and Sociology, modified to meet the requirement, and formalized with techniques of Computer Science. After the general presettings, the world models are generated through their relations to the reality and the resulting degree of fictivity. On this foundation, the components of the world are established: the setting, the characters, and the events. The socio-historico-spatial setting concretizes the relations and works as a referential frame for the characters and events. The generation of characters proceeds in a 6-layered model, that results in a detailed, structured data base for each protagonist. After formalizing the modes of events, the tellability and structure of events were discussed

Power from Switching across Netdoms through Reflexive and Indexical Language

En sociedades diferenciadas con redes sociales de largo alcance pero fragmentadas, la habilidad de manejar la ambigüedad es crucial para navegar órdenes dominantes. En este artículo sostenemos que las identidades, para aumentar su control a través de cambios de redes y dominios (netdoms), manejan una ambigüedad creciente a través de las propiedades indéxicas y reflexivas del lenguaje. Explicamos variaspropiedades—metapragmática, heteroglosia, y poética—y afirmamos que éstas rara vez constituyen actuaciones inocentes de creación de consenso en la reproducción de los órdenes sociales. Al contrario, el lenguaje está inherentemente implicado en relaciones de dominación. Así, argumentamos que el control metapragmático de historias adquiridas en incontables cambios de netdoms conduce a posiciones firmes que aseguran recursos y oportunidades; que las retóricas que incluyen fértiles voces heteroglósicas a través de agujeros estructurales generan historias que se pueden transponer reflexivamente a otras arenas institucionales; y que el control poético de estilos lingüísticos puede transformar identidades en leyes potenciales con posiciones que se desacoplan en prismas para preservar su calidad. Nuestra meta es doble: Primero, mostrar que la reflexividad e indexicalidad del lenguaje emergen en multitud de cambios a través de netdoms; y segundo, demostrar que el lenguaje indéxico y reflexivo es crítico en las luchas de las identidades por el control—deposiciones y dominación—a través de cambios de netdoms que se polimerizan rápidamente.   Abstract:   In highly differentiated societies with far-reaching yet fragmented social networks, such as post-industrial societies, the ability to manage and sustain pervasive ambiguity in daily interactions is crucial to navigate domination orders. Identities —from individuals to organizations—struggle to reflexively control decoupling  and contradictory demands through switchings across entangled social networks and interpretive domains (hereafter netdoms).2 At times strong interactional footings or other competitive edges may emerge through successful albeit temporary juggling of disjointed framings across netdom switchings. Moreover, to manage mounting ambiguity and contradiction across rapidly polymerizing netdoms skillful innuendo and indirect language is used. Thus increasing netdom complexities in contemporary societies  seem    to  proceed    along  ever   more   virtuoso  meta-communicative performances that can reframe volatile and unpredictable mutual expectations (e.g., workplaces with downsizing risks, job markets following fickle trends, gender relation uncertainties, fast-paced multicultural daily interactions). We in the 21st century inhabit social worlds that are sustained by fleeting arts of phenomenological epoché in connection with rapidly shifting netdom configurations