7,357 research outputs found

    Grasping nothing: a study of minimal ontologies and the sense of music

    Get PDF
    If music were to have a proper sense – one in which it is truly given – one might reasonably place this in sound and aurality. I contend, however, that no such sense exists; rather, the sense of music takes place, and it does so with the impossible. To this end, this thesis – which is a work of philosophy and music – advances an ontology of the impossible (i.e., it thinks the being of what, properly speaking, can have no being) and considers its implications for music, articulating how ontological aporias – of the event, of thinking the absolute, and of sovereignty’s dismemberment – imply senses of music that are anterior to sound. John Cage’s Silent Prayer, a nonwork he never composed, compels a rerethinking of silence on the basis of its contradictory status of existence; Florian Hecker et al.’s Speculative Solution offers a basis for thinking absolute music anew to the precise extent that it is a discourse of meaninglessness; and Manfred Werder’s [yearn] pieces exhibit exemplarily that music’s sense depends on the possibility of its counterfeiting. Inso-much as these accounts produce musical senses that take the place of sound, they are also understood to be performances of these pieces. Here, then, thought is music’s organon and its instrument

    The Mission Statement of Jesus: Mark 1:15, Mark's Apocalyptically Charged Decision Motif

    Get PDF
    This dissertation examines the mission statement of Jesus in Mark 1:15: ‘The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel’. The statement will be examined from the perspective of the writer, Mark, who - it will be argued - crafted the statement as a rhetorical device to press his audience for a personal decision to accept Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God and as a call for them to be baptized. It will be argued that the mission statement was fully crafted by Mark rather than originating with the historical Jesus. The analysis examines the apocalyptic imagery that the writer invokes, and how he uses that imagery to charge a decision motif with tension and a call to action, prior to what was expected to be the imminent Parousia of Jesus. The statement in Mark 1:15 is examined from a textual, literary, and historical perspective, considering Mark’s literary style from a narrative perspective, his rhetorical goals, and the eschatological and apocalyptic expectations that were operating in the background at the time of the Gospel’s composition. Mark’s use of apocalyptic imagery for rhetorical purposes will be shown to be the product of his circumstances and of those experienced by his community during the first Jewish-Roman War. These circumstances led him to believe that the end of the age had come and that certain prophetic traditions regarding the ‘Day of the Lord’ were being fulfilled. This therefore led Mark to frame the mission statement as an imperative for early Christian believers to decide to commit themselves fully, through the act of baptism, to suffering discipleship and imminent death in the final moments before the return of Jesus

    Towards a sociology of conspiracy theories: An investigation into conspiratorial thinking on Dönmes

    Get PDF
    This thesis investigates the social and political significance of conspiracy theories, which has been an academically neglected topic despite its historical relevance. The academic literature focuses on the methodology, social significance and political impacts of these theories in a secluded manner and lacks empirical analyses. In response, this research provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for conspiracy theories by considering their methodology, political impacts and social significance in the light of empirical data. Theoretically, the thesis uses Adorno's semi-erudition theory along with Girardian approach. It proposes that conspiracy theories are methodologically semi-erudite narratives, i.e. they are biased in favour of a belief and use reason only to prove it. It suggests that conspiracy theories appear in times of power vacuum and provide semi-erudite cognitive maps that relieve alienation and ontological insecurities of people and groups. In so doing, they enforce social control over their audience due to their essentialist, closed-to-interpretation narratives. In order to verify the theory, the study analyses empirically the social and political significance of conspiracy theories about the Dönme community in Turkey. The analysis comprises interviews with conspiracy theorists, conspiracy theory readers and political parties, alongside a frame analysis of the popular conspiracy theory books on Dönmes. These confirm the theoretical framework by showing that the conspiracy theories are fed by the ontological insecurities of Turkish society. Hence, conspiracy theorists, most readers and some political parties respond to their own ontological insecurities and political frustrations through scapegoating Dönmes. Consequently, this work shows that conspiracy theories are important symptoms of society, which, while relieving ontological insecurities, do not provide politically prolific narratives

    Marvellous real in the Middle East: a comparative study of magical realism in contemporary women’s fiction

    Get PDF
    Magical realism has been studied extensively in relation to Latin America and subsequently in other parts of the world, yet the Middle East has not received adequate attention in academic scholarship. This PhD study examines a selection of contemporary female-authored narratives from the Middle East to establish an understanding of the practice of magical realism in this region. The selected texts for this study are: Raja Alem’s Fatma and My Thousand and One Nights; Shahrnush Parsipur’s Women Without Men and Touba and the Meaning of Night; Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul and Gina B. Nahai’s Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith. This study firstly explores the concept of magical realism as a mode of writing and determines its relationship to the Middle Eastern context. It then evaluates the texts under scrutiny by examining how the narrative of magical realism is constructed and what the sources are of the magical component in these texts, specifically in relation to Middle Eastern mythology. It also investigates the ideological aspect behind the employment of magical realism and whether it serves any political goal. The analysis of the selected texts is approached from three standpoints, that is, from literary, mythological and ideological perspectives. I argue that magical realism serves various purposes and that it is applied from perspectives that can be regarded as marginal to their communities’ dominant values, to subvert mainstream ideology. I also demonstrate that the Middle East is a crucial place to investigate magical realism because of the numerous complex cultural values that interact with each other in this region, and which enrich the practice of magical realism

    Photography and Aesthetics: a critical study on visual and textual narratives in the lifework of Sergio Larraín and its impact in 20th century Europe and Latin America

    Get PDF
    The main focus of this study is a theoretical exploration of critical approaches applicable to the work of the Chilean photographer Sergio Larraín (1931-2012). It presents analytical tools to contextualise and understand the importance and impact of his work in photographic studies and his portrayal of twentieth-century Latin American and European culture. It inspects in depth a large portion of his photo work, which is still only partially published and mostly reduced to his "active" period as a photojournalist, aside from the personal photographic exploration of his early and late career (C. Mena). This extended material creates a broader scope for understanding his photographs and him as a canonical photographer. This study analyses the photographer's trajectory as discourses of recollection of historical memory in time (Mauad) to trace Larraín's collective memory associated with his visual production. Such analysis helps decode his visual imagery and his projection and impact on the European and Latin American culture. This strategy helps solve a two fold problem: firstly, it generates an interpretive consistency to understand the Chilean's photographic practice; secondly, it explores the power of images as an aesthetic experience in the installation of nationalist ideologies and the creation of imaginaries (B. Anderson 163)

    On the Education of a Psychiatrist: Notes from the Field

    Get PDF
    The overarching borrowed question that frames the work of this PhD asks, "What does an education in psychiatry do to a psychiatrist?" Early in my practice of child and adolescent psychiatry, the "know how" in the custodianship of care neither readily nor easily translated into "show how," resulting in a pedagogical conundrum that belatedly registered as uncomfortable emotional symptoms about my education. This nidus of professional confusion and uncertainty creates the context for my inquiry into the complexities and dilemmas of contemporary matters of medical education, specifically as it pertains to my identity as a psychiatrist. To probe these queries, three non-traditional, blended methodologies are relied upon. John Forrester's "thinking in cases" is utilized in reading memoirs and critical histories in psychiatry, such that the thesis can be read as a case of many educational cases. I stay close to the reading of Oliver Sacks' memoir whose work in neurology also grapples with questions of the mind; an idea which becomes a leitmotif in my own autoethnographic reflections for re-constructing my education in psychiatry and its potential beginnings as a trainee and educator in both Canada and Uganda. Weaving in and out of historical observations made by Foucault about psychiatry and linking them to Sacks' recall of numerous medical institutional encounters, I tackle the problem of matricide in an educational arena weary of newness and how this deadly curriculum can be generative in its intent. Through attempts at engaging a decolonizing discourse about my experiences as a clinician educator in Uganda, the concept of an educational void and how it was both ruthlessly encountered as a situational dilemma but underwent a thought transformation to understand it as a survival tactic, is described. Psychoanalytic orientations are heavily leaned upon in my interpretations, highlighting the emotional logic inherent in the transference sites constituting the human work of medical practice and education. Broad themes emerge focusing on history, place, gender, and positioning of the body as educational markers speaking to a different kind of experiential pedagogy predicated on somatic revelations to make the mind intelligible in its relevance to the temporality of education. I arrive at the fault lines of education, difficult knowledge, and the uncertainties, including the frailty of my own self as a resource for the mind, that form educational myths needed to tackle obstacles to learning. Through this process, a personal and professional awakening occurs

    The syntax of negative polarity items in Syrian Arabic based on the dialect of Deir Ezzor

    Get PDF
    Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) are pervasive among languages. Cross-linguistic examination of NPIs continues to shed light on the complexity of this phenomenon. One unfortunate fact is that NPIs in Arabic dialects have seen relatively little examination in comparison with NPIs in other languages, such as English, Dutch, and Greek. The present study aims at contributing to filling this lacuna in research. It is a descriptive and analytical study of the syntax of negative polarity items in the Arabic dialect of Deir Ezzor, a city on the Euphrates in the north-eastern part of Syria; this Arabic dialect is Mesopotamian and not Levantine. This thesis contributes to the study of NPIs by providing an extensive inventory of these items in an Arabic dialect and a deeper analysis of these items' behaviour and licensing conditions. This study moves beyond the already known negative polarity pronouns and determiners to discuss negative polarity auxiliary verbs and negative polarity lexical verbs. It also expands the discussion of the idiomatic NPIs by discussing minimisers and maximisers. This thesis discusses the largest number of NPIs in any Arabic dialect. It also sheds light on areas where a contribution is needed, such as a thorough examination of the licensing contexts, e.g., the subjunctive and comparatives. This study examines the licensing proposals and concludes that Giannakidou’s nonveridicality theory offers the needed account. This study proposes new ways to examine the contexts where the licensing is possible, e.g., considering the details of comparative structures and what makes them licensing environments for NPIs. This study concludes that further research is needed and that researchers should not limit their exploration to testing the proposals that account for the licensing problem. Details do matter, and the details are what we should be looking for

    Chinese Benteng Women’s Participation in Local Development Affairs in Indonesia: Appropriate means for struggle and a pathway to claim citizen’ right?

    Get PDF
    It had been more than two decades passing by aftermath the devastating Asia’s Financial Crisis in 1997, subsequently followed by Suharto’s step down from his presidential throne which he occupied for more than three decades. The financial turmoil turned to a political disaster furthermore has led to massive looting that severely impacted Indonesians of Chinese descendant, including unresolved mystery of the most atrocious sexual violation against women and covert killings of students and democracy activists in this country. Since then, precisely aftermath May 1998, which publicly known as “Reformasi”1, Indonesia underwent political reform that eventually corresponded positively to its macroeconomic growth. Twenty years later, in 2018, Indonesia captured worldwide attention because it has successfully hosted two internationally renowned events, namely the Asian Games 2018 – the most prestigious sport events in Asia – conducted in Jakarta and Palembang; and the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting 2018 in Bali. Particularly in the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting, this event has significantly elevated Indonesia’s credibility and international prestige in the global economic powerplay as one of the nations with promising growth and openness. However, the narrative about poverty and inequality, including increasing racial tension, religious conservatism, and sexual violation against women are superseded by friendly climate for foreign investment and eventually excessive glorification of the nation’s economic growth. By portraying the image of promising new economic power, as rhetorically promised by President Joko Widodo during his presidential terms, Indonesia has swept the growing inequality in this highly stratified society that historically compounded with religious and racial tension under the carpet of digital economy.Arte y Humanidade

    Strung pieces: on the aesthetics of television fiction series

    Get PDF
    As layered and long works, television fiction series have aesthetic properties that are built over time, bit by bit. This thesis develops a group of concepts that enable the study of these properties, It argues that a series is made of strung pieces, a system of related elements. The text begins by considering this sequential form within the fields of film and television. This opening chapter defines the object and methodology of research, arguing for a non-essentialist distinction between cinema and television and against the adequacy of textual and contextual analyses as approaches to the aesthetics of these shows. It proposes instead that these programmes should be described as televisual works that can be scrutinised through aesthetic analysis. The next chapters propose a sequence of interrelated concepts. The second chapter contends that series are composed of building blocks that can be either units into which series are divided or motifs that unify series and are dispersed across their pans. These blocks are patterned according to four kinds of relations or principles of composition. Repetition and variation are treated in tandem in the third chapter because of their close connection, given that variation emerges from established repetition. Exception and progression are also discussed together in the fourth chapter since they both require a long view of these serial works. The former, in order to be recognised as a deviation from the patterns of repetition and variation. The latter, In order to be understood in Its many dimensions as the series advances. Each of these concepts is further detailed with additional distinctions between types of units, motifs, repetitions, variations, and exceptions, using illustrative examples from numerous shows. In contrast, the section on progression uses a single series as case study, Carnivàle (2003-05), because this is the overarching principle that encompasses all the others. The conclusion considers the findings of the research and suggests avenues for their application
    corecore