Queer feminine disidentificatory orientations: occupying liminal spaces of queer fem(me)inine (un)belonging

This thesis develops fresh critical insights regarding dynamics of queer feminine identity construction and community (un)belonging, with a specific focus on the rhetorics and realities of inclusion and exclusion occurring within queer feminine identities, communities and representations. The project takes a intersectional approach to exploring these dynamics by interrogating how various positionalities (e.g. “race”, disability, class etc.) interact with queer feminine genders and sexualities. Synthesising insights from Sara Ahmed’s (2006) queer phenomenology regarding processes of orientation with José Esteban Muñoz’s (1999) theory of disidentifications, the project explores the possibilities that experiences and articulations of queer feminine disidentificatory orientations offer for a critical take on queer femininities from within. The key research question that this project addresses is: How and why are disidentificatory orientations experienced by various differently positioned queer feminine subjects and what can queer feminine disidentificatory orientations tell us about dynamics of inclusion, exclusion and (un)belonging within queer feminine subjectivities, communities and representations? The project developed a collaborative queer fem(me)inist ethnographic approach that combined questionnaires, interviews and visual materials (collages and photographs) produced by a diverse sample of 15 queer feminine participants in the UK, with insights gained from a discursive analysis of three major contemporary femme anthologies: Chloë Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri’s (2002) Brazen Femme, Ulrika Dahl and Del LaGrace Volcano’s (2008) Femmes of Power and Jennifer Clare Burke’s (2009) Visible. The project presents a significant new data set which demonstrates the complexities, politics and cultures of femme subjectivities and the ranges of (sub)cultural capitals that one has to either already be invested in, or actively invest in, to access queer feminine identities, recognition and community belonging. Thus, the project argues for the continued necessity of engaging in positioned reflexive work on the lived experiences of minority subjects within our own queer, feminist and femme communities

Words Matter: The Work of Lawrence Weiner

This dissertation explores the practice of contemporary artist Lawrence Weiner. From 1968 onwards, Weiner has presented his work using language and, as such, the artist is historically regarded as one of the pioneering practitioners of Conceptual art. The artist himself categorically refuses that designation, preferring to focus on the material aspects of his work. Nevertheless, his oeuvre has been largely received in terms of a predominantly linguistic intervention. Craig Dworkin encapsulates this position, when in discussing the Conceptual wager of Weiner's statements he writes: "Having tested the propositions that the art object might be nominal, linguistic, invisible, and on a par with its abstract initial description, the next step was to venture that it could be dispensed with altogether." By focusing equally on the linguistic and material aspects of Weiner's practice, this dissertation argues, conversely, that Weiner's work is primarily an object strategy, and not a dematerialized linguistic presentation. The first part of this discussion deals with Weiner's ground-breaking work from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s, analyzing the full implications of Weiner's extraordinary decision to present materials through language. Close comparisons are drawn with the profoundly materialist practices of contemporary artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Carl Andre, Richard Serra and Robert Smithson. Weiner's use of language is also distinguished from the text-based works of Conceptual artists Joseph Kosuth and Douglas Huebler, problematizing the degree to which Weiner's statements can stand as an exemplar of postmodern textuality, inasmuch as their referential content remains of primary consequence. Several chapters of the dissertation focus on drawings, and in particular the artist's notebooks, an aspect of Weiner's practice that has remained largely unstudied. Crucially, the notebooks present a model of thinking which is wholly corporeal as opposed to purely analytical. Furthermore, they raise the problem of the visual in relation to a body of work that has been credited with the suppression of a traditional (optical) aesthetic. In being conceived by the artist as "maps," Weiner's drawings also invite an analysis of spatial considerations, and are thus linked to the artist's own designation of his work, not as art in general, but specifically as sculpture. Finally, the notebooks, like Weiner's films, practically dissolve the categories of reality and fiction. Indeed, Weiner himself would insist that every presentation of his essentially "realist" work is nonetheless inherently "theatrical." One of the long-standing criticisms of Conceptual art was that while it made aspects of circulation and distribution part of the work - thereby testing the limits of institutional constraint and expanding art's potential to engage in collective reception - it failed to achieve truly democratic access, in large part by neglecting issues of desire. Thus, Conceptual art's promise of collective accessibility was purportedly foreclosed by an art whose theoretical propositions lacked a democratic content. In closely considering the generic content of Weiner's work, this dissertation develops a picture not only of the concrete relationship between word and thing, but of the ways in which Weiner uses signs (drawings, text, films) to "objectify" desire, demonstrating that his "sculptures" must be seen as both conceptual and sensual, fully immersed in politicized questions of imaginary and bodily experience

The Lazy Lambda Calculus : an investigation into the foundations of functional programming

Imperial Users onl

Principles of Markov automata

A substantial amount of today's engineering problems revolve around systems that are concurrent and stochastic by their nature. Solution approaches attacking these problems often rely on the availability of formal mathematical models that reflect such systems as comprehensively as possible. In this thesis, we develop a compositional model, Markov automata, that integrates concurrency, and probabilistic and timed stochastic behaviour. This is achieved by blending two well-studied constituent models, probabilistic automata and interactive Markov chains. A range of strong and weak bisimilarity notions are introduced and evaluated as candidate relations for a natural behavioural equivalence between systems. Among them, weak distribution bisimilarity stands out as a natural notion being more oblivious to the probabilistic branching structure than prior notions. We discuss compositionality, axiomatizations, decision and minimization algorithms, state-based characterizations and normal forms for weak distribution bisimilarity. In addition, we detail how Markov automata and weak distribution bisimilarity can be employed as a semantic basis for generalized stochastic Petri nets, in such a way that known shortcomings of their classical semantics are ironed out in their entirety.Ein beträchtlicher Teil gegenwärtiger ingenieurwissenschafter Probleme erstreckt sich auf Sys- teme, die ihrer Natur nach sowohl stochastisch als auch nebenläufig sind. Lösungsansätze fußen hierbei häufig auf der Verfügbarkeit formaler mathematischer Modelle, die es erlauben, die Spez- ifika jener Systeme möglichst erschöpfend zu erfassen. In dieser Dissertation entwickeln wir ein kompositionelles Modell namens Markov-Automaten, das Nebenläufigkeit mit probabilistis- chen und stochastischen Prozessen integriert. Dies wird durch die Verschmelzung der zweier bekannter Modellklassen erreicht, und zwar die der probabilistischen Automaten und die der interaktiven Markovketten. Wir entwickeln dabei ein Spektrum verschiedener, starker und schwacher Bisimulationsrelationen und beurteilen sie im Hinblick auf ihre Eignung als natür- liche Verhaltensäquivalenz zwischen Systemen. Die schwache Wahrscheinlichkeitsverteilungs- bisimulation sticht dabei als natürliche Wahl hervor, da sie die probabilistische Verzwei- gungsstruktur treffender abstrahiert als bisher bekannte Bisimulationsrelationen. Wir betra- chten des Weiteren Kompositionalitätseigenschaften, Axiomatisierungen, Entscheidungs- und Minimierungsalgorithmen, sowie zustandsbasierte Charakterisierungen und Normalformen für die schwache Wahrscheinlichkeitsverteilungsbisimulation. Abschließend legen wir dar, dass Markov-Automaten und die schwacheWahrscheinlichkeitsverteilungsbisimulation als Grundlage für eine verbesserte Semantik von verallgemeinerten stochastischen Petrinetzen dienen kann, welche bekannte Mängel der klassischen Semantik vollständig behebt

Translating the form: a process-based approach to translating the poems of Martinus Nijhoff (1894-1953) and Gerrit Achtergerg (1905-1962)

This study explores the poetic works of two major Dutch modernist poets, Martinus Nijhoff (1894-1953) and Gerrit Achterberg (1905-1962), from the point of view of translation. Both poets created their poems with a strong attention to formal qualities, with consequent stylistic effects which may be difficult to translate. Through a combination of critical analysis and translation-based creative practice the thesis examines which aspects of form seem most salient in the work of each poet and which aspects, therefore, the translator-poet might attempt to convey in translation. In Chapter 1 the guiding notion of the thesis is examined. Since both poets placed a strong emphasis on process as central to their poetics, a similar process-based approach is proposed as a route into the translation of their poems. This is followed by an initial commentary which examines some of my own earlier, and problematic, translation strategies. The study is then structured so that the specific aspects of form explored in each of the main chapters, rhythm (Chapter 2), phrasing, pausing and breath (Chapter 3), and sound and iconicity (Chapter 4), are inter-punctuated with further commentaries in which these aspects are approached through practical experiments. The commentaries are intended not only to exemplify my own translation process, but also to suggest several innovative models for a psychophysiological approach to formal poetic translation. My aim has been twofold: to find ways of representing formally salient aspects of Nijhoff’s and Achterberg’s poetry in translations which are also poems, and to make their work better known beyond the Dutch literary system. I conclude that a whole-body attention to the aspects of form explored in this study, coupled with a non-schematic approach to rhyme, may help the translator find a way out of the blind alley created by the opposition between free and formal translation