RETHINKING ABSENCE: ART PRACTICE AND THE CRITICAL METAPHYSICS OF JACQUES DERRIDA AND JACQUES LACAN

The methodology aims to demonstrate that absence is not reducible to one approach or another but plays on the incommensurabilities, commensurabilities and gaps between the different concepts presented. The 'motions of absence', which are textual insertions interspersed between the sections, directly articulate the methodology of the thesis by responding to and exploring the thinking in each section. The methodology therefore both produces and addresses the tensions and gaps available in visual and theoretical discourses to demonstrate absence. lt thereby allows for the possibility of a re-inscription of signification for absence to occur

New technologies of democracy: how the information and communication technologies are shaping new cultures of radical democratic politics.

What characterises contemporary democratic political struggles? According to the post-Marxist theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, it is their sheer unknowability, the fact that there can be no certainties, no fixed grounding. Drawing a distinction between the 'certainties' of classical Marxism (i. e. base/superstructure) and the more 'diffuse' nature of modem democratic demands (such as sexual and gender equality, environmentalism and the peace movements), the emergence of a post-Marxist perspective has endeavoured to engage the widening imaginaries of present-day democratic politics. In this thesis the central post-Marxist category of radical democracy, defined literally as the 'multiplication of public spaces of antagonism, is interrogated in relation to new modes and ideas of contemporary political struggle, particularly those associated with the expansion of the ICTs and networks. Arguing for the need to consider politics beyond the somewhat outmoded and uninspiring description of the 'new social movements', this thesis critically investigates the emerging practices of politics and activism enabled by the technologies like the Internet, using the ideas of post-Marxism as a basis for generating new theories of radical democracy. Looking in particular at the practices of Tactical Media and Culture Jamming, together with new methods of interaction and consumption, such as peer-to-peer file sharing and open publishing on the Internet, this study demonstrates how radical democracy contains as yet unthoughtout critical potentials through which to examine the ICTs in relation to these nascent cultures of politics. These emerging political cultures, this thesis suggests, entail the articulation of other ways of conceiving democracy, the political and politics more appropriate to the increasingly networked nature of contemporary society

Goodman's Grue ? Relativized Pluralism and Paradigmatic Thought Experiment (Whack)

In this paper we examine Nelson Goodman's Grue 'new riddle of induction' from the perspective of research into semantics of thought experiment. Since Grue may be considered a productive epistemic paradox TE, we can't agree on the skeptical resolution of the neologistic thought experiment to near-common sense of Goodman's entrenchment theory. Instead, we consider the thought experiment a prototype of a Kuhnian paradigmatic or revolutionary thought experiment, which may cover famous examples from history of science, whereof we will analyze one in more detail as a specimen with help of temporal predicate logic ('all swans are whack'). Next, we argue for a pluralistic interpretation of the paradox thought experiment as in line with Goodman's philosophical position of irrealism--pluralism of the paradox is not the problem, it is the resolution of the problem. Partly on basis of analogous analyses of WVO Quine's Gavagai thought experiment, we conclude by opting for Quinean ontological relativity, which does not exclude pluralism, but makes it hook upon (physical) reality. Modal logic, possible worlds semantics is proposed as alternate to classical logic as to deal with relativized pluralism and possible paradigm shifts in science

Modernism, Responsibility, and the Novel

Through formal innovation and experimentation—and through a renewed commitment to human subjectivity—many modernist writers consciously disrupted traditional modes of narration. In doing so, their writing simultaneously engaged ethical questions about responsibly representing the alterity of the other. With particular attention to narrative fragmentation, I claim that reading modernism in terms of responsibility yields an uncommon yet critical understanding of its practitioners as deeply invested in ethical problems related to representation. I argue that in the context of British modernism, particularly in the decade following the Great War, many writers developed narrative strategies that anticipated, welcomed, and responded to the irruption of “the new” into a world of repose, order, and complacency. This dissertation therefore explores the concept of ethical responsibility as it relates to representation and self-other relationships in the three British modernist novels: Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room (1922), D. H. Lawrence’s Aaron’s Rod (1922), and E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India (1924). I draw on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida to show that while modernists mindfully broke with representational practices of the past, they also felt themselves beset by the terrible burden of “making it new.” I demonstrate that this burden, or anxiety, is experienced by modernist narrators, characters, and readers

Appropriation en abyme: the postmodern art of Imants Tillers

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN055171 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Roberto Calasso - deconstructing mythology: a reading of Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia

This thesis reviews Roberto Calasso’s Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia (1988) and demonstrates that thematic and formal elements of this text allow us to to cast a postmodern and poststructuralist light on his theorization of ‘absolute literature’ – a declaration of faith in the power of literature which may appear to clash with the late twentieth century postmodern and poststructuralist climate responsible for concepts such as la mort de l’auteur. The importance of these findings lies in their going against Calasso’s claim that he never needed to use the word ‘postmodern’ and his complete silence on contemporary literary criticism, as well as on most contemporary authors. Calasso’s self-representation (interviews, criticism and the themes of the part-fictional work-in-progress) acknowledges as influences ancient Greek authors, both canonical and marginal; French décadence; the finis Austriae; Marxism; Nietzsche; Hindu mythology and Aby Warburg. These influences are certainly at work in Le nozze, however they may be employed to subvert Calasso’s self-presentation. I have explored in detail the representations of literature emerging from Le nozze, and shown that they allow the identification in Calasso’s texts of elements confirming his fascination with poststructuralism, in particular with the thought of Jacques Derrida, despite the complete silence on this philosopher throughout Calasso’s work