Rhetoric and Rupture: A Theory of the Event

Rhetoric and Rupture: A Theory of the Event This thesis engages the problematic of agency and interiority in rhetorical studies by proposing a theory of evental rhetoric. The event is a rupture in the continuities of the symbolic, revealing the distance between the forces of symbolization and their phantasmagorical effects. This theory is built upon the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Lacan, engaging questions of truth, being, and the relationship of the subject to herself and the world. The rhetorics of legal practice, particularly the per curiam opinions of the United States Supreme Court, I argue, provide the institutional and epistemological formations necessary to transcend the bonds of situated rhetoric and become truly evental. I turn to the Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v. United States as an example of such an evental rhetoric. These rhetorics clear the way for the introduction of the new, and found a conversation in which democracy can begin

Effects of Government Reform and Creative Clusters on Chinese Entrepreneurship

This thesis analyzes the ways in which Chinese entrepreneurs have interacted with and responded to government policy. An examination of ethnographic research on the Shenzhen “Special Economic Zone” revealed that the forms entrepreneurship that emerged there during the early years of China’s economic reforms are rooted in the history and culture of the region. Analysis of modern policies, such as the 13th 5-Year Plan (2016-2020) and the Internet Plus doctrine, determined that the state strategy for encouraging entrepreneurship is now focused on empowering local governments, rather than individuals, as entrepreneurial agents. The city of Hangzhou’s “Dream Town” creative cluster is proposed as a potential site for future ethnographic research to determine whether the incentives offered by the local government are aligned with the motivations of the individual entrepreneurs

Accommodating repair actions into gas turbine prognostics

Elements of gas turbine degradation, such as compressor fouling, are recoverable through maintenance actions like compressor washing. These actions increase the usable engine life and optimise the performance of the gas turbine. However, these maintenance actions are performed by a separate organization to those undertaking fleet management operations, leading to significant uncertainty in the maintenance state of the asset. The uncertainty surrounding maintenance actions impacts prognostic efficacy. In this paper, we adopt Bayesian on-line change point detection to detect the compressor washing events. Then, the event detection information is used as an input to a prognostic algorithm, advising an update to the estimation of remaining useful life. To illustrate the capability of the approach, we demonstrated our on-line Bayesian change detection algorithms on synthetic and real aircraft engine service data, in order to identify the compressor washing events for a gas turbine and thus provide demonstrably improved prognosis

The challenge of self-determination and emerging nationalism: the evolution of the international community’s normative responses to state fragmentation

How does the international community understand and apply the right of self-determination? Who holds this right: individuals, peoples, nations, states, ethnicities, minorities, majorities? What limits are there to the exercise of this right and which claims are ‘valid’ and which are not? This thesis addresses these issues as it seeks, above all, to answer the question of when, why and in what ways the international community’s understanding of and normative responses to self-determination have evolved. To do so, Part I explores critically the theories and history of nationalism, human rights, sovereignty and self-determination to explain the challenges of ‘emerging nationalism’ (defined herein as nationalism within established multi-national states aimed at altering the constitutional and/or social standing of the nation vis-à-vis the larger political entity). This part identifies the genesis of the interconnected ideas of identity, human rights, and sovereignty and begins to trace the evolution of the norm of self-determination over time as it has been conceived and employed by international society. It suggests new approaches to these concepts based within the liberal democratic tradition, which are, arguably, more philosophically coherent than other explanations for self-determination. Part II assesses international normative responses to state fragmentation and national liberation prior to the end of the Cold War to determine how much they have resembled the interpretation of national self-determination suggested in Part I, contending that the conceptual evolution of selfdetermination can only be interpreted accurately by understanding the parallel evolution and development of international society. Part III examines the evolution of self-determination and emerging nationalism in the post-Cold War era, asking whether the norms generated by the present-day society of states are consistent with the theoretical and historical observations made earlier. The recent case of Kosovo is examined in detail as it best suggests the present trajectory of international norms and responses to emerging nationalism

Relaxed plasma equilibria and entropy-related plasma self-organization principles

The concept of plasma relaxation as a constrained energy minimization is reviewed. Recent work by the authors on generalizing this approach to partially relaxed threedimensional plasma systems in a way consistent with chaos theory is discussed, with a view to clarifying the thermodynamic aspects of the variational approach used. Other entropy-related approaches to finding long-time steady states of turbulent or chaotic plasma systems are also briefly reviewed