Graduate Theses & Dissertations

Transcendental Turn
This dissertation traces the concept of transcendentalism from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) to Michel Foucault's historical a priori and Pierre Bourdieu's field and habitus, with implicit reference to Deleuze's `transcendental empiricism,' and the influence this trajectory has had on contemporary theory and culture. This general conceptual framework is used as the basis for a critical analysis of a series of examples taken from popular culture to highlight their transcendental conditions of possibility and the influence this conceptual paradigm has had on today's theory. The examples include the NFL `concussion crisis,' South Park's problematization of the discourse surrounding it, as well as the literature of Charles Bukowski, as an exemplification of an immanent writer-written situation. It is further suggested that, not only is transcendentalism an epistemological framework for thought, but it also doubles as an ontological principle for the emergence of a constitutively incomplete and unfinished reality. Author Keywords: Bukowski, Concussion, Foucault, Kant, South Park, transcendental
Lacanian Realism
The overarching argument of this manuscript concerns Lacanian Realism, that is, the Lacanian theory of the Real. Initially, my argument may seem quite modest: I claim that Lacanians have been preoccupied with a particular modality of the Real, one that insists on interrupting, limiting, or exceeding the various orders or agencies of the human mind. The implications of such a position are worth considering. For example, one must, as a consequence of holding this position, bracket questions pertaining to Things outside of the Symbolic and Imaginary psychical systems. Careful study shall expose the extent to which this position has infuenced each of the major felds inspired by Jacques Lacan: clinical psychoanalysis, radical political philosophy, and mathematics or topology. My task has been to explore the consequent occlusion which psychoanalysis has suffered in each of these three felds and to tease out the possibility of a return to the Real. Author Keywords: Alain Badiou, Anarchism, Hysteria, Jacques Lacan, psychoanalysis, Slavoj Zizek
At the Intersection Between History and Fiction in Biography and Autobiography; A Repositioning, Using the Quest for the Historical Jesus as a Case Study
The modern sense of historicism developed over time that brought different textures at the intersection between history and fiction. The life of Jesus of Nazareth, prolifically researched after Herman Reimarus (1694-1768) right until today – a phenomenon known as The Quest for the Historical Jesus – provides an instructive case study for a wider discussion about the intersection between history and fiction in biography and autobiography. As a result of these centuries of Jesuanic research, one can identify a set predictable challenges which life-writing may need to confront. Furthermore, interesting historiographical criteria to detect factual authenticity versus factual inauthenticity for life-writing were also developed. Nevertheless, the depth of disagreement about a well-researched narrative such as the Jesuanic chronicle can eventually feel almost insurmountable. Pessimism, in fact, has become widespread. Thus, this dissertation raises the question: Is it but a vain attempt to search for truth by attempting to draw a sharp line between fiction and history? Hence, the discussion moves to Mikhail Bakhtin whose insistence on dialogism rather than truth seeking provides a more relational approach to appreciating the intersection between history and fiction in biography and autobiography. Author Keywords: biography, Copernicanism, dialogism, fiction, historicism, monologism
Rethinking Subjectivity
The following thesis problematizes different theories of subject formation in relation to morality, accountability, and consciousness raising. Focusing on the conditions subjects emerge in, I argue that socially transformative subjectivities emerge in movement through spaces. The theoretical discussion departs from the premise that morally accountable subjectivities drive social change. The politics of positionality that anchor the subject in a particular social location conceptualize morality as the result of critical consciousness raising. The causal nature of the relationship between the subject’s ability to reflect back on itself and its moral capacity is problematic for it leaves the reflective subject in a position of epistemic and moral authority. Rather, a subject who does not fully know itself nor the conditions of its being has the ability to engage in moral inquiry. Grounding subject formation in epistemic uncertainty construes the subject as inherently accountable to other unknowing subjects. Transformative subjectivities emerge out of epistemic resistance and uncertainty. The particular understanding of morality that underlies the rethinking of my moral subject emanates from its relational constitution. A morality of care prioritizes the responsibilities a subject has to others. In the context of Covid-19, relational subjects act in accordance with a morality of care that leads them to intervene in the lives of others who are threatened by the virus and left unprotected by institutional structures. The desire to interfere is cultivated when subjects emerge in ontological fields generated through epistemic intervention. One way to create such interventions is through counter-hegemonic cultural production such as works of art. Author Keywords:
Speaking of Being
The central question of this research is “What is poetry?” The ambiguity and unintelligibility of the question itself forces the writing to take two different approaches to it. The first approach is to define poetry not by what it is but by how it is related to the human being and to the world. Seeing poetry as its relation to Being allows a definition of poetry based on its function. This approach draws on philosophical discussions how poetry is related to the human and how Being can be extended into poetic creation. Martin Heidegger’s move from seeing poetry as the possibility of worldmaking to seeing it as a place of dwelling, and, in his later works, as unconcealment and the extension of Being as the House of Being, marks the direction of philosophical discussions in this paper. In this sense, poetry is defined as a creative possibility, where the speaking being comes in close contact with the speaking things and speaks of being.The second approach is to define poetry not as a whole but as some of its essential parts, as “poetic imagination” for instance. This attempt to define the poetic imagination draws on long-running discussions of imagination, metaphor, metaphorical thinking, image and imaging. It also relies on Freud’s discussions of how dreams function as textual phenomena: the poetic imagination, this approach argues, is similar to dreaming. The poet’s conscious and unconscious engagements with language create an uncanny experience where the relation between object and its poetic image is simultaneously known and unknowable. The third part of this study focuses on Lacan’s move from the symbolic unconscious to the real unconscious, in order to shed light on how the real is related to its linguistic reality. This brings the discussion to a point where language is replaced by lalangue in order to knot the real directly to the symbolic. Author Keywords: poetic creation, poetic imagination, poetry
Breach, Digital Disruption, the Event
The goal of this dissertation is to formulate a critique of embodiment through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis and in the context of digital media and intelligent technologies. Along with psychoanalysis, our research methodology and philosophy are informed by Badiou’s philosophy of the event, Stiegler’s philosophy of technics and infrastructuralism in media studies. Our study aims to uncover and articulate the implicit conditioning by the primordial trauma constitutive of the subject’s encounters with the medium. In our analysis of embodiment, we make extensive use of psychoanalytic concepts such as: the breach, the lack, the signifier, the construction of the object, the object-a, the transitional object, fetishism and phobia. Each of the four parts of the dissertation approaches the topic from a specific angle, such as the theoretical critique of the basic concepts of the subject and object, the function of the metaphor in the context of intelligent technologies, the role of technological infrastructure in the embodiment of the trauma, the construction of a transitional object such as a pop song in the context of technological dystopianism. We demonstrate that the cognitivist presumption concerning the pivotal role of intellectual motivation behind the subjective attachment to information technologies can be significantly shaken from the point of view of the psychoanalytic understanding of drives and jouissance. On the basis of Alain Badiou’s argument, we show the limitations of structurally-determined forms of embodiment considered by psychoanalysis and draw a dividing line between them and the more rare cases of the subjectivation by events suggested by Badiou’s theory. We discuss Badiou’s concept of the work of truth as an advanced alternative to the psychoanalytic concept of the object and the paradigm of the construction of the (transitional) object. We distinguish the Badiouian concept of the event from the idea of technological/digital disruption, on the one hand, and correlate the latter with the problems discussed in psychoanalysis such as the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father and the crisis of the paternal metaphor along with the problems of the futurity and the disruption of intergenerational communication discussed by Bernard Stiegler on the other. Author Keywords: Badiou, digital media, Lacan, metaphor, transitional object, work of truth

Description

Graduate student theses produced at Trent University. You may also browse theses and dissertations by year, program, or author.

In collections

Search Our Digital Collections

Query

Enabled Filters

  • (-) = Cultural Studies
  • (-) = Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
  • (-) ≠ Bordun, Troy Michael
  • (-) = Philosophy

Filter Results

Date

2004 - 2024
(decades)
Specify date range: Show
Format: 2024/04/23

Author Name

Name (Any)

Degree

Subject (Topic)