Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available by subscription via World Wide Web.

Based upon thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork among indigenous Mapuche people of southern Chile, this thesis explores two relational oppositions which are central concerns of both Mapuche people and the discipline of anthropology. The first opposition explored is that between self and other, focusing on how it is conceived differently from different positions within rural Mapuche life. Through this exploration, I emphasise an understanding of otherness as a relational category, which is more connected to ascertaining and describing what the self is not, rather than to the depiction of an embodied alterity. The second opposition I investigate is that between individual and society. More specifically, I look at the possibilities of constructing social relationships despite the strong emphasis Mapuche people put on persons as unique, unrepeatable, and often incommensurable, singularities. I demonstrate how and why these two oppositions are closely connected for the Mapuche. Such a connection lies in the fact that Mapuche philosophy proposes a radical singularism according to which the conception of everything is rooted in the individual person. As a result, the pluralisation of such conceptions is always, necessarily, a particularly personal extrapolation. The thesis is divided in three sections. In the first I explore the ontological foundations of Mapuche lived worlds, discussing the pillars upon which Mapuche people conceive their experiences and setting the scene for my overall argument. In the second section, through both ethnographical and historical sources, I attempt to explore how perceived differences and similarities are managed in order to create a sense of plurality. In the final section I elaborate an argument centred upon how Mapuche people conceive “the social”. Here, by discussing different ideas of what it means to be Mapuche, I conclude that Mapuche notions of sociality are in the antipodes of Western ones. Put simply, if in the latter sociality is based upon interactions embedded on given shared semantic fields, the Mapuche seem to maintain that shared semantic fields do not exist, and that they should, at best, be consciously created.

This thesis is a discourse-analytical study of SELF and OTHER representations in contemporary Russian discourse on migration. The overall aim of this thesis is to explore how SELF and OTHER discourse participants are represented in pro-governmental discourse, to which extent the ideology of pro-governmental media discourse can be classified as discriminatory towards migrants and how it changes in the period between the years 2006 and 2009. The discussion is based on the results of the discourse analysis of the corpus of texts collected from three various sources. Firstly, the pro-governmental moderate corpus of media articles collected from the website of the Moscow City Council in August – November 2006 is compared to the corpus of texts collected from the website of the radical anti-migrant movement DPNI. The purpose of this comparative study is to establish the extent of commonalities through the analysis of referential-categorizing and evaluative strategies between thee two types of discourse. Moreover, in the instances of represented discourse, it is important to understand how journalists position themselves and the readers with respect to the evaluative force of the statements. The results received from the analysis of these strategies are used to construct discourse space ontology for SELF and OTHER representations. Secondly, the moderate corpus is extended to receive more data for the analysis of conceptual imagery, i.e. metaphors. The analysis of metaphors confirms tendencies typical of migration discourse but also has its special pattern which is attributed to sociocultural specifics explored through the examination of conceptual blends. The evaluative dimension constitutes an important aspect of the discourse analysis of conceptual imagery. Finally, a multimodal corpus of verbal and visual data representing a protest action by the pro-governmental youth movement “Molodaia Gvardiia” at the end of 2008 – beginning of 2009 is searched for specific strategies of SELF and OTHER representation. The analysis shows an extensive use of discursive strategies typical of racist ideology used for the representation of SELF and OTHER discourse participants in pro-governmental media discourse on migration.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationships among Chinese college students’ attitudes toward online games and online game advertising, their perceived influence of online game advertising on themselves and others, and their attitude toward restrictions on online game advertising. The growing popularity of online games and the frequent use of advertising in promoting online gaming activities make it necessary to examine empirically the relationships among these variables. Based on a survey among 518 Chinese college students, the study found support for the mediating role of the third-person effect. It also found evidence for the first-person effect through the mechanism of looking glass perception.

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As humans, we are enslaved by language. The kind of knowledge we hold is both created and limited by language. Gender is a category socially constructed in language that helps to determine our expression. Today, however, we are living in a world where the meaning of the words 'man' and 'woman' in our language are far more blurred than they used to be. Gender and sex are no longer considered binary structures by many and this presents interesting philosophical discussions. In fact one might even say there are 1,000's of tiny sexes (or genders) . So with the topic of gender (and sex) becoming a gray area what would a world completely devoid of gender terms look like? Are we constraining individuals by placing them within such a category as gender or are we taking something significant from them if we were to remove this label? Would we provide empowerment to oppressed genders by removing such labels or simply put them at further risk of domination by the oppressors? In this thesis I would like to argue that the removal of gender terms would create more accurate self-identity by allowing for a broader spectrum of diversity and, as a result, further equity. Due to the strong bond between language and culture, my theory is that by slowly tweaking our language over time, while intermediately allowing for the resulting cultural changes, until gender terms are removed from our everyday lives we could develop a culture that has no ability to discriminate between what we currently consider different genders. / Master of Arts

Through practice-led research this thesis will explore the phenomenology of interactions between the digital 'other', and the lived experience of the subject through real-time video performance practice. It challenges the assumption that the digital video image is merely or simply other to the subject and aims to re-position the 'other' as an integral part of self where we perform the other. It does this by drawing on Jacques Lacan's Mirror Stage and claims that through digital performance we can suspend divisions between the self and the digital other. By being immersed within the real-time video image the thesis argues we re-enter the Mirror Stage and become captivated within the digital counterpart. Through a disruption in the proprioception of the body there is a crossover of the actual self and digital other which are suspended in each other. Through the use of Head Mounted Display Systems in the work In[bodi]lmental it is claimed that the actual body can In[body] the other subject as part of self. The thesis argues that the digital other is a component of self mediated through new digital technologies to be understood as an augmented self. Therefore it is through an In[bodied] Mirror Stage we momentarily access the loss of the Lacanian real encountered through the uncanny experience. This investigation has been conducted in the form of four digital performance projects defined as Inter-Reactive Explorations I-REs (i-iv).The I-REs were subjected to critical analysis and reflection using a variety of disciplines including: psychoanalysis, philosophy, the study of perception, phenomenology, and ethnography. The methodological framework for this research has been coined 'auto-ethnophenomenology'; a mixed-method approach utilizing auto-ethnography and the phenomenological lived experiences of informants. This model has enabled both the 'I' of the researcher and the other to be equally represented from both first person and third person perspectives. The symbiotic relationship between the theory and the practice is exemplified through the phenomenology of interactions between the digital 'other', and the lived experience of the subjects supported by the writings of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Drew Leder and Rane Willerslev.

Through a study of the work of three important writers, this thesis engages with the traumatic memories of the second half of the twentieth century in Czechoslovakia in order to highlight the value of literature in widening critical understandings of the continuing legacy of this complex era, which was dominated by totalitarian regimes under the Communist governments which gained control after the upheaval of the Second World War. Whilst these years were not unilaterally traumatic, many lives were dramatically affected by border closures and by the experience of living under a regime that maintained control through methods including confiscation of property, surveillance, arbitrary imprisonment, show trials, and executions. Many of the stories of this era could not be published openly because of censorship, and the persecution of intellectuals led to a wave of emigration, during which a number of writers moved to France. Using theories of trauma, exile, illness, and of self and other, this thesis opens up a dialogue between the work of three writers who engage, albeit from very different perspectives, with this little-explored intersection between Czech and French. The first chapter explores Daniela Hodrová's translated Prague trilogy as a first-hand witness to her nation's dispossession and as a form of resistance to the deletion of memory. The second chapter considers the painful transgenerational legacy of the era as it plays out in the work of bilingual writer Jean-Gaspard Páleníček. Chapter Three considers the ways in which the Prague novels of established French author Sylvie Germain negotiate the fine line between an appropriation of the stories of the other and a moral responsibility to bear witness. By bringing these authors together for the first time and locating their work within French Studies, my work foregrounds the need for Western criticism to pay attention to other valuable voices who can contribute to our understandings of the traumatic experience that has shaped modern history.

ABSTRACT This thesis examines the representation of trauma and memory in six post-Apartheid plays. The topic is explored through a treatment of the tropes of racial segregation, different forms of dispossession as well as violence. The thesis draws its inspiration from the critical and self-reflexive engagements with which South African playwrights depict the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The dramatists are concerned with the contested nature of the TRC as an experiential and historical archive. Others explore the idea of disputed and seemingly elusive notions of truth (from the embodied to the forensic). Through the unpacking of the TRC, as reflected in three of the plays, the thesis argues that apart from the idea of an absolute or forensic truth, the TRC is also characterised by the repression of truth. Furthermore, there is a consideration of debates around amnesty, justice, and reparations. Underpinning the politics and representations of trauma and memory, the thesis also interrogates the concomitant explorations and implications of identity and citizenship in the dramas. In the experience of violence, subjugation and exile, the characters in the dramas wrestle with the physical and psychological implications of their lived experiences. This creates anxieties around notions of self and community whether at home or in exile and such representations foreground the centrality of memory in identity construction. All these complex personal and social challenges are further exacerbated by the presence of endemic violence against women and children as well as that of rampart crime. The thesis, therefore, explores the negotiation of memory and identity in relation to how trauma could be mitigated or healing could be attained. The thesis substantially blurs the orthodox lines of differentiation between race and class, but emphasises the centrality of the individual or self in recent post-Apartheid engagements.