This dissertation examines how contemporary Irish women writers dismantle national conceptions linking Irish women to the hearth and home by offering an alternate version of women’s lived experience, which nationalist ideologies have simplified. I consider how these writers define “home”—the domestic, the familiar, the intimate—as complicated by sexuality, exile, and violence. Using Freud’s theory of the uncanny as a lens, I analyze how these writers question established social relations in order to uncover uneasy relationships to self, home, and homeland. In my project, postcolonial theory and transnational feminisms, coupled with trauma theory, facilitate the contextualization of the uncanny as a response to the hybrid identities, dislocations, and effects of violence on gender roles within the nation. The first two chapters examine Edna O’Brien’s later fiction, which unsettles conceptions of the nation by emphasizing the experiences of marginal figures, thereby questioning who belongs within the nation’s borders. The next two chapters on the fiction of Jennifer Johnston and Mary Beckett reveal how the crossing of the public into the private sphere exposes a paradoxical homespace that is both haven and prison for rich Anglo-Irish Dubliners and working-class Catholics in Belfast. The final chapter on Kate O’Riordan’s novels explores issues of exile, alienation, and trauma through a multi-generational lens, revealing how memories of “home” and fraught parent-child relationships at once hinder and facilitate identity formation. In the epilogue, I briefly discuss how contemporary Irish poetry could address the issues raised by the works of fiction examined in my project.

This study constitutes an attempt to bring the notion of stupidity into relation with ethics and creativity, through a reading of Samuel Beckett's Endgame. Employing Emmanuel Lévinas' theories on ethics - the responsible responsiveness in regard to the Other and the concept of the Face - the objective is to demonstrate how stupidity, conceived as lack of control and knowledge, functions as a precondition for the ethical relation between humans, as well as that of the individual to her creativity.

Ce mémoire porte sur la figure de l'intelligence artificielle, en ce qu'elle permet d'incarner les craintes et les angoisses mises au jour par la critique sociale véhiculée dans les fictions dystopiques. Il analyse les manifestations d'êtres-machines et de structures de contrôle social créés par l'humanité, et dont la conduite témoigne d'une forme d'intelligence; il montre ainsi en quoi certaines structures sociales se calquent sur les machines pensantes imaginées. S'appuyant sur une approche pluridisciplinaire qui fait notamment appel aux domaines de la cybernétique, de la biologie et de la science politique, cette étude de la dystopie se concentre plus particulièrement sur le corpus littéraire suivant: Nineteen Eighty-Four, de George Orwell, Le Dépeupleur, de Samuel Beckett, et Neuromancer, de William Gibson. Prenant ses racines dans l'utopie, la dystopie a été façonnée au XIXe siècle à partir des craintes et des désillusions liées à une industrialisation qui modifiait radicalement le mode de vie humain. Dans ce type de fictions, les rapports de force entre l'humanité et ses outils -ses créations -basculent, car la technique y permet la transmission d'un ascendant sur l'être humain. Cette emprise se voit exacerbée par la machine pensante, dont l'accession à la vie autorise un niveau d'indépendance et d'initiative inaccessible à ses prédécesseurs. Ce faisant, l'intelligence artificielle permet d'imager le déplacement de point focal qui s'opère quand l'outil devient une fin en soi, de même qu'elle illustre les potentialités asservissantes d'une utilisation inconsidérée de la technique. À l'image de l'être artificiel, les structures machiniques de la dystopie acquièrent suffisamment d'autonomie pour pouvoir, elles aussi, attenter à la souveraineté de l'individu. L'humain, noyé au sein de ces structures qui le submergent, n'est alors plus qu'une composante insignifiante dont la spécificité se fait systématiquement gommer par la machine sociale. En définitive, qu'il s'agisse d'un être ou d'un système, la figure de l'intelligence artificielle apparaît comme un sujet agissant, qui incarne la propension de la dystopie à réduire l'individu à l'état de pion. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Dystopie, Intelligence artificielle, Cybernétique, George Orwell, Samuel Beckett, William Gibson.

There are many parallels and points of similarity between the themes of the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett and the themes explored by Friedrich Nietzsche. This essay examines the play in light of some of Nietzsche’s key concepts, such as the Will to Power, the Übermensch or Overman, the Eternal Recurrence, as well as the aesthetic conception of existence. The essay argues that while Waiting for Godot shares many of the premises and conclusions of Nietzsche’s philosophy, the play can also be interpreted as a critique of the same. The play presents a post-religious world marked by pessimism and resignation rather than affirmation and Nietzschean amor fati. The characters are as far removed from the heroic Overman ideal as can be imagined, unable to harness the Will to Power, which is absent or distorted or even unknowable. Communication is fraught with difficulty and uncertainty. The dynamic of the Eternal Recurrence is present but rather than being affirmed it is a source of crushing boredom, tediousness and existential angst. The characters are unable to embrace the Eternal Recurrence and are in a continual state of mental flight from its implications. They suffer from a vague recollection of the past while projecting their hopes into the future in order to diminish the unbearable suffering of the existing present, or state of perpetual becoming. Beckett can thus be said to be offering a satirical critique of the concept of salvation, both in its traditional religious sense as well as in the sense implied by Nietzsche’s concept of the Eternal Recurrence. However, Beckett does offer a sense of hope by suggesting, paradoxically, that the abandonment of hope of salvation may lead to a sort of salvation of resignation.

<p>This dissertation examines the pair subject-subjectivity embedded in the problematic of the end of art, as it is figured in exemplary fashion by film and literature. The analysis examines critically the problem of the subject vis-à-vis subjectivity by opening a dialogue that allows the necessary double terms of this discussion to emerge in the first place from the encounter with selected filmic and literary texts: Jacques Rivette's La belle noiseuse and Samuel Beckett's Film, The Unnamable and The Lost Ones. These texts are analyzed on an equal footing with the thought of Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Gianni Vattimo, Giorgio Agamben, and Gilles Deleuze who have written on both subjectivity and art. The study thus proposes a real movement - in terms and through art - that treats the metaphor of anamorphosis on the level of praxis: the image of subjectivity appears on the screen that is the filmic or literary text as the result of a passage in terms. The subject that emerges at the end of the analysis puts in perspective a certain practice of metonymic reading as renewed political potential of subjectivity.</p> / Dissertation

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Littérature générale et comparée : Paris 8 : 2007. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. p. 283-300. Index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 400-412). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

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Jag har i denna studie av Samuel Becketts (1906-1989) två dramer I väntan på Godot (En Attendant Godot) (1952) och Slutspel (Fin de Partie) (1957) studerat dialogen och monologen i de båda dramerna och diskuterat kring vilka slutsatser man därav kan dra om språk och berättande. Fokus har legat på hur dialogen tar sig ut, vilka faktorer den är under stor påverkan av och dess relation till monologens fundamentala roll i Becketts dramer. Analysen har jag delat upp i två delar vilka för sig behandlar var sitt drama i kronologisk ordning. Först I Väntan på Godot och därefter Slutspel. De båda delarna är sedan i sin tur uppdelade i två delar varav den första diskuterar dialogen och den andra monologen. Första delen av analysen av I väntan på Godot har kallats ”Missförstånd och minne” och där har jag reflekterat kring, som titeln avslöjar, missförståndets roll – hur det tar sig ut och varför – samt dialogens påverkan av karaktärernas bristande minne. I delen som följer har jag fokuserat på berättandet i dramat med utgångspunkt i bland annat Pozzos spel och Luckys förbryllande tal. I första delen av analysen av Slutspel, ”Spelet”, har jag studerat dialogen i relation till det spel vilket karaktärerna i dramat utsätter varandra för. Vidare tar jag upp vanan under samma rubrik och hur den påverkat dialogen. I sista delen, ”Hamms berättande”, har jag undersökt Hamms berättelse, vilket även kommer nämnas under rubriken innan, och monologens roll även i detta drama. För att kunna förankra analysen i de båda dramernas handling, vilka i sig stått fokus för en mängd forskning, har jag valt att använda mig av verk vilka presenterar generella och översiktliga tolkningar av Becketts författarskap, t.ex. Charles R. Lyons Samuel Beckett (1983), Richard N. Coes Beckett (1968) samt portalverket till den absurda teatern, Martin Esslins The Theatre of the Absurd (1961). Jag kommer också bland annat använda mig av två samlingar vetenskapliga essäer om Beckett, Samuel Beckett now (1970) och Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays (1964) samt en mer språkinriktad studie om Beckett, Six dramatists in search of a language (1975) av Andrew K. Kennedy. Som stöd till analysen kommer även andra skönlitterära verk av Samuel Beckett användas som kan belysa den tematik om språk och berättande vilket kommer diskuteras i denna analys. Analysen kommer vara en närläsning och allt skönlitterärt material kommer vara i svensk översättning.

The goal of the present study is to examine the way in which Samuel Beckett, an artist whose work contributes also to philosophy, presents his metaphysical vision of the world through drama, where different plays represent different philosophical interpretations of the world. Using Paul Ricœur’s Memory, History, Forgetting as a theoretical platform, this thesis will concentrate on the manner in which Krapp’s Last Tape presents identity as a phenomenological construction based on cumulative past experiences inserted into and spread throughout time. Based on this assumption, to tamper with one’s conceptions of a memory-time continuum is to alter the identity which is a result of this dynamic. The Beckettian vision of the world does not see identity – the ever-elusive self, as many authors would say – simply as a unique and separate phenomenon that, by staying constant through time, serves as the basis for one’s phenomenological experience ; rather, in Krapp’s Last Tape the self is the sum of mnemonic experiences lived through time, which in turn impacts the identity of the individual. This philosophical perception of identity is further complicated by other phenomenological questions which must come into play if we are to study the way in which this identity is perceived not only by the reader-spectator, but also by the subject himself. For example, how does the ideal image that Krapp constructs of himself impact his identity ? Does he modify memory so as to conform to the idealistic vision he has created of himself, and does this image, perceived as the desired Other, foment in him a feeling of alterity when faced with himself as he is, as opposed to the fulfillment of the desired Other by which he measures his success ? / Thesis (Master, French) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-26 09:07:19.995