In reading the literary criticism on Janet Frame's work it soon turns out that Frame was deconstructive before the concept was even invented. Thus, deconstruction is used in this essay to close-read a passage in the title story of her collection of short stories, The Lagoon (1951). The main hierarchical dichotomy of the passage is found to be the one between "the sea" and "the lagoon," in which the sea is proven to hold supremacy. "The sea" is read as an image of the great sea of English literary/cultural reference whereas "the lagoon" is read as an image of the vulnerably interdependent, peripheral pool of it, in the form of New Zealand literary/cultural reference. Through this symbolic and post-colonial reading the hierarchical dichotomy between "the sea" and "the lagoon" is deconstrued and reversed. In the conclusion, a post-colonial trace of Maori influence displaces the oppositional relation between "the sea" and "the lagoon."

Within the field of Disability Studies, research on cognitive and developmental disabilities is relatively rare in comparison to other types of disabilities. Using Clifford Geertz's anthropological approach, "thick description," autism can be better understood by placing both fiction and non-fiction accounts of the disorder into a larger theoretical context. Applying concepts from existing works in Disability Studies to the major writings of Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, and Donna Haraway also proves to be mutually enlightening. This ethnographic approach within the context of analysis of literary texts provides a model by which representations of individuals who are cognitively or developmentally disabled can be included in the academy.

This dissertation examines American attitudes towards death from the colonial era to the end of the nineteenth century. I begin with a close analysis of the thanatology of the Congregational church in New England, before demonstrating the lasting influence of Puritan thought on three later writers: Jonathan Edwards, Henry David Thoreau and Stephen Crane. In contrast to purely cultural studies of mortality in America (including those by Phillipe Ariès, David Stannard and Michael Steiner), my investigation discusses the philosophical difficulties that obstruct any attempt to speak about death. Building on Jacques Derrida’s work in Aporias (1993), I identify three logical impasses that interrupt Puritan writing on mortality: the indeterminacy, singularity and finality of death. While Edwards, Thoreau and Crane write in different circumstances and diverse genres, I argue that they are sensitive to these same three aporias when they discuss death. In this regard, they resist a broader post-Puritan tendency (in both scientific and sentimental texts) to minimize the uncertainties surrounding human mortality and approach death as a universal (rather than radically singular) phenomenon. While my study situates each of its authors in the cultural and intellectual contexts in which they worked, it also challenges the notion that it is possible to write a history of death. Speaking strictly, mankind’s relationship to death can never change. It is always, in fact, a non-relation. The very idea of death destabilizes our most fundamental historical and literary assumptions. Accordingly, my second chapter uses a deconstruction of Edwards’ theory of revivalism to argue that the New-England awakenings of the eighteenth century expressed the converts’ desire to renounce responsibility for their souls, rather than accept it. In my third chapter, I argue that those writings in which Thoreau registers what might seem to be a nihilistic fascination with dead and decaying bodies in fact express a sentimental desire for a peaceful death. Chapter four reads Stephen Crane’s poetry, fiction and journalism in the context of his Calvinist heritage, breaking down the distinction between his textual play with the concept of death and the Puritans’ “serious” attempts to come to terms with mortality.

This dissertation examines American attitudes towards death from the colonial era to the end of the nineteenth century. I begin with a close analysis of the thanatology of the Congregational church in New England, before demonstrating the lasting influence of Puritan thought on three later writers: Jonathan Edwards, Henry David Thoreau and Stephen Crane. In contrast to purely cultural studies of mortality in America (including those by Phillipe Ariès, David Stannard and Michael Steiner), my investigation discusses the philosophical difficulties that obstruct any attempt to speak about death. Building on Jacques Derrida’s work in Aporias (1993), I identify three logical impasses that interrupt Puritan writing on mortality: the indeterminacy, singularity and finality of death. While Edwards, Thoreau and Crane write in different circumstances and diverse genres, I argue that they are sensitive to these same three aporias when they discuss death. In this regard, they resist a broader post-Puritan tendency (in both scientific and sentimental texts) to minimize the uncertainties surrounding human mortality and approach death as a universal (rather than radically singular) phenomenon. While my study situates each of its authors in the cultural and intellectual contexts in which they worked, it also challenges the notion that it is possible to write a history of death. Speaking strictly, mankind’s relationship to death can never change. It is always, in fact, a non-relation. The very idea of death destabilizes our most fundamental historical and literary assumptions. Accordingly, my second chapter uses a deconstruction of Edwards’ theory of revivalism to argue that the New-England awakenings of the eighteenth century expressed the converts’ desire to renounce responsibility for their souls, rather than accept it. In my third chapter, I argue that those writings in which Thoreau registers what might seem to be a nihilistic fascination with dead and decaying bodies in fact express a sentimental desire for a peaceful death. Chapter four reads Stephen Crane’s poetry, fiction and journalism in the context of his Calvinist heritage, breaking down the distinction between his textual play with the concept of death and the Puritans’ “serious” attempts to come to terms with mortality.

This essay traces two trends in current philosophical and theological debates concerning forgiveness. One, advocated by Vladimir Jankélévitch and Jacques Derrida, I label “impossible” forgiveness. The second, advanced by John Milbank and L. Gregory Jones, I label “communal” forgiveness. I explore and critically examine each of these positions in the first two sections of the thesis. In the last section of the thesis I examine a recent conversation amongst religious ethicists against the background of the theoretical conversations described in the first half of the essay. Bringing the theoretical conversation together with the religious ethicists’ conversation, I argue that whether or not we embrace forgiveness depends in large part in what tradition, religious or secular, we place ourselves.

The philosophical problem of the tension between liberty and order has dominated the agenda of western philosophy and science since the beginning of the history of thought, and it is a leading issue nowadays, too. The problem of the act of decision is particularly one of the significant themes of contemporary political thought. Instead of the classical poles of both voluntarism and determinism prioritising either the subject or the structure, what should be employed is a much deeper analysis of the relation between undecidability and the act of decision. In this respect, the discussion between Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj &amp / #381 / i&amp / #382 / ek is considerably illuminating. But there are also theoretical shortcomings shared by these thinkers. That is, despite the informativeness of this debate, there is an overwhelming necessity to critically assess this dialogue with a particular emphasis on the conceptual issues. In this regard, an overall scrutiny and critical assessment of this debate constitute the main body of this thesis.

Critical theory has historically situated the beginning of the “modern” era of subjectivity near the end of the seventeenth century. Michel Foucault himself once said in an interview that modernity began with the writings of the late seventeenth-century philosopher Benedict Spinoza. But an examination of early modern English utopian literature demonstrates that a modern notion of subjectivity can be found in texts that pre-date Spinoza. In this dissertation, I examine four utopian texts—Thomas More’s Utopia, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Margaret Cavendish’s Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World, and Henry Neville’s Isle of Pines—through the paradigm of Jacques Lacan’s tripartite model of subjectivity—the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. To mediate between Lacan’s psychoanalytic model and the historical aspects of these texts, such as their relationship with print culture and their engagement with political developments in seventeenth-century England, I employ the theories of the Marxist-Lacanian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, to show that “early modern” subjectivity is in in fact no different from critical theory’s “modern” subject, despite pre-dating the supposed inception of such subjectivity. In addition, I engage with other prominent theorists, including Fredric Jameson, Jacques Derrida, and Donna Haraway, to come to an understanding about the ways in which critical theory can be useful to understand not only early modern literature, but also the contemporary, “real” world and the subjectivity we all seek to attain.

This essay explores Swarm Consciousness in relation to the novels Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Remembering Babylon by David Malouf, and the manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. Through these novels, Swarm Consciousness can be reimagined in order to challenge the ways insects have previously been considered in literature. Swarm Consciousness is originally a concept from biology that explains the self-organizing systems of social insects such as for example bees or ants. Previously it was believed that these insect societies consisted of a great majority of mindless drones that were governed by a central authority, most commonly envisioned as a queen. However, if we base our vision of Swarm Consciousness on the more recent understanding of insect self-organization it is possible to challenge this rigidly divided traditional perspective into one that instead has the potential to give rise to visions of new and more creative interactions between humans and insects. These interactions are not limited to an in-group, out-group mentality, but Swarm Consciousness can be used to imagine interactions between groups, irrespective of their species identity. Due to this shift towards a more decentralized perspective, it is possible to create a new way of imagining the umwelt, as Jakob von Uexküll would define it, the unique environment, of vastly different creatures. The limits of the umwelt can be breached with the aid of Swarm Consciousness and create new possible forms of interspecies imagination. However, these intimate interactions surpass the individuals involved and create opportunities for glimpsing a wider planetary perspective which gives rise to an increased sense of planetary responsibility. Thus, Swarm Consciousness challenges both how we can think, but also who we can think with and, as a consequence, opens up new ways of perceiving unique and individual worlds, as well as the entire planet.

Si le rapport entre Derrida et Bergson n’a pas fait l’objet de nombreuses études, les commentaires existants témoignent à peu près tous d’une vision commune : entre les deux philosophes, les divergences peuvent être atténuées, voire dissoutes, par la considération de convergences plus fondamentales. Les pages qui suivent seront l’occasion pour nous de faire contrepoids à cette vulgate interprétative. Sans nier l’existence de points de contact entre Derrida et Bergson, nous voudrions en effet montrer qu’un important désaccord subsiste entre eux au sujet de la possibilité de l’intuition. Alors que Derrida met en cause les doctrines intuitionnistes, Bergson érige l’intuition en méthode philosophique. Le présent mémoire prendra pour fil conducteur les motifs de cette discorde. Réduit à sa plus simple expression, l’objectif que nous y poursuivrons sera de montrer que les pensées bergsonienne et derridienne, lorsque mises en dialogue, révèlent un désaccord partiel qui permet de réfléchir de façon féconde sur la possibilité de l’intuition. Pour être plus exact, nous caresserons ici une triple ambition : i/ cerner étroitement l’objet du litige entre Derrida et Bergson, trop peu souligné par les commentateurs, et dont nous montrons qu’il s’articule à une entente partielle ; ii/ tirer au clair les diverses raisons qui amènent l’un à s’en prendre à l’intuition, l’autre à embrasser la méthode intuitive ; iii/ établir que certains arguments de Bergson, bien qu’ils connaissent un regain d’intérêt depuis quelques années, paraissent lacunaires lorsqu’on les confronte à différentes objections. / Although studies of the relation between Derrida and Bergson are few and far between, they nearly all share a common vision: that of attenuating – or even altogether eliminating – the divisions between the two philosophers’ thought, by considering their more fundamental convergences. The following pages will allow us to counterbalance this common interpretation. Without denying the points that Derrida and Bergson do have in common, we will show an important divergence in opinion between the two on the idea that intuition is possible and founded. While Derrida lays doubt on intuitionist doctrine, Bergson establishes intuition as a philosophical method. This thesis examines the motives behind this divergence. Put simply, a comparison of Derridian and Bergsonian thought reveals a partial disagreement that enables fruitful reflection about whether or not intuition is possible. More precisely, we pursue three objectives here: i/ to clearly identify the scope of the disagreement between Derrida and Bergson, often overlooked by previous commentaries, showing that it includes a partial agreement; ii/ to clarify the diverse reasons leading Derrida to deny the very existence of intuition while Bergson embraces intuition as a philosophical method; and iii/ to show that certain Bergsonian arguments, although enjoying a resurge in interest in recent years, appear unable to stand up to several different objections.

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