Rosa Bonheur, artiste animalière du 19e siècle se révèle, par ses représentations humaines/ équines, être pionnière dans l’avènement d’une éthique animale. Bien qu’ayant joui d’une popularité enviable de son vivant, les études posthumes faites à son sujet sont majoritairement biographiques et principalement intéressées à examiner son célèbre Marché aux chevaux (1853-1855), sous la loupe de sa sexualité. Cette approche limitée, en plus de ne pas rendre justice à la position artistique adoptée par Bonheur, asservit les sujets équins de ses œuvres. Ce mémoire propose un angle alternatif de lecture de ses tableaux, qui se veut plus en adéquation avec son éthique animale. Inspiré par les recherches récentes des animal studies, particulièrement celles influencées par la déconstruction, il sera démontré que les représentations des relations inter-espèces de Bonheur soulèvent d’importants questionnements éthiques. Dans ce contexte, Rocky Bear and Chief Red Shirt (1889), une œuvre indûment négligée par les études en histoire de l’art, s’avère essentielle, lorsque considérée aux côtés du Marché aux chevaux, comme moyen de saisir l’éthique équine de l’artiste. Par l’analyse de ses oeuvres, ce mémoire invite à une réévaluation de l’art de Bonheur comme étant l’expression de son engagement pour l’avènement d’une manière plus éthique d’être avec le cheval. De plus, il cherche à contribuer, de façon significative, à la compréhension des rôles que les pratiques de représentation, en général et spécifiquement dans l’art, peuvent jouer dans la transformation de nos perceptions de l’animal non-humain. / Through her depictions of the human/horse relationship, the animal painter Rosa Bonheur has shown herself to be a pioneer in the advent of animal ethics. In life she enjoyed an enviable popularity and posthumously her work has continued to attract attention with most studies focussing on her biography, reading her famous The Horse Fair (1853-1855) through the prism of her sexuality. Such approaches are too limited and fail to do justice to Bonheur’s artistic philosophy, overwriting the importance of the horse, a key subject in many of her works. This dissertation takes an alternative approach, one more in keeping with the artist’s animal ethics. Inspired by recent research in animal studies, particularly research informed by deconstruction, the thesis demonstrates how Bonheur’s representation of interspecies relations raises key ethical questions. In this context, Rocky Bear and Chief Red Shirt (1889), a painting which has been unduly neglected in existing art historical scholarship, forms a vital work, one which is considered alongside the celebrated The Horse Fair as a means to understand Bonheur’s equine ethics. Through an analysis of these paintings in particular, the thesis invites a reassessment of Bonheur’s art as an expression of her commitment to the ethical treatment of horses and also seeks to make a significant contribution to understanding the role practices of representation more generally, including art, can play in the transformation of our perception of non-human animals.

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Magister Artium - MA (English) / After the 1976 student uprising, South Africa entered a period of increased violent state repression. The struggle against apartheid also became increasingly globalised, as can be seen in the UN resolution and the rise of various international anti-apartheid organisations. My thesis looks at the various ways in which art was used as a response to the crisis of late apartheid in the 1980s, focusing on a landmark international exhibition, the Art Contre Apartheid exhibition which opened in Paris on 1983. It examines the context and history of the Art Contre Apartheid collection, and follows its path to its current location at the Mayibuye Archive at the University of the Western Cape, where it mostly languishes in packing crates. My research locates its analysis of the works in broader debates around art and politics during the struggle years in South Africa, but also to highlights the continuities and contrasts between international responses to apartheid, and local struggle art produced in the period surrounding the launch of the exhibition. Some of most compelling works of art in the collection depict the human form, and register acts of torture. The analysis focuses specifically on depictions of a fragmentation and dismemberment of the human body. Drawing on Elaine Scarry's argument about the limitations of language as an adequate response to trauma, my research develops an analysis of these works that demonstrates how the body becomes a privileged site in which violent political contestations are made visible. The thesis also deals extensively with the 'absence of form', which highlights the various instances in the ACA collection where abstract art was used as a signifier of pain, and thus the unspeakable effects of apartheid.

In Toni Morrison’s Jazz and Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter, extreme opposition is prevalent as the authors describe the makeup of each character, as well as the setting and plot in these novels. What are they accomplishing by portraying such opposition? By using Jacque Derrida’s deconstructive theory and Julia Kristeva’s definition of abjection as theoretical guides to navigate these novels, examples of how both authors use extreme opposition in each element of their works are cited and explored. Through this process, the realization that opposing extremes can harmoniously lie side by side and have as many similarities as differences is discovered. By the conclusion, the unifying quality that love plays in both novels, as well as the authors’ intents to change their readers traditional concept of love, is evident.

The dissertation re-examines the philosophy of Georges Bataille within the context of post-Kantian aesthetics and argues for a re-evaluation of Bataille’s notion of expenditure [depenser] within this context. The dissertation argues further that the artistic practice of Robert Smithson is an exemplary case of an ‘aesthetics of expenditure.’ It is our contention that Bataille’s cosmic-energetic philosophy finds a complementary material expression in Smithson’s abstract geology and its confrontation with post-Kantian aesthetics. We will argue that this occurs through Smithson’s varying strategies, which are grouped conceptually according to the broader logic of their expression:seriality, sedimentality, monumentality, and meandering. While Smithson’s own references to Bataille in the early 1970s are discussed in detail, it is not our position that Smithson was enacting Bataille’s philosophy ‘aesthetically’; rather, by reading Bataille’s evaluation of Kant’s aesthetics and teleology in relation to Smithson’s artistic practice, we emphasize instead that the politics of disgust shared by both figures advance a radical decentring and repositioning of the human in relation to planetary and geological forces. If, as geologists now agree, our present age is that of the Anthropocene1, our argument is that Bataille and Smithson anticipate this precarious condition analytically, and, perhaps more importantly, that their analysis suggests further important diagnostic considerations at the level of social organization and political composition that might help defer, if not entirely prevent, the catastrophic end of this all-too-human period.

《序曲》一直以來被視認為華茲華斯的自傳詩，描述華茲華斯如何憑藉自身心靈與自然的互動，發展獨立整合的自我。然而，《序曲》文本結構上的多重性與不完整性，卻與華茲華斯所提倡的自我形象相抵觸。本篇論文將依據德希達的翻譯理論，由三方面探討華茲華斯如何透過書寫《序曲》形塑自身詩人形象的身份認同。首先，寫作《序曲》是華茲華斯的譯者天職 (the task of the translator)。唯有完成書寫《序曲》此一必要卻又不可能的任務 (a necessary and impossible task)，華茲華斯才可確立自己作為詩人的身份認同。再者，華茲華斯的詩人身份仰賴華茲華斯之名的翻譯 (the translation of Wordsworth's proper name)。華茲華斯之名的可譯與不可譯 (the translatability and untranslatability of Wordsworth’s proper name)促使華茲華斯不斷地進行翻譯與改寫，因而造成了《序曲》文本結構上的多重性與不完整性。最後，《序曲》將以華茲華斯的「佚傳」(otobiography) 而非自傳的方式進行重新詮釋，說明華茲華斯企圖透過書寫《序曲》所建立的自我身份認同，必須藉由「他者的耳朵」(the ear of the other)來確立。 / The Prelude has long been regarded as William Wordsworth's autobiographical poem in which he celebrates an autonomous and consistent self nourished from the interaction between his mind and Nature. However, the textual plurality and a sense of incompleteness of The Prelude contradicts the unique and unitary self-identity proposed by Wordsworth in this poem. On the basis of Derrida's theory of translation, this thesis intends to investigate the establishment of Wordsworth's identity as a poet in The Prelude in three aspects. First, the writing and completion of The Prelude is Wordsworth's task of the translator, the necessary and impossible task in search of an identity as a poet. Second, the constitution of Wordsworth's identity as a poet depends on the translation of Wordsworth's proper name which calls for and against translation at the same time. The translatability and untranslatability of Wordsworth's proper name leads to the textual plurality and incompleteness of The Prelude as the result of Wordsworth's endless translation of his name. Last but not least, The Prelude is not so much Wordsworth's autobiographical poem as Wordsworth's otobiography which calls for the ear of the other to constitute his self-identity by hearing and signing with him. This thesis endeavors to prove that Wordsworth, in the position of an indebted translator committed to an insolvent debt and non-dischargeable duty by a translation contract with Nature and Coleridge, is obliged to translate his proper name in search of the sur-vival of his name as a poet and his poetry by writing The Prelude as his otobiography which is always open to and demands the ear of the other to recognize and affirm Wordsworth's name as a great poet.

Central to animal studies is the question of words and how they are used in relation to wordless beings such as non-human animals. This issue is addressed by the writer D.H. Lawrence, and the focus of this thesis is the linguistic vulnerability of humans and non-humans in his novel Women in Love, a subject that will be explored with the help of the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s text The Animal That Therefore I Am. The argument is that Women in Love illustrates the human subjection to and constitution in language, which both enables human thinking and restricts the human ability to think without words. This linguistic vulnerability causes a similar vulnerability in non-human animals in two ways. First, humans tend to imagine others, including non-verbal animals, through words, a medium they exist outside of and therefore cannot be defined through. Second, humans are often unperceptive of non-linguistic means of expression and they therefore do not discern what non-human animals may be trying to communicate to them, which often enables humans to justify abuse against non-humans. In addition, the novel shows how this shared but unequal vulnerability can sometimes be dissolved through the likewise shared but equal physical vulnerability of all animals if a human is able to imagine the experiences of a non-human animal through their shared embodiment rather than through human language. Hence the essay shows the importance of recognizing the limitations of language and of being aware of how the symbolizing effect of words influences the human treatment of its others.

Pour exprimer ou définir une idée nouvelle, Derrida détourne souvent le sens d’un mot en se l’appropriant. La relation de Derrida avec les idées est telle que leur transmission passe par un vocabulaire spécifique, notamment l’analyse de l’étymologie (vraie et fausse). Mais quelle est sa conception du mot ? Quelles en sont les implications et les conséquences ? Pour répondre à ces questions, l’approche la plus féconde consiste à suivre au plus près celle que Derrida utilise en abordant la langue par rapport à la grammaire au sens large (c’est-à-dire tout ce qui fait événement dans la langue). En effet, la relation entre le mot et l’idée prend tout son sens dans l’analyse de certaines scènes bibliques, telles celles de la Genèse ou encore du mythe de Babel. Le fameux énoncé inaugural de l’Évangile de Jean, « Au commencement était la parole... », fait retour dans l’œuvre de Derrida, où il connaît plusieurs variations : il mérite examen, dans la perspective d’une déconstruction du logos et des origines de la langue. Le corpus de notre étude porte principalement sur trois textes de Jacques Derrida : « Des tours de Babel » (L’art des confins, PUF, 1979), Schibboleth – Pour Paul Celan (Galilée, 1986) et Donner la mort (Galilée, 1999), ces textes permettant tous une interrogation de l’« intention » divine dans le langage. Notre visée, en privilégiant dans l’œuvre derridienne ces « exemples » bibliques, est d’étudier la démarche de Derrida dans la « création » d’une langue, aspect qui a toujours été inséparable de l’élaboration de sa philosophie et auquel il a accordé la plus grande attention. À terme, ce travail se veut une contribution à la pensée du philosophe, portant sur un aspect capital de son travail et battant en brèche l’idée que son écriture est « absconse » ou « hermétique », alors qu’il y va pour lui de la mise en œuvre de sa manière même de concevoir la langue. / In order to express or define a new idea, Derrida often alters the meaning of a word in order to make it his own. Derrida’s relationship with ideas mostly expresses itself through a specific vocabulary which finds its roots in an etymological analysis (whether true or false). How does Derrida conceive the word? What are its implications and consequences? In order to answer these questions, one ought to follow closely Derrida’s approach of language through grammar in its broader sense (meaning anything which produces an event in language). It is by the examination of biblical episodes such as Genesis or Babel’s myth that the relationship between a word and the idea it represents is better conceived. The inaugural sentence in the gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word…”, is often present in Derrida’s work, where its numerous occurrences undergo various transformations: this requires a closer inspection, especially in retrospect of logos’s deconstruction and the origin of language. This analysis will be based upon, amongst other texts, Shibboleth: for Paul Celan, The Gift of Death and “Des Tours de Babel” since they allow the possibility of a “divine intention” within language. Our objective, through a preferential study of those biblical “examples” in Derrida’s work, is to study his creation process pertaining to language. This aspect has always been intertwined with the elaboration of his philosophy and he has given it the utmost attention. In the end, this analysis presents itself as a contribution to the philosopher’s thinking, addressing a paramount aspect of his work while disproving the idea that his writing is “unreachable”, whereas it is, in fact, a question of how Derrida conceives language.

This thesis examines the fragile perimeter that separates an illusory reality from the supposedly more authentic Real it conceals, which forms a key focus of Slavoj Žižek’s work, and in this thesis I offer a study of the relations between this aspect of Žižek’s work and film theory. In particular, this thesis is an elaboration on and interrogation of Žižek’s employment of the Lacanian notion of the Real in critiques of the inadequacy of 1970s and 1980s film theory and its widespread adoption of a Lacanian model of film-spectator relations. By way of illustration, I consider the microgenre of films released between the years 1998 to 2000 that includes the Matrix trilogy, David Fincher’s Fight Club, Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, and Alex Proyas’ Dark City, which are all similarly fascinated by the border between a fake reality and an ostensibly more genuine real. However, I also argue that this cycle of films does more than illustrate a fascination with that which is in excess of signification: this cycle of films equally participates in the reappraisal of this important phase of film theory. This thesis proceeds from a consideration of Žižek’s assertion that Lacanian psychoanalysis is missing from the dominant field of film theory. To assess this claim, I re-examine the era of political modernism. From this it becomes clear that what Žižek is noting is not the total absence of Lacanian psychoanalysis, but, rather, an absence of the version of Lacan to which he is drawn. This thesis considers aspects of the Real that contaminate the form and matter of these films, in addition to the thematic exploration of the shadowy world beyond reality. In pursuing this investigation, this thesis utilises the insights of the deconstructive work of Jacques Derrida, to consider the terms ‘form’, ‘content’ and ‘matter’. These words are ubiquitous in film studies, and I aim to explicate not their final meaning, but the way in which the Real interrupts the very stability of vocabulary used in film studies. I interrogate the concepts of gaze and voice as privileged instances of the way in which the Real can rupture the symbolic in narrative film. Without seeking to reject these aesthetic figures, through critical readings of key theories of embodiment, the grotesque and the abject (such as those of Marks, Shaviro, Sobchack, Bakhtin and Kristeva), I suggest how the body and its representation provides a more sustained motif where the Real leaves its trace in these films. This thesis proposes that it is above all through such representations that these films offer a response to the themes with which politically modernist film theory has been historically concerned. The Edge of the Construct films achieve this in their evocation of an intolerable namelessness at the centre of the human subject and the social world it inhabits. / Thesis(Ph.D.) -- School of Humanities, 2008

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.