How to Factor Loss is a collection of poems and translations prefaced by a critical paper over Robert Hass's “Meditation at Lagunitas.” The preface, “A Sensuous Theory, A Sensuous Poem,” explores how Hass merges the discourses of theory and poetry to create a poem that hangs suspended between a confidence and an anxiety about language. The poems in this thesis are primarily responses to finitude. The first section turns toward an “other” as a strategy of placating desire and of reaching both inward and outward. The second section explores the potential failures of art as a means of touching objects. The final section acknowledges that finitude is the condition of humankind, and it turns toward a more tender language, one that embraces limitations and is filled with something like faith. The collection is followed by an appendix which contains translations of several poems by René Guy Cadou and Georg Trakl.

The erotic website SuicideGirls.com can be viewed in the context of striptease culture. The term was coined by the sociologist Brian McNair in 2002 in order to describe the tendency to openly theme the human sexuality within media content. Simultaneously with the metaphorical and literal exposing, the intimacy is being constructed within the discourse as an expression of true self and, as Feona Attwood develops McNair's claims speaking about sexualization of culture, the representation becomes the selfrepresentation. The SuicideGirls present themselves especially on soft-pornographic photographs through a significant alternative stylization, mostly tattoos and piercing. While for example Megan Jean Harlow (2009), a feminist critique representative, considers the style-creating elements of tattoo as an expression of distinctive practices, according to Shoshana Magnet (2007) the soft-pornographic mode of representation reduces the distinctiveness of SuicideGirls to a certain form of standard pornography. The semiotic and psychoanalytical interpretation of SuicideGirls.com focuses on softpornographic symbolic of the distinctiveness perceived by the community. Jacques Lacan's mirror stage concept explains the principles of subject's identification with his or her specular image. It is also important to...

Freud iniciou suas reflexões sobre o trauma partindo da etiologia das neuroses e da sua proposta do aparelho de linguagem. Após considerar a relação do trauma com a fantasia, vinculou-o à repetição e à pulsão de morte, dando ênfase ao inassimilável da experiência e propondo uma saída pela narrativa. Se Freud considerou a sexualidade traumática, Lacan propôs a existência de linguagem do ser falante como traumática. Do trauma ao troumatismo, suas elaborações sobre o tema apontam ao que excede o simbólico e o imaginário, aludindo o real: a tique e o troumatismo, e apontando no limite da fala, a escrita. Esse trabalho é um percurso passo a passo que nos permite levantar algumas questões para o que nomeamos clínica do trauma. Trata-se de uma clínica que deve operar com o inassimilável do instante traumático como primeiro modo de intervenção, o qual exige que possamos pensar suas particularidades / Freud began his reflections on trauma based on the etiology of neuroses and his proposal of the language device. After considering the relationship of trauma with the fantasy, linked it to the repetition and the death instinct, emphasizing the unassimilable aspect experience and proposing a way out by the narrative. If Freud considered traumatic sexuality, Lacan proposed the existence of the language of the talking being as being traumatic. From trauma to troumatismo, his elaborations on the topic point to what exceeds the symbolic and the imaginary, alluding to the real: the tyche and troumatismo, and pointing out at the limit of speech the writing. This work is a step-by-step route that allows us to raise some issues for which we call the trauma clinic. This is a clinic that must operate with the unassimilable aspect of the traumatic instant as a first mode of intervention, which requires us to be able to think about its particularities

For many years, theorists have turned to popular movies and books to help interpret the difficult principles of Jacques Lacan. However, one story that has gotten very little attention is Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and its derivative body of film adaptations. Both the novella and Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 film are a small part of an intertextual body of work which contains scenes that play out the Lacanian principles of the mirror stage and the gaze very well. Since art imitates life, an in depth exploration of the way that these scenes play out can illuminate how Lacan’s abstract theories might look in the real life formation of identity and in male/female relations.

Thesis (Master of Arts)--Miami University, Dept. of Mass Communication, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], iv, 63 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 58-63).

This thesis seeks to discuss the ways in which canonical Francophone Algerian authors, writing in the late-colonial period (1945 - 1962), namely Kateb Yacine, Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Feraoun, Mouloud Mammeri and Assia Djebar, approached the representation of Algerian women through literature. The thesis, divided into five chapters, each focusing on the late-colonial oeuvre of one writer, initially makes use of Bourdieusian conceptions relating to a gendered "dissymétrie fondementale" and concomitant Spivakian notions of representation, to argue that a masculine domination of public fields of representation contributed to, if not ensured, a post-colonial marginalization of women and a reduction of their public role. However, it is the principal argument of this thesis that the canonical writers of the period, who were mostly male, both textually acknowledge their inability to articulate the experiences and subjectivity of the feminine Other, to represent women, and deploy a remarkable variety of formal and conceptual innovations in an attempt to tentatively produce evocations of Algerian femininity that seek to upset or highlight the structural imbalance of masculine symbolic hegemony in literary and socio-political milieux. Though this thesis does not shy from investigating those aspects of its corpus that produce ideologically conditioned masculinist representations, it chiefly seeks to articulate a shared reluctance concerning representativity and an omnipresent literary subversion of a masculine subject pole. It deploys formal narrative analysis, Lacanian psychoanalytical frameworks and a conceptualisation of "pessimistic" form to achieve these ends and to argue that the texts of its corpus discreetly militate for a communal feminine self-representation to be inaugurated, before outlining in its conclusion a post-colonial Algerian feminine literary tradition, in particular contemporary symbolic conduits such as la bande dessinée that might serve as effective motors for progression in gender relations.

Föreliggande uppsats är en analys av Maggie Nelsons Bluets (2009), med fokus på begär. Texten beskriver en kvinna som är förälskad i färgen blått. Den innehåller även minnen från en relation som berättarjaget haft. Syftet med uppsatsen är att visa på textens olika uttryck för begär och tolka dessa för att kunna fördjupa läsningen av texten. Jag kommer att undersöka vilka begär som gestaltas och vilka funktioner dessa har, samt på vilka sätt som begären i Bluets ger möjlighet till en feministisk förståelse av begärsbegreppet. Begärsteman är vida undersökt i litteraturen. Många gånger har psykoanalytiska teorier använts för analys, inte minst Lacan och konceptualiseringen av begär som en brist. I denna uppsats används dels Lacans teori och dels en vidareutveckling av te orin som gjorts av Deleuze och Guattari, där begär inte beskrivs som konstituerat av en brist, utan som ett flöde. Studien visar att på tre huvudsakliga begärsteman i Bluets: begäret efter det förlorade kärleksobjektet, begäret efter det kroppsliga/sexuella och begäret efter färgen blå. Dessa analyseras utifrån aspekterna det betecknande och det betecknade, dikotomin man-kvinna, det blåa begärets funktion samt romanens form. Studien visar på att det är möjligt att göra en lacansk läsning av boken, som en illustration av sorgen orsakad av det förlorade kärleksobjektet och det blåa som en symbol för denna sorg. Men analysen öppnar också upp för en annan förståelse av begär: begäret som en maskin, som ger upphov till ett mer mångfaldigt kvinnligt subjekt, som står i förbindelse med en rad andra personliga och opersonliga maskiner. Ett begär som genererar kreativitet och produktion utanför subjektets fantasier.

Freud iniciou suas reflexões sobre o trauma partindo da etiologia das neuroses e da sua proposta do aparelho de linguagem. Após considerar a relação do trauma com a fantasia, vinculou-o à repetição e à pulsão de morte, dando ênfase ao inassimilável da experiência e propondo uma saída pela narrativa. Se Freud considerou a sexualidade traumática, Lacan propôs a existência de linguagem do ser falante como traumática. Do trauma ao troumatismo, suas elaborações sobre o tema apontam ao que excede o simbólico e o imaginário, aludindo o real: a tique e o troumatismo, e apontando no limite da fala, a escrita. Esse trabalho é um percurso passo a passo que nos permite levantar algumas questões para o que nomeamos clínica do trauma. Trata-se de uma clínica que deve operar com o inassimilável do instante traumático como primeiro modo de intervenção, o qual exige que possamos pensar suas particularidades / Freud began his reflections on trauma based on the etiology of neuroses and his proposal of the language device. After considering the relationship of trauma with the fantasy, linked it to the repetition and the death instinct, emphasizing the unassimilable aspect experience and proposing a way out by the narrative. If Freud considered traumatic sexuality, Lacan proposed the existence of the language of the talking being as being traumatic. From trauma to troumatismo, his elaborations on the topic point to what exceeds the symbolic and the imaginary, alluding to the real: the tyche and troumatismo, and pointing out at the limit of speech the writing. This work is a step-by-step route that allows us to raise some issues for which we call the trauma clinic. This is a clinic that must operate with the unassimilable aspect of the traumatic instant as a first mode of intervention, which requires us to be able to think about its particularities

This thesis is a 'big-picture' look at the course of Western philosophy and its eventual arrival at ideas that look remarkably similar to the revelations of Guatama Buddha 2500 years ago. I look at the roots of how the West has understood itself and understood "being" through the centuries and at the revolutions in thought that took place in the 20th century. I look more closely at 20th century thinkers to demonstrate how their thinking begins to align with the ancient insights of Eastern philosophy, particularly the notions of a prevailing emptiness as "ground" of Being and of the fallacy of the individual subject. I also look at how some 20th century artists have engaged with these new ideas. I see generally two responses to the postmodern (post-subject) position: that of a play of surfaces, such as in the work of Andy Warhol and the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard; and that of an embracing of absence, presented in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and the works of such artists as John Cage, George Brecht, Pauline Oliveros, Bill Wegman, David Hammons and others.

I have come to a point where I feel a need to understand more about my own work methods and my motivations. Departing from a process diary written during my master studies, I take a closer look at my own artistic process — the questions which inform my work, the questions that arise in it, and how my work is an attempt to understand those questions. Wherein lies the urgency for me to work with art in the way that I do?  This is an essay about a search, about trying to make sense of something, about not knowing. It is also an exploration of how my work in the non-verbal domain transforms my not knowing, how working with art is a tool for thinking and understanding.