No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis traces an idea of auditory influence or sonorous individuation through three distinct areas of sound-art practice. These three areas are discussed according to a kind of spatial contraction, passing from the idea of auditory influence in acoustic ecology and field recording practices, to its expression in work happening at the intersection of soundart and architecture, and finally towards headphonic space and the interior of the body. Through these diverse fields and divergent practices a common idea pertaining to the influence of the auditory upon listening subjects is revealed, which itself brings up questions concerning the constitution of a specifically auditory subjectivity in relation to the subject ‘as a whole’. Towards the expression of a theory of sonorous individuation appropriate to practices approaching sonorous matters in the mode of a sonic materialism, the philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze is called upon as a critical framework. This philosophical framework is adopted as it clearly expresses a spatio-temporally contingent theory of individuation. This particular contingency becomes necessary in exploring works wherein the production of acoustic space is understood as being indissociable from a subjective ‘modulation’ or process of sonorous individuation, in which auditory individuals or listening subjects are bound within and influenced by acoustic spaces in which a sound takes place and a self takes shape.

This thesis traces the development of Luce Irigaray's philosophy of sexuate difference along the lines of her call for a 'sensible transcendental'. Specifically, I aim to arrive at a deeper understanding of the concept in the context of her early engagement with psychoanalytic theory and her critique of 'phallocentrism', as well as her struggle to define a specifically 'female' subjectivity which, I suggest, forg>,s a path beyond the Oedipal psychoanalytic model. The 'sensible transcendental' - the central category or 'hinge term' of this thesis - stands for a mode of experience which emphasises the corporeal origins and conditions of existence - particularly in relation to the body of the mother - which have been occluded by 'phallocentric' modes of representation (in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and religion). In her later thought, Irigaray will evoke the sensible transcendental as the condition of ethical relations with sexuate 'others', and it is in this context that the term is most commonly understood. However, I argue that a closer inspection of Irigaray's early writing directs us to the psychoanalytic origins of the term, and its crucial role in defining an autonomous 'female' Subjectivity. The question that concerns me in this thesis is the nature of the relationship between the sensible transcendental as a mode of experience (of 'becoming') which unites corporeal and conceptual logic, and Irigaray's project of defining a female subjectivity which moves beyond the constraints of phallocentric discourse and the Oedipal model at its core. In the first three chapters I adopt an analytical approach to Irigaray's early thought, focusing on the psychoanalytical and philosophical origins of the 'sensible transcendental'. I argue that the term must first be understood in the context of the 'psychoanalytic scene'. Irigaray claims that the 'transference' process remains irresolvable between a female analyst and female analysand because no symbolic processes exist that would mediate and 'contain' it; as such, the relationship dissolves into an imaginary corps-il-corps. The analytic scenario is, moreover, symptomatic of a wider problem: the often 'strained' relationship between mothers and daughters. Irigaray argues that, because of inadequate symbolisation, the maternal figure has become trapped in the realm of Imaginary phantasy, making it difficult for the mother to 'separate' herself fully from her daughter (and vice versa). Thus Irigaray initially evokes a 'sensible transcendental' as a form of mediation or 'dialogic space' that would permit the 'separation' of mother and daughter by creating a 'setting' for sublimation to take place. I then focus my attention on Irigaray's critique of Kant, arguing that the sensible transcendental must be viewed as a reaction to, and a revision of, the Kantian transcendental subject. Following this, I describe how Irigaray's notion of the sexuate subject is shaped by Heidegger's philosophy and, specifically, a 'Heideggerian' re-reading of Kant, especially on the topics of space and time and the 'transcendental'. Chapter 4 is pivotal in that I reject a 'theological' interpretation of Irigaray's writing on the mystical and the divine, arguing instead for a phenomenological approach to Irigaray's conception of the body as divine 'flesh'. In the final two chapters I adopt a more constructive approach to Irigaray's thought, showing in chapters 5 and 6 how the problem of psychical 'matricide' (the 'killing' or repudiation of the mother) is solved by positing a 'relational' model of subjectivity - what I call a 'fleshy' subjectivity - which begins in utero. This model assumes, contra Freudian-Lacanian orthodoxy - that there was never a mother-infant 'dyad' in the first place, and thus the requirement for violent separation from the mother (qua the Oedipal scenario) is diminished. This model of 'relationality' is constitutive of what I call the 'Irigarayan subject' - a heterogeneous, 'fleshy' subject - which defies phallic hierarchy and traverses the bounds of Oedipality.

In this practice-led MPhil I aim, through text and visual artworks, to examine the dynamic, vitalist body of ‘emergent forms’ and becomings in art. From a theoretical standpoint, my examination focuses on Classical Bergsonism and the unique implications it holds for the figure in time. I probe Henri Bergson’s insistence upon the notion that life and reality are in constant flux in order to explore how this central claim could be shed light on the status of the dynamic or shifting figure in art. My investigation examines the space in-between the virtual Bergsonian body, (a formless body of dynamic vital energy which lies just beyond the scope of representation), and the body accessible through representations of the figure, (a formed body defined by static anatomies and defined outlines). Bergson claims that all codified forms and representations fall short of the way creatures live in time. His claims are founded in the notion that the real is inaccessible to the rational mind, thus creating the need for an alternative form of cognition – namely, the intuition. Relating to this, through my artwork I search for signs of the amorphous created by the body which access what could be termed as a 'Bergsonian vision' of the real. Drawing upon Bergson’s concepts of ‘ontological becoming’, ‘duration’, intuition, élan vital, and ‘flux’, my investigation explores how manifestations of the figure existing at the periphery of codified semiotics may be interpreted in a way which embraces and validates intuition as an indispensable mode of consciousness. Interwoven throughout my discussion is an exploration of the aesthetics which Bergson’s philosophy promotes. I examine how the movements of Futurism, Cubism, and Surrealism approached the task of interpreting the dynamic, unbound figure through the lens of ‘unconscious vision’. Alongside this, I examine the role which photography has specifically played in extending perception into the territory of Bergsonian becoming. Finally, uniting Bergson’s concept of the intuition as an ideal mode of philosophical inquiry with insights provided by Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes, I consider the concept of the ‘intuition image’ and how it may provide access into pure possibility. This analysis is facilitated by an examination of my own practice, which draws upon the tradition of non-objective photography and Benjamin’s ‘unconscious optics’, while engaging the subjects of the nebulous figure, movement, time, and transformation.

No description available.

Building on the theoretical/methodological approach to history and historical investigation evident in the work of Michel Foucault, the thesis takes the form of an archaeology/genealogy of human/nonhuman animal association, placing a particular focus on the practice of vivisection. The first chapter examines the theoretical/methodological approach taken by Foucault in his archaeological and genealogical analyses. It outlines the theoretical and methodological tools that Foucault provides, and locates the research within a coherent analytical framework consistent with a Foucauldian analysis. Chapters two, three and four constitute an archaeological investigation of the way in which the human/nonhuman animal relationship has been constructed in the Western world within the conditions of possibility of knowledge in the Renaissance, Classical and Modem ages. The historical a priori conditions of the three epistemic formations are examined and the construction of the association between man and the nonhuman animal and the practice of vivisection is considered within each. Chapter five develops the archaeological investigation of the historical formation of human/nonhuman animal association and the practice of vivisection by using Foucault's genealogy of the Modem penal system as a backdrop to a genealogical analysis of the dispotif of Modem vIvIsection. The historical discourse that locates the human/nonhuman relationship within a progressivist construct of humanist reform and rational scientific development is disturbed and the historicised justification for the use of the nonhuman animal in the practice of vivisection undermined through the decentring of man as the foundational freethinking subject of knowledge. The thesis shows that the contemporary historical discourse surrounding human/nonhuman animal association and the practice of vivisection can be rethought and reconstructed by considering it within an analytical construct liberated from the transcendento-empirical constraints of conventional history. This discourse, which legitimises the practice of nonhuman animal vivisection as a result of its apparent potential to advance medicine's ability to cure disease, is destabilised, and a counter memory constructed that identifies vivisection as a mechanism of surveillance used to discipline the human population. As such, the thesis constitutes an alternative history of human/nonhuman animal association and the practice of vivisection, one that allows them to be spoken of and thought of in a different way. The counter memory produced opens up a space from which political resistance to the contemporary practice of vivisection can emerge, free from the anthropological constraints of the Modern age.

This thesis advances from the conjecture that Jean-Luc Nancy's work demands to be interpreted according to the logic it describes. For Nancy unity is irreducible from exposure, because a distinct entity cannot be abstracted from its boundary conditions. It is my contention, therefore, that Nancy's work must be treated accordingly, as a syntactic unity that can only be understood in its exposure to other syntactic unities. Two interrelated claims are therefore made. First: that the current literature on Nancy’s work fails to identify that an inheritance from Plato and from Greek philosophy more widely is a key to the specificity of Nancy’s thinking, and second that only by retrieving this connection can Nancy’s contribution to contemporary ontological debates be made out. The thesis attempts to take a preliminary step in this direction by positioning Nancy’s work within a contemporary philosophical scene definitively characterised by its exposure to Ancient Greek philosophy. This investigation places a conceptual focus on the Platonic terms μίμησις and μέθεξις, terms which bear a rich history of implications in philosophies of immanence, transcendence, production, and art. I argue that in showing that there is never μίμησις without μέθεξις, and vice versa, Nancy shows that there is never immanence without transcendence, and vice versa. Furthermore, I argue that this mutuality places sensibility at the core of Nancy’s thought, and determines the artwork to be a privileged site at which the reciprocity of immanence and transcendence is presented. In this much, I suggest Nancy’s work offers an alternative to the demand for some mutually exclusive decision between immanence and transcendence.