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In this thesis, I argue that identity construction is a postal effect: it results from a transmission of some sort, received or sent. I examine three instances of postal effect. In a chapter on Jacques Derrida's "Envois," a collection of fragments presented as if transcribed from a one-way love letter correspondence, I explore the performative force of relayed address. Working from Derrida's account of the literary performative, I point out that the "Envois" letters are addressed to "you" in the singular, which implies an address reserved for a particular subject, but that the postal relay of the collection enacts a repetition of their address. For the reader of the book, this repetition has evocative force which I compare with the force of transference in the context of the psychoanalytic situation. In a second chapter on the "Envois" letters, I examine their haunting effect. The "Envois" letters have an I/we signature that intimates pluralities in the writing subject. I argue that this signature is the effect of a postal relay of another order: a phantom, which Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok define as a gap in the psychic topography of the subject caused by a secret unwittingly received along with a legacy. To a certain extent, the "Envois" letters are written by Plato's "in-voices." In a chapter on J. M. Coetzee's epistolary novel Age of Iron, I explore the gift effects of a posthumous letter. Age of Iron is an epistolary novel consisting exclusively of a single letter written by a dying South African woman, Mrs. Curren, to her daughter, a political objector who has emigrated to the United States. Writing her letter in the knowledge that her death is imminent, Mrs. Curren anticipates her daughter's mourning. Working with J. L. Austin's doctrine of illocutionary forces and Derrida's analysis of the gift event, I postulate two effects of Mrs. Curren's letter, one that annuls the gift in a circular return and another that surpasses this circuit with textual diss

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The dissertation focuses on 1. M. Coetzee's novels The Life and Times of Michael K., Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life and Disgrace, analysing the central protagonists' engagement with the landscape in general and specifically focussing on the farm as a site on which identities are interrogated. By way of introduction the two central themes, landscape and identity are highlighted with respect to Coetzee's theoretical work, specifically White Writing and Doubling the Point. Introductory discussion on the 'farm novel' and 'autobiography' is also given in the first chapter. In the second chapter, Boyhood is examined as an influential text in the rereading of Coetzee's allegorical work Michael K. The intention is to elucidate the power relations which underlie the earlier novel by means of a comparative analysis of the mother-child, father-child culture-child and author-text relationships found in Boyhood. Consideration of Coetzee's critical analysis of Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm is given towards establishing links between Coetzee's fiction and the farm novel genre. The third chapter focuses on Disgrace as 'another take' on the farm novel. The position of the white male 'self' in post-apartheid South Africa is interrogated through an analysis of the protagonist David Lurie's fictional' return to the farm.' 'Subject'/ 'other' relations are also discussed with a view to understanding identity formation. In the final chapter, conclusions are drawn regarding the relationship between Coetzee's fiction and the farm novel genre. Finally, the failure of lineal consciousness and the' self becoming redundant are considered. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg , 2002.

The rule-following problem can be condensed into the paradox that a rule cannot determine any course of action because every course of action can be made to accord with that rule. In his Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke sees this paradox as potentially leading to a radical semantic scepticism that renders meaning itself meaningless, and attributes a sceptical solution of the problem to Wittgenstein. After a critical examination of Kripke's work, I conclude that this solution fails on account of allowing neither for a normativity beyond the subjection of the individual to correction by others in her community, nor for a non-interpretive conception of the understanding. Finally, I propose an alternative solution that incorporates the notion of communal background understanding into that of a form of life and thus preserves the normativity of rule-following and of language.

Le present essai propose en premier lieu une analyse de la theorie linguistique de Walter Benjamin telle qu'enoncee dans son essai de 1916, Uber Sprache uberhaupt und uber die Sprache des Menschen. Dans un meme temps, il propose aussi une analyse de la theorie linguistique de la Kabbale telle qu'elaboree par Gershom Scholem tout au long de sa vie, dans un nombre non negligeable de publications, theorie dont il chercha a faire la synthese dans son essai de 1970, Der Name Gottes und die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala. / Cet essai se propose ensuite de demontrer comment Scholem et Benjamin ont trouve dans l'oeuvre de Franz Kafka l'expression litteraire de leurs theories linguistiques. / En conclusion, cet essai se propose de demontrer comment Scholem et Benjamin, a partir de leurs theories linguistiques respectives, et malgre la proximite indeniable de celles-ci, en sont venus a interpreter Kafka d'une facon diametralement opposee. Scholem, en effet, voyait dans cette oeuvre l'expression d'une des theories les plus nihilistes de la Kabbale: Die Unvollziehbarkeit der Offenbarung, une negation de la Revelation divine; Benjamin voyait pour sa part chez Kafka l'expression d'une tres mince possibilite de redemption.

The objective of this dissertation is to demonstrate the existence of a prophetic discourse in the work of the French writer J. M. G. (Jean-Marie-Gustave) Le Clezio. Within the period of his first books (1963--1973), from Le proces-verbal (The interrogation) to Les Geants (The Giants), Le Clezio systematically adopts a prophetic discourse conveying his personal view of the world. / We intend to show that these works form a complete cycle within the broader scope of Le Clezio's writings. At the forefront of these earlier works we find a questioning on the nature of language and the process of writing, the latter being at times disputed and scorned, at others celebrated and inflated. We shall see the profound ambivalence that Le Clezio has towards language, the language being perceived both as a degradation of man's being as well as the sole mean to express the "adventure of being alive". / The first chapter recaps succinctly the evolution of the prophetic terminology up to the modern times, in which it is no longer the pure domain of godly matters. In the following chapters, each of which pertains to a specific work according to their sequence, we aim to show that (1) the prophetic discourse in Le Clezio's earlier works operate as a set of literary devices---narrative strategies, addresses, invocations, sacred themes---and that (2) this discourse takes the shape of a trajectory. As for content, we win demonstrate that (3) Le Clezio's prophetic discourse is the expression of a phenomenological approach positing the individual's consciousness in face of the absolute. / It is this threefold dynamic that we will analyze in the first works of Le Clezio and that we have gathered under the notion of prophetic discourse.

This dissertation details the study of the influences of historical discourses of early childhood on the recalled experiences of children, parents and teachers in a Queensland kindergarten between 1940 and 1965. The study investigates the interweaving of discourses of childhood and recounted experiences of kindergarten, drawing on the view that "different discursive practices produce different childhoods, each and all of which are 'real' within their own regime of truth" (James & Prout, 1997, p.26). The study builds a case for using an interpretive/constructionist historical approach to reframe the recounted narratives of those present in an historical kindergarten landscape, particularly the narratives of those who were children in that landscape. To date, historical studies of early childhood education in Australia have largely focused on "big picture" issues of policy, practice and training, rather than on investigating and documenting the lived experiences of children and adults in particular early childhood contexts and historical eras. In contrast, this study takes a micro-history approach, focusing on one early childhood setting in a way that Mills & Mills (2000, p.165) argue enables the "complexity and richness of the big picture to be understood". Reiger (1993) suggests that growing interest in the social construction of childhood has increased awareness of "the agency of children as contributors to interpretations ... of their development" (p.4).While participants in my study look back on childhoods lived in a past era, their interpretations and feelings about events and practices that they observed and experienced as children at kindergarten provide a valuable perspective on the discourses which framed their childhoods. Findings from this study have the potential to broaden understandings of the impact on children of pedagogical approaches to early childhood education, and deepen awareness of the meaning of childhood at particular points in time.

Bibliography: leaves 452-495. / 495 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / This thesis examines the representation of utopia in the works of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. Through the reference to the utopian tradition, it provides a global reading of a diverse range of writings, both fictional and non-fictional, which have hitherto proved difficult to classify as a coherent corpus. While drawing upon the imagery of the quest that has been highlighted by mythocritical, psychocritical and sociopoetical approaches, this study extends their conclusions by linking the diverse images of the quest in Le Clezio's writings to this personal quest for utopia. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Centre for European Studies, 1999