Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores the themes of representation and identity in four post-9/11 novels: Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. The novels of Hosseini and Hamid represent the experience of two Muslim protagonists from Afghanistan and Pakistan who immigrate to the US. The protagonists offer two contrasting understandings of fundamentalism, using this lens to understand the terrorist figure and American society respectively. The construction of power for both the American society and the terrorist is argued to be located in images which are linked to masculinity: money, sport, militancy, sex and religious devotion. The personal experiences of these protagonists reflect the political circumstances which they encounter, and both characters identify with national identities in ways which relate to their readings of representations of identity and news media. Beigbeder and DeLillo’s novels are discussed using the theme of trauma. The novels portray the experiences of American characters who are confronted with 9/11 and suffer from disorientation and loss. The negotiation of this loss takes place in relation to entanglements with the terrorist figure, who penetrates the physical and psychological spaces of these characters. Images of masculinity are evoked in order to signify this loss of power, where the destabilising of the paternal role is linked to the pervasive sense of vulnerability which the characters experience after the attacks. Memorials and rituals become ways of dealing with disorientation. The two novels unsettle the distinction between terrorist and terrorised in order to negotiate a new American identity after 9/11. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek temas van representasie en identiteit in vier post-9/11 romans, naamlik Khaled Hosseini se The Kite Runner, Mohsin Hamid se The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Frédéric Beigbeder se Windows on the World en Don DeLillo se Falling Man. Hosseini en Hamid se romans verbeeld die ervarings van twee Muslim-protagoniste, onderskeidelik afkomstig van Afghanistan en Pakistan wat na die VSA immigreer. Hierdie protagoniste verbeeld twee uiteenlopende beskouïngs van fundamentalisme wat gevolglik aangewend word om die terroris-figuur en die Amerikaanse gemeenskap te verstaan. Die konstruksie van mag vir die Amerikaanse gemeenskap en die terroris-figuur word getoon, is geleë in beelde wat verband hou met manlikheid, naamlik geld, sport, militarisme, seks en toegewydheid. Die persoonlike ervarings van hierdie protagoniste weerspieël die politieke omstandighede waarmee hulle kennis maak. Beide hierdie karakters vereenselwig hulself met nasionale identiteite op grond van hul begrip van representasie van identiteit en die media. Beigbeder en DeLillo se romans word volgens die tema van trauma vergelyk. Hierdie romans beeld die ervarings van Amerikaanse karakters wat met 9/11 gekonfronteer word en met disoriëntasie en verlies worstel, uit. Die oorweging van hierdie verlies vind plaas in verhouding tot ontmoetings met die terroris-figuur wat die fisiese en psigiese ruimtes van hierdie karakters binnedring. Voorstellings van manlikheid word opgeroep om die verlies van mag ten toon te stel. Hierdie verlies van mag word gekenmerk deur die destabilisering van die vaderlike rol tesame met die diepgaande sin van weerloosheid wat die karakters na die aanval ervaar. Gedenktekens en rituele word vervolgens instellings om met die disoriëntasie om te gaan. Uiteindelik problematiseer die twee romans die onderskeid tussen terroris en geterroriseerde om sodoende ’n nuwe Amerikaanse identiteit ná 9/11 tot stand te bring.

In this thesis, I argue that twenty-first century American war films are constructed in dialogue with the past, repurposing earlier forms of war representation by evoking the visual and narrative memory of the past that is embedded in genre form—what Mikhail Bakhtin calls 'genre memory.' Comparing post-9/11 war films with Vietnam War films, my project examines how contemporary war films envision war's impact on culture and social space, explore how war refashions ideas about race and national identity, and re-imagine war's rewriting of the human psyche. My research expands on earlier research and departs from traditional approaches to the war film genre by locating the American Civil War at the origin of this genre memory, and, in doing so, argues that nineteenth century documentation of the Civil War serves as a rehearsal for the twentieth and twenty-first century war film. Constructed in explicit relation to the Vietnam film, I argue that post-9/11 war films rehearse the history of war representation in American culture while also emphasizing the radically different culture of the present day. Rather than representing a departure from past forms of war representation, as has been argued by many theorists, I show that contemporary American war films can be seen as the latest chapter in a long history of reimagining American military and cultural history in pictorial and narrative form.

This dissertation argues that Paul’s apostolic mission to the Gentiles was the definitive expression of his divine vocation as an Israelite, and thus of his Jewish identity. For many of Paul’s Jewish contemporaries, Israel’s divine vocation was to keep and to teach the precepts of the Law of Moses as an exemplary witness to God’s power and wisdom. For Paul, however, Jewish identity was expressed primarily by preaching the gospel of Christ, as the fulfilment of the Law of Moses, to the Gentiles. This is seen most clearly in Paul’s letter to the Romans. In chapter 1, we summarize our methodology: we are seeking to examine Paul’s Jewish identity by reading Paul’s letters (especially Romans), in light of other second-temple Jewish texts, using certain insights from social identity theory. We show that the concept of vocation is an important dimension of Jewish identity, especially in Paul’s letters. We also discuss some prior approaches to the question of Paul’s Jewishness, demonstrating both their value and also their limitations for our purposes. In chapter 2, we survey three key aspects of Paul’s explicit language of Jewish identity in his letters: Jewish distinctiveness, divine revelation and divine vocation. In chapter 3, we demonstrate that Paul deliberately frames his letter to the Romans (Rom 1:1–15, 15:14–33) by presenting his apostolic ministry as the fulfilment of positive scripturally-based eschatological expectations concerning Israel’s divine vocation with respect to the nations. We also compare Paul’s self-presentation in the outer frame of Romans with other first-century expressions of Jewish vocation. In chapter 4, we concentrate on Rom 2:17–29. Contrary to most interpretations which read this passage as a discussion about the nature of (Jewish or Christian) salvation, we argue that Paul deliberately sets this passage in the context of the mainstream Jewish synagogue, in order to contest the nature of Jewish vocation. In chapter 5, we examine Rom 9–11 from the perspective of Jewish vocation. We demonstrate that in Rom 9–11, Paul presents his own apostolic vocation, in various ways, as a contrast to, a fulfilment of, and a means of hope for Israel’s place and role in God’s worldwide purposes.

Évènement exceptionnel, les attentats du 11 septembre ont marqué l'entrée de la politique mondiale dans l'ère de la crise du jihadisme international. Si l'apparition de la menace jihadiste est antérieure à 2001, l'attaque qaidiste perpétrée à l'encontre des États-Unis a en effet représenté un saut qualitatif d'envergure, en ce qu'elle a été synonyme d'agression commise par des acteurs privés aucœur de l'hyperpuissance d'après-Guerre froide, et en ce qu'elle a constitué le point de départ d'un essor considérable du péril jihadiste. De la destruction du World Trade Center aux attentats du 13 novembre, en passant par le rapt des lycéennes de Chibok ou l'érection de l'État islamique, le jihadisme en est ainsi arrivé à représenter un défi protéiforme et véritablement global. Ciblesprivilégiées des forces jihadistes, les démocraties libérales occidentales ont dès lors répondu à ce challenge en s'engageant dans une « guerre contre le terrorisme » aux facettes multiples (interventions armées, mesures antiterroristes, etc.). Si plusieurs intellectuels d'extrême gauche, inscrits dans une perspective de critique du libéralisme politique, ont considéré, en s'inspirant de la réflexion de Carl Schmitt, que les États occidentaux contemporains sont plongés dans un étatd'exception permanent, dont la lutte contre le jihadisme a constitué soit le déclencheur, soit le révélateur, nous estimons pour notre part, que cette thèse ne permet tout simplement pas de se faire une idée exacte des retombées juridico-politiques de l'anti-jihadisme post-11 septembre. D'où la nécessité de la discuter en procédant à l'étude approfondie des éléments contextuels et principiels auxquels elle renvoie. / Outstanding event, September 11 attacks marked the entrance of the world politics to the era of the threat of the international jihadism. If the appearance of this threat is previous in 2001, the qaidiste attack committed against the United States indeed represented a large-scale qualitative jump, in the fact that it was synonymic of aggression committed by private actors at the heart of the cold postwar hyperpower, and in the fact that it constitued the starting point of a considerable development of the jihadist danger. From the spectacular destruction of the World Trade Center to the attacks of November 13th, via the kidnapping of the high school students of Chibok or the erection of the Islamic State, the jihadism came to represent a really global challenge, in the forms as diverse asvaried. Privileged targets of the Jihadist strengths, the western liberal democracies have then answered this challenge by making a commitment in a multifaceted ''war against the terrorism'' (military interventions, antiterrorist measures, etc.). If several extreme left-wing intellectuals, registered in a perspective of critic of the political liberalism, considered, by being inspired by Carl Schmitt's reflection, that the contemporary western States are plunged into a permanent state of exception, which the fight against the jihadism constitued either the trigger, or the revelation, we consider for our part, that this thesis does not simply allow to be made an exact idea of the legal and political effects of the post-September 11's anti-jihadism. Where from the necessity of discussing it by proceeding to the in-depth study of the context and the principles to which refers.

Le propos de cette thèse est centré sur la fictionnalisation des violences terroristes qui ont ébranlé l’Algérie et les États-Unis au tournant des XXe et XXIe siècles. Deux perspectives polarisent le traitement de ces violences dans les littératures dites « de l’urgence » et « du 11 septembre » : d’un côté, la radicalisation et le passage à l’acte des personnages terroristes ; de l’autre, la terreur et la reconstruction des témoins. Appréhendées suivant le prisme du tremblement, ces perspectives qui sont traitées tout au long de la thèse mettent en jeu des questions d’ordre esthétique, poétique et éthique. Ces trois questions organisent la progression de notre étude. En engageant une réflexion relative à l’incidence du thème sur la forme, elles montrent que les romans examinés ne se contentent pas de décrire le terrorisme ; ils en dégagent les invariants : coupures, dé-liaison, instabilité sémantique, enchevêtrements complexes, sont autant de traits saillants dont les romans du corpus se saisissent, autant d’aspects par lesquels ils illustrent et cristallisent les années noires et le 11 septembre. Si ces invariants mettent en évidence la ténuité du thème et du traitement littéraire, ils ménagent par ailleurs la percée de l’équivoque du sens, du non-totalisable, du non-rapport. Cela, que Jacques Lacan formalise sous l’angle de l’impossible, du réel, ouvre la voie à un décryptage tout à fait singulier de la transgression des terroristes, du faire face des témoins, et des questions portées par le roman contemporain. / The subject of this dissertation is the fictionalization of the terrorist violence that shook Algeria and the United States at the turn of the XXth and the XXIst centuries. Two predominant viewpoints polarize the treatment of this violence in what has been dubbed by French literary critics as « littérature de l’urgence » (« emergency literature ») and « 9/11 literature »: on the one hand, the reader is exposed to the radicalization process of the terrorist characters and to their acting-out, and on the other, to the terror experienced by the witness characters and their reconstruction. These two perspectives, examined throughout the thesis, are apprehended via the prism of the tremor (understood as indecision, doubt and shaking) and involve issues of an aesthetic, poetic and ethical nature. These three issues provide coherence to the general outline and determine the organization of our study. They question the effect of theme on form, thereby demonstrating that the novels studied do not only describe terrorism ; they also bring out the underlying invariables: interruptions, disconnections, semantic instability and complex entanglements are some of the salient features whereby the novels of our corpus describe and crystallize the Algerias’ dark decade and the events of 9/11. While these invariants highlight the subtlety of the theme and its literary treatment, they also point out the equivocal meaning and give the lion’s share to the « non-totalizable » and the « non-rapport ». These aspects, which Jacques Lacan theorized from the angle of the « impossible », the Real, pave the way for a singular decoding of the terrorists’ transgression, of the witnesses’ coping, and of the issues raised by the contemporary novel.

This study sought to determine if and how television texts produced since September 11, 2001, reflect and address cultural concerns by analyzing patterns in their theme and narrative style. Three American television serials were examined as case studies. Each text addressed a common cluster of contemporary issues such as trauma, death, and loss.

This dissertation intervenes in debates in Media Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Canadian Immigration Studies, and Critical Race Studies to explore how shifting news media and political representations of Muslim families reflect the complexities of what it means to be Canadian beyond holding citizenship. In the post-9/11 era, the Muslim family has re-emerged in Canadian English-language news media and Canadian political debates as a site of inherent violence. Drawing on orientalist narratives of the Muslim family, news media and political conversations tend to frame these homes as being headed by patriarchal fathers and oppressed mothers, and children seeking to break from families and traditions, yet always holding the potential to become violent themselves. Even though Canada identifies as a multicultural nation, Muslim families are often presented in media as undeserving of the rights of Canadian citizenship, and even deserving of state violence. While news media play a key role in reproducing orientalist framings of Muslim families, news media can also take the government to task when it comes to the violation of immigrant and racialized Canadians’ rights as citizens. Some news media coverage counter orientalist narratives by producing “positive” representations of Muslim families, however, these “positive” representations frequently frame Muslims who are worthy of the rights of citizenship as adhering to heteronormative family dynamics, productive citizenship, and normative Western gender roles and kinship formations. These “positive” portrayals produce varying representations of Muslim families, but such framings can also labour in the way of reifying Canada’s multicultural ideals and Canada’s idea of itself as “civilized.” Drawing on the news media coverage of the family of Maher Arar, the Khadrs, and the Shafias, I argue that such representations still produce the norms of the settler-colonial Canadian nation, where some racialized bodies, in this case Muslim families, can be granted the rights of Canadian citizenship if they are able to proximate normative Canadian kinship formations. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In the wake of 9/11, many Canadian English-language news media have framed Muslim men as violent and Muslim women as oppressed. This dissertation analyzes the shifting Canadian news media portrayals of the Muslim family. Muslim homes in Canada are often portrayed as spaces for the perpetuation of violence that threatens the Canadian nation. Simultaneously, news media also portray some Muslim homes as spaces of purportedly “good” Canadian citizens, if these Muslim families are able to conform to Canadian “values.” I examine how Canadian news media mobilize heteronormativity, middle-class status, productive citizenship, among others, to portray some Muslims as ascribing to Canadian values, and therefore worthy of the rights of citizenship. Drawing on the news media coverage of the cases of Maher Arar and Monia Mazigh, Ahmed and Omar Khadr and Maha Elsamnah, and Mohammed Shafia, Rona Mohammed, and Tooba Yahya, I analyze how Muslims who are viewed as not assimilating to Western ideals of family are deemed as undeserving of the rights of citizenship, and, in addition, may even deserve violence.

Several theorists, including the Marxist theorists Trevor Ross, Walter Benjamin, and M.H. Abrams, have proposed theories to explain the eighteenth-century shift from functional to aesthetic conceptions of literature. Their explanations attribute the change to an increasingly consumer-based society (and the resulting commoditization of books), the development of the press, the rise of the middle class, and increased access to books. When we apply the cause-effect relationships which these theorists propose to the contexts of nineteenth-century America, Communist East Germany, WWII America, and 9/11 America, however, the causes don't correlate with the effects they theoretically predict. This disjunction suggests a re-examination of these three theories and possibly the Marxist basis which they share. I suggest that by triangulating rhetorical theory with Marxist theory we will gain a more comprehensive understanding of society's valuation of literature.

This study examined impact of national culture on human resource management (HRM) functioning in present-day Pakistan. / No digital full text provided

Bakgrund: Aktiemarknaden reagerar på information och omvärldsförändringar. Prissättningen på aktiemarknaden sker utifrån investerares tro på aktierna och vid oro hos investerare reagerar aktiemarknaden ofta negativt. Investerarnas oro kan skapas av information från kriser, där krisen i sig kan speglas på aktiemarknaden men även investerarnas uppfattning om krisen kan bidra till negativa stängningkurser. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att beskriva och analysera relationen mellan globala kriser och aktiemarknaden i Sverige. Metod: För att mäta aktiemarknadens reaktion på kriser används marknadsindex OMX30, OMXSPI tillsammans med nio branschindex. Utifrån dessa har aktiemarknadens volatilitet under kriserna analyserats med hjälp av eventfönster. För att mäta investerares påverkan på aktiemarknaden och hur anpassningsbar den är har effektiva marknadshypotesen tillsammans med teorin beteendeekonomi använts. Studien har formulerat två hypoteser i syfte att analysera om statistiskt signifikant skillnad mellan aktiemarknadens stängningskurser föreligger innan och efter kriserna. Studien analyserade kriserna terrorattacken 11:e september, Finanskrisen 2008, Covid-19-pandemin och Rysslands invasion av Ukraina. Slutsatser: Studiens resultat visade aktiemarknadens volatilitet varit högre utifrån aktieindex efter samtliga kriser. Utifrån branschindex har aktiemarknadens volatilitet varit varierande efter kriserna. Alla kriser studien undersöker har synliggjorts som nedgång på aktieindex och majoriteten av branschindex. Det finns en statistiskt signifikant skillnad mellan aktiemarknadens stängningskurser innan och efter krisen för 36 av 39 marknadsindex. Studien kunde även visa att marknaden återhämtat sig olika snabbt efter kriserna och påverkats av information kring kriserna. / Background: The stock market reacts to information and changes in the environment. Pricing on the stock market takes place based on investors' faith in the shares, and when investors are worried, the stock market often reacts negatively. Investors' concerns can be created by information from crises, where the crisis itself can be reflected on the stock market, but also investors' perception of the crisis can contribute to negative closing prices. Purpose: The purpose of the studies is to describe and analyze the relationship between global crises and the stock market in Sweden. Method: To measure the stock market's reaction to crises, the market index OMX30 and OMXSPI is used together with nine industry indices. Based on these, the volatility of the stock market during the crises has been analyzed using event windows. To measure investors' influence on the stock market and how adaptable it is, the efficient market hypothesis together with the theory of behavioral finance has been used. The study has formulated two hypotheses with the aim of analyzing whether there is a statistically significant difference between the closing prices of the stock market before and after the crises. The study analyzed the crises 9/11 terrorist attack, The financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Conclusions: The results of the study showed that the volatility of the stock market was higher based on the stock index after all the crises. Based on the industry index, the volatility of the stock market has been variable after the crises. All the crises the study examines have been made visible as declines in stock indices and the majority of industry indices. There is a statistically significant difference between stock market closing prices before and after the crisis for 36 out of 39 market indices. The study was also able to show that the market recovered differently quickly after the crises and was influenced by information about the crises.