In this thesis a new concept called ‘Lexism’ (the Othering and discrimination of dyslexics) is proposed, outlined and defended. The dyslexia debate is currently in a state of deadlock. The origin of this stalemate is not an empirical problem but a conceptual one. The conceptual problems with dyslexia, and the existence of dyslexics, are both recognised, but the contradictions between them remain unresolved. For this reason a philosophical approach (influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle) has been adopted. First, the conceptual foundations are set out to enable the recognition of Lexism as a concept, and to reject the concept of dyslexia whilst recognising the existence of dyslexics. Second, Lexism as a concept, is evaluated, compared and contrasted with what some might consider to be the strongest existing account of dyslexics’ social experiences, that of Riddick’s (2001) social model of dyslexia. Third, the key aspects and features of Lexism as a new concept are set out. The original contribution to knowledge is that Lexism enables us to see that dyslexics are defined by Lexism not dyslexia. Lexism, it is argued, in a certain sense, is comparable to, though not the same as, racism, sexism and homophobia. This enables us break the current deadlock and move away from sterile debates over dyslexia’s existence, to how dyslexics are Othered by a literate society. Lexism raises new and significant implications for the dyslexia debate, but also government policy, educational practice, assessments and reasonable adjustments for dyslexics.

This thesis investigates how ways of being in different ontologies emerge from material and embodied practice. This general concern is explored through the particular case study of Scotland in the period of the witch trials (the 16th and 17th centuries C.E.). The field of early modern Scottish witchcraft studies has been active and dynamic over the past 15 years but its prioritisation of what people said over what they did leaves a clear gap for a situated and relational approach focusing upon materiality. Such an approach requires a move away from the Cartesian dichotomies of modern ontology to recognise past beliefs as real to those who experienced them, coconstitutive of embodiment and of the material worlds people inhabited. In theory, method and practice, this demands a different way of exploring past worlds to avoid flattening strange data. To this end, the study incorporates narratives and ‘disruptions’ – unique engagements with Contemporary Art which facilitate understanding by enabling the temporary suspension of disbelief. The methodology is iterative, tacking between material and written sources in order to better understand the heterogeneous assemblages of early modern (counter-) witchcraft. Previously separate areas of discourse are (re-)constituted into alternative ontic categories of newly-parallel materials. New interpretations of things, places, bodies and personhoods emerge, raising questions about early modern experiences of the world. Three thematic chapters explore different sets of collaborative agencies as they entwine into new things, co-fabricating a very different world. Moving between witch trial accounts, healing wells, infant burial grounds, animals, discipline artefacts and charms, the boundaries of all prove highly permeable. People, cloth and place bleed into one another through contact; trees and water emerge as powerful agents of magical-place-making; and people and animals meet to become single, hybrid-persons spread over two bodies. Life and death consistently emerge as protracted processes with the capacity to overlap and occur simultaneously in problematic ways. The research presented in this thesis establishes a new way of looking at the nature of Being as experienced by early modern Scots. This provides a foundation for further studies, which can draw in other materials not explored here such as communion wares and metal charms. Comparison with other early modern Western societies may also prove fruitful. Furthermore, the methodology may be suitable for application to other interdisciplinary projects incorporating historical and material evidence.

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde, 2008. / Submitted by Natália Cristina Ramos dos Santos (nataliaguilera3@hotmail.com) on 2009-09-22T11:35:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_EnilzaMariaMPaiva.pdf: 559038 bytes, checksum: ce66bdf3edc8470301dd35bc31628e1a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luanna Maia(luanna@bce.unb.br) on 2010-01-04T15:20:13Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_EnilzaMariaMPaiva.pdf: 559038 bytes, checksum: ce66bdf3edc8470301dd35bc31628e1a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2010-01-04T15:20:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_EnilzaMariaMPaiva.pdf: 559038 bytes, checksum: ce66bdf3edc8470301dd35bc31628e1a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / O vírus da hepatite B (VHB) é considerado o agente de maior risco ocupacional para o cirurgião-dentista (CD). A vacinação contra este vírus é fortemente recomendada para este profissional que tem contato freqüente com sangue e saliva dos pacientes. Os objetivos deste estudo foram: determinar a soroprevalência da infecção pelo VHB em CD de Goiânia-GO; verificar a imunidade vacinal deste grupo de profissionais e investigar a possível presença de DNA do VHB nos soros anti-HBcAg positivos. Uma amostra randomizada de 678 CD participou deste estudo. Os participantes responderam a um questionário com questões sobre vacinação e fatores de risco para infecção pelo VHB, bem como amostras sanguíneas foram coletadas para detecção dos marcadores sorológicos HBsAg, anti-HBsAg e anti-HBcAg total. O estudo foi aprovado pelo Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa Humana e Animal do Hospital das Clínicas da Universidade Federal de Goiás. O marcador de infecção viral anti-HBcAg total foi observado em 41 (6,0%) dos CD, sendo que nenhum deles apresentou HBsAg positivo. Associações significantes com a positividade ao VHB foram observadas com relação ao gênero masculino, ao aumento no tempo de trabalho e ao uso incompleto de equipamentos de proteção individual. Nas amostras anti-HBcAg positivas, o DNA viral foi detectado na semi-nested PCR em duas amostras (4,9%). Foi observado que 98,4% (667/678) dos CD relataram vacina contra o VHB sendo que 77 (11,4%) não completaram o esquema de três doses. Dentre os 667 CD vacinados, foi observado que 87,0% eram anti-HBs positivos, com 88,3% para aqueles com esquema vacinal completo. O anti-HBs quantitativo foi feito para 313 soros (49,8%) dentre 629 CD vacinados anti-HBcAg negativos. Destes, concentração < 10 UI/L foi encontrado em todos os soros que tiveram resultado indeterminado (n=7) e negativo (70) no ensaio qualitativo. No entanto 48 (20,3%) soros anti-HBs positivos tiveram resultado < 10 UI/L no ensaio quantitativo. Estes resultados sugerem que a soroprevalência da infecção para o VHB em CD desta região está abaixo da taxa assumida para a população em geral, para outros grupos de profissionais de saúde na mesma região e para CD de outras regiões do Brasil que, associados à alta prevalência de vacinados e de imunidade vacinal, apontam para um impacto positivo do programa de imunização com a evidente alta adesão dos CD também às outras medidas de precauções padrão. ______________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT / HBV is considered the major occupational risk agent for dentists. The hepatitis B vaccination is hardly recommended to these professionals who have frequent contact with blood and saliva from patients. To determine the HBV infection rate as well as the vaccine immunity for dentists from Goiânia-GO, a randomized sample of 678 professionals participated in this study. The participants filled out a questionnaire about HBV infection risk factors and vaccination, and blood samples were collected to detect the serological markers HBsAg, anti-HBs and anti –HBc. All dentists gave their written consent to the procedure and this study was approved by the Ethical Committee in Human and Animal Research from the Clinical Hospital of the Federal University of Goias (n. 110/2003). HBV infection marker was found in 41 (6.0%) dentists. None of them was HBsAg positive. HBV positivity were related to the male gender (OR=2.08; CI=1.09-3.97), the length of time working as a dentist (p<0.001) and the use of incomplete personal protective equipment (PPE) [p<0.05]. Among the anti-HBcAg positive samples (n=41), viral DNA was detected by PCR in PS1-PS2 segment in the second amplification in two samples (4.9%). Among the participants the vaccinated prevalence was high, 98.4% (667/678), although 77 dentists said they did not do the complete three doses series of the vaccine or they were not sure if they did it. Among 667 vaccinated dentists, 580 (87.0%) had anti-HBs positive result. The index goes to 88.3% if the vaccination schedule was completed. The quantitative anti-HBs assay was done to 313 blood samples (49.8%) from 629 vaccinated dentists anti-HBcAg negatives, and the concentration result <10 UI/L was found in all of serum that had negative and equivocal result in qualitative assay. However, 48 (20.3%) anti-HBs positive samples had as a result <10 UI/L in quantitative assay. The HBV prevalence in this group of dentists was lower than the endemic pattern of the general population, as well as the other health care workers in this region and of the dentists from other Brazilian regions that, associated with the high prevalence of vaccinated dentists and vaccine immunity, can represent a positive impact of the vaccination program with also the evident high adherence to the others standard precautions among the dentists.

Actin is a highly conserved protein in eukaryotes which forms dynamic cytoskeletal structures. Rapid remodeling of actin filaments is important for the regulation of a broad range of critical cellular processes. The cytoskeleton is acutely responsive to stresses and there are multiple interactions between actin and signaling pathways, positioning it centrally to a cells ability to adapt and respond to their environment. Here I provide further evidence that a dynamic actin cytoskeleton regulates processes including endocytosis, mitochondrial respiration, and signal transduction. Results presented here show that actin is embedded in the signaling networks which control the responses to environmental change. Change to the dynamic status of actin modulates the activity of the transcription factor Ste12p which regulates both the mating and filamentous/invasive growth responses. The activity of these pathways are linked to cortical patch organisation, and our data suggests that there is crosstalk between multiple pathways. I propose that the links between actin dynamics and environmental sensing pathways leave it well positioned for a role as a biosensor. Actin dynamics is altered by changes in internal or external conditions, leading to adapted of cellular responses which may provide a protective function for a population.

In an age where the historical event is mediated increasingly through the still and moving image, new stress is placed on the archival image as surviving evidence of and performer of history. Lost Film Found Film asks what the scope is for re-intervention by artists who engage with the documentary archival. What is found in their reappropriation? What is lost in the remix? Through a discussion of key works by Jean-Luc Godard, Hito Steyerl, Harun Farocki, Jayce Salloum, Johan Grimonprez and Eyal Sivan, Lost Film Found Film offers a definition and a description of what I have called the Cinema of Aftermath. I define this as cinema that evolved in the aftermath of the Second World War, that deploys found footage film not only as a form of critique but also as a form of participation in wider historical and political events. I argue that the Cinema of Aftermath comments on politics and is also political. Central to its project is a questioning of the potency of the archival image in both its self-reflexive and wider cultural use. In three chapters, I explore how the Cinema of Aftermath recalibrates the meaning and renews the formal possibilities of the documentary, and analyse the performance of memory, truth and evidence by this aestheticisation of archival image.

In this thesis, I propose a theoretical framework to understand the process of secularization produced by the revolutions of language and life. Thanks to the linguistic turn it has discovered that knowledge is kept within language. As Agamben explains, the Copernican revolution of language has made us “the first human beings who have become completely conscious of language. For the first time, what preceding generations called God, Being, spirit, unconscious appear to us as what they are: names for language. This is why for us, any philosophy, any religion, or any knowledge that has not become conscious of this turn belongs irrevocably to the past”(Agamben, 2005a: 45). Thanks to the vitalist turn, modern thought has found out that human beings are natural beings and, in spite of the peculiarity of their characteristics, their origin is the result of the natural process of evolution. I will maintain that this process of secularization leads to a new theological way of thinking definable as secularized theology. The peculiarity of secularized theology lies in the fact that it finds its ownmost reason of existence in the demonstration of the “death of God” but, the absence of revelation becomes the true revelation. The absence of the theological God reveals a secularized form of God – the God of those who believe of being without God. The name of this new divinity comes from Nietzsche who wrote that he would believe only in a God able to dance: The Dancing God. In La vita. Un’invezione recente, the Italian philosopher Davide Tarizzo argues that before modernity human beings did not exist “in the sense that the question of the humanity of man was not being asked, nor was there any ‘analysis of finitude’ in which ‘man’s being is always maintained, in relation to man himself, in a remoteness and a distance that constitute him”(Tarizzo, 2011: 53). Modernity becomes the process of secularization whereby the human being no longer measures himself against God, but becomes the measure of himself. The human being himself is the subject and the object of his own inquiry. The linguistic and the vitalist turns are, first and foremost, a reaction to theology. If in theology human being measures himself with respect to God, the disappearance of God makes human being size of himself. What distinguishes and opposes them is the definition of the human being, the unit of measure used to establish the humanity of man. On the one hand, the essence of the human being becomes language, on the other, the nature of the human being starts being biological life. Modernity is the epoch of the Dancing God and language and life are the two opposing doctrines fighting for the orthodoxy. The ultimate reason for this conflict is the definition of the essence or nature of the human being. In order to let emerge the fracture between the linguistic and the vitalist turns, I will address the question of the philosophy of biopolitics. Biopolitics is the discipline aimed at envisioning a politics able to give voice to the nature of the human being. Before proposing a biopolitical account it is therefore necessary to answer the philosophical question concerning the definition of the human being. I will claim that the fracture between the linguistic and the vitalist turn in defining what it means to be human is the source of modern monotheism. Thinking beyond secularized theology ultimately means to challenge the Copernican revolution of language and the Darwinian revolution of life in order to envision a new ontology grounded on a different understating of the human being. In the present work – which represents the pars dentures of this theoretical project – I will demonstrate that the revolution of language and life has to be understood as a form of revelation, more precisely, as the revelation of the lack of revelation. I will enquiry the linguistic and vitalist approach to the philosophy of biopolitics through the analysis of the work of three contemporary Italian philosophers: Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Davide Tarizzo. The decision to focus on Italian biopolitical theory is determined by the conviction that this philosophical approach offers one of the clearest and best-articulated insights into the fracture between life and language.

Jacques de Vitry (†1240), a noted preacher in Brabant and Languedoc, served as canon regular of Saint-Nicholas d’Oignies (1211-16), bishop of Acre (1216-29) and auxiliary bishop of Liège (1226-29), and ultimately as cardinal-bishop of Tusculum (1229-1240). Whilst his letters, sermons, and the Historia Occidentalis have been extensively studied, the Historia Orientalis, Jacques’s encyclopedic work on the Holy Land, has so far escaped any such interest. Considered as yet another crusading history or pilgrimage guide drawing on previous writings, the few editions and brief studies of this work published since the nineteenth century are based neither on a detailed textual analysis nor on a complete investigation of the manuscript tradition. This thesis, therefore, addresses an important gap in the historiographical debate by providing a detailed analysis of the contents of the Historia Orientalis and its sources, in combination with an examination of the manuscript tradition up to the early fourteenth century. In it, I argue that the work is composed of different genres, each addressing a topic that served Jacques’s agenda and his activities as theologian, preacher, historian, pilgrim, and crusader. Moreover, by examining the rich manuscript tradition, I establish the book’s legacy and show that Jacques’s contemporaries perceived the text as an eclectic work. Jacques’s combination of different popular genres contributed to the influence of the text which is preserved in no fewer than 126 extant manuscripts. The thesis falls into three sections. In the first, I introduce my investigation and provide a long overdue revised biographical note and contextualisation of Jacques’s writings. In the four chapters of the second section, I analyse the text to see how Jacques combined the editing of existing source material with his personal knowledge into a work that served the reform and crusade agenda of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. The four chapters discuss the medieval genres that can be found in Jacques’s work: a history of the crusades, an account on Islam, a description of the Holy Land, and an ethnographical treatise. In the third section, using codicological research to discuss the text’s compilation, influence, readership, and legacy in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, I argue that each genre found within the Historia was intended for and read by a different audience, thus explaining the wide appeal of the work as a whole. The sixth chapter focuses on the early manuscript tradition and dissemination of the Historia Orientalis while the seventh chapter addresses, on the one hand, the use of these manuscripts and the relationship to other texts in the same codex and, on the other hand, the authors who copied or used Jacques’s text in their own works. By combining a detailed textual analysis with extensive manuscript research, this investigation into the contents, readership and legacy of the Historia Orientalis sheds new light on the mechanisms behind the dissemination and influence of religious propaganda, as well as highlights Jacques’s seminal contribution to Church reform and the approach to crusading in the thirteenth century in accordance with the agenda set by the Fourth Lateran Council.

The modern wave of environmentalism that swept most of the Western world since the 1960s, has generated considerable academic interest and has been widely documented. However there are apparent gaps in the knowledge, understanding and academic coverage of the phenomenon in the developing world, particularly in Africa. This thesis is an empirical exploration into the nature of environmentalism in Ghana, West Africa dwelling on the phenomena of environmental consciousness and movement activity. It identifies the presence of a small yet viable indigenous environmental movement. The movement is most visible through the partnering and collective networking activities of small, institutionalized local organizations that came together to form coalitions, share resources and work together on broad thematic issues that were of common concern.

This thesis argues for the continuing possibility of Adorno set against the backdrop of a post-modern proliferation of affects. A major theoretical contention is the concept of the subject: a sticking point within philosophy. The thesis takes this up and offers a new pathway without falling into the cliché of a renewal of Adorno’s position. Drawing on Adorno’s theoretical thoughts on the subject the thesis contends that the subject is that which by turns dissolves all eventualities or more proportionally acts like a place-holder for the newly emerging: structures that cannot be explained by recourse to the laws that govern its parts. These experiential structures present a surface, resistance, or solidarity that upon closer examination dissolve back into the ephemeral. Although such structures are profligate and prolific, the thesis adopts as its major concern artworks and aesthetics. Following Adorno, a claim is made for artworks that present open-ended possibilities. They are able for example to critically challenge the dominant hegemony the profundity that all too easily sides with the oppressors of life. What philosophy, a critical tool in furtherance of the good life, a concept restaged, here takes from art is not a sense of equivalence, art and philosophy are held apart in a creative and critical tension, but the sense of yearning that animates the nonconceptual side of art which the concept negates. The yearning, being experiential, is always embodied. Its fulfilment negates the immediacies, the mere appearance of life, particularly in its systematically reflexive form. The conclusion concurs with Adorno in the thought that affinity with the object is achieved not as the resultant of identity thinking, but through the act of definite negation of identifying schema.

No description available.