Title: 'I'm not a looser that lives only in this pub.' Bar ethnography Keywords: bar, alcohol, meaning, guests, norms, students, ambivalence. Abstract: Goals: to understand the meaning of bar visits and activities that take place in bars. Method: Qualitative research using the methods of participatory observations and semi- structured interviews. Conclusions: A bar is common place in which people choose to spend their free time. It is thought of as a place full of fun, consumption, and social interaction. It forms an important part of free time activities. Alternative free time activities are commonly connected to boredom and loneliness especially by individuals without stable social circles outside of bars. Evenings in bars tend to be stereotypical, especially for frequent visitors. The stereotypical environment is a source of much ambivalence. It carries many positive effects (such as stability, certainty, security, anticipation, and known environment) but can be also perceived negatively (boredom, stagnation). A bar is in the Czech cultural context regarded as an ordinary part of life of people maturing to adulthood. Feelings of inappropriateness can arise in case of a long transition to adulthood. This increases the range of ambivalences towards the bar environment as well as towards the activities...

A qualitative study on a sample of 12 Puerto Rican women was conducted in Puerto Rico. The purpose of this study was to explore the various ways in which sexual meanings are created, changed, and modified as the nature of social discourse and personal experience changes. The two theoretical frameworks that guided the methodology and analysis of the data were social constructionism and feminism. I assumed that sexuality is socially constructed, shaped by social, political, and economic influences, and modified throughout life. Feminist theories assisted in documenting the ways in which females' sexuality in Puerto Rico is shaped by culture and by institutions that disadvantage females and other oppressed groups by silencing their voices. The theories guided the discussion of the contradicting messages about women's sexualities and their experiences, as these women fought, conformed to, and even colluded with their oppression. Analysis of the participants' written and oral narratives produced the overarching theme of sexual meanings/scripts, along with three interrelated sub-themes: sources and nature of sexual scripts, determining experiences, and social discourses of female sexuality. Participants reported three institutional sources of sexual messages: family, religion-culture, and institutions of education. Their determining experiences follow a common thread that weaves a common story line: the life-long struggle with the incongruencies between the social constructions of female sexuality and the realities of these women's sexual experiences. Sexuality is defined as being challenged and modified through the participants' lives. Four social discourses of female sexuality emerged from the analysis of the data: source of guilt and shame, vulnerability and sexual victimization, ambivalence, and empowerment. A theory of ambivalence was developed from the data as a means to understand the participants' process of developing the paradigms for their own sexuality. / Ph. D.

Le présent mémoire, s’articulant autour de quatre œuvres de Bernard-Marie Koltès, se propose de problématiser les rapports intersubjectifs mis en scène dans l’œuvre de l’auteur à partir du motif du désir. Il s’agira de comprendre sous quelle forme de désir s’élaborent les rapports interhumains représentés par Koltès. Plutôt que de fonder notre approche sur une lecture psychanalytique, notre perspective se déploie à partir du concept de désir tel que forgé par le philosophe et anthropologue René Girard. Cette approche particulière nous a permis de dégager une certaine logique des comportements apparemment arbitraires et contradictoires chez les protagonistes. Nous avons relié entre eux des gestes, des attitudes, des renversements émotifs qui apparaissent souvent étrangers les uns aux autres afin de donner à voir une facette différente aux textes koltésiens. Le premier chapitre est consacré au statut des objets dans l’œuvre de Koltès ; même s’ils sont au centre des interactions entre personnages, leur fonction est essentiellement de servir de prétexte à leurs échanges. Le deuxième chapitre a pour objet l’ambivalence des rapports intersubjectifs qui unissent les protagonistes ; il s’agit de comprendre sur quoi se fonde cette dualité (amour/haine) qui caractérise les rapports entre les sujets koltésiens. Par un détour à travers les théories de la reconnaissance, le troisième chapitre traite des stratagèmes mis en place par les protagonistes pour entretenir des relations nécessaires au développement de leur être sans pour autant admettre leur besoin existentiel des autres. Ultimement, il s’agit pour nous de comprendre ce qui unit des personnages ouvertement hostiles les uns envers les autres. / This thesis, based on four works by Bernard-Marie Koltès, proposes to problematize the intersubjective relationships staged in the author's work according to the motif of desire. Its aim is to understand the form of desire on which the interhuman relationships represented by Koltès are built. Rather than basing our approach on a psychoanalytical reading, our perspective is based on the concept of desire as forged by the philosopher and anthropologist René Girard. This particular approach allowed us to identify a certain logic in the apparently arbitrary and contradictory behaviors of the protagonists. We linked together gestures, attitudes, and emotional reversals that often appear foreign to each other in order to show a different facet of the Koltesian texts. The first chapter is devoted to the status of objects in Koltès' work; even if they are at the center of the exchanges, their function is essentially that of a pretext. The second chapter treats the ambivalence of the intersubjective relationships that unite the protagonists; the aim here is to understand the basis of this duality (love/hate) which characterizes the relations between the Koltesian subjects. By a detour through the theories of recognition, the third chapter discusses the stratagems put in place by the protagonists to maintain intersubjective relations necessary to the development of their being without admitting their existential need of others. Ultimately, it is about understanding what unites characters who are openly hostile to each other.

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In this essay, I study ambivalence in Pär Lagerkvist's (1891–1974) novel The Dwarf (1944). The ambivalence is primarily expressed through Lagerkvist's use of contrasts, and enhanced by the unreliable narrator. At first glance, the contrasts might be perceived as binary oppositions, but I aim to illustrate how boundaries are dissolved, and I argue that the contrasts cannot in fact be seen as opposites. Instead, a non-binary perspective is required. Inspired primarily by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler, I use a queer reparative reading as my starting point. The analysis focuses specifically on four examples of contrasts that I claim are most prominent in the novel: love–hate, closeness–distance, superiority–inferiority, and good–evil. Although the protagonist is confused by the dissolved boundaries between these, he is the one who embodies them the most. He might seem as a hateful, inferior, and evil character who wants to maintain distance from everyone else. However, he is not inferior all the time and he also expresses more loving feelings and shows a desire to be close to others. This raises the question whether he truly is evil or if his actions are simply the result of being mistreated. Reading the novel from a non-binary perspective thus proves that we can never reach any definitive answers. Rather, we are forced to continue asking important, difficult, and sometimes uncomfortable questions.

This thesis sets out to examine the relationship between science fiction and its conditions of production, specifically interrogating the genre's articulations of the ideology of modernity as progress. Sf has been characterized variously as a characteristically useful critical engagement with the ideologies of its context and as wholly ideological at the level of form, relying on the authority of a scientific episteme in its "cognitive estrangements," while not obligated to operate within the boundaries of this episteme. As such, the genre is unparalleled in its capacity to articulate ideologies under the guise of a putatively neutral science and reason. However, this same formal action places the genre in the unique position of being able to utilize the authority of a scientific episteme to re-evaluate the putative neutrality of that very scientific episteme. As a result, this study concludes that while the genre's reliance on the external authority of science in "cognitively" organizing its estrangements may make it particularly conducive to articulating ideological technoscience and the ideology of modernity as progress, the genre is characteristically ambivalent in this respect, both at the level of form and as a result of the incongruities between form and narrative. To support my thesis I engage a number of science fictional texts, focusing on Golden Age sf of the mid-20th century, while also branching out into explorations of a variety of 20th and 21st century sf texts, including texts from the pulp era, New Wave, cyberpunk, and post-singularity sf. I analyze within the effects of the conceptual mapping of society in terms of the natural sciences in sf, as well as the ambivalent presence of the robot as a megatextual motif, exploring the relationship of these to the ideology of modernity as progress and the post-scarcity fantasy of global mass consumption prosperity.

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