Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2002. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-301). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ82823.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [424]-437).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Political Science December 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Dr. Jeffery J. Mondak, Florida State University, College of Social Sciences, Dept. of Political Science. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 19, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains x, 134 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2000. / UMI number: 9996850. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 361-394).

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Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is arguably one of the most widely represented female figures in South Africa. The images presented of her are not static. Indeed, they are shot through with contradictions which include Mama Africa, Warrior, and Abhorrent Mother. The figure of Madikizela-Mandela is a nexus for different opinions and interpretations; she is a focal point for and of the divisions in South African consciousnesses. Therefore the depictions of this persona provide the reader with a means to analyse the discourses through which she is represented. Such an exploration might also provide South Africans with insight into some of the biases and beliefs generally held more than a decade after the advent of democracy. The South African texts Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog, and The Cry of Winnie Mandela by Njabulo Ndebele, extensively represent Madikizela-Mandela and (re-)mythologise her, and as such each provides interesting comparative material for a discussion of the ideological implications imbricated in each. These texts are also particularly appropriate to use in such a study because the writers, a white woman, and black man respectively, could not be further apart on the continuum of South African cultural identification. The politics of the representations of Madikizela-Mandela can thus be interpreted from opposing social extremes. The Mandela name is a powerful signifier, and often constitutes much of Madikizela-Mandela’s public identity. The power of naming is thus the focus of Chapter One of this dissertation. The romantic ideal of Nelson Mandela and Madikizela-Mandela’s relationship constitutes a major focal point in Ndebele’s work. On the other hand, Krog’s text denigrates Madikizela-Mandela’s refusal to toe the peaceful democratic line. As such, the needs of the public in relation to Madikizela-Mandela are illuminated through the impositions of the authors and characters in these texts.

My dissertation brings a new historical perspective and a theoretical reflection on 1970s French intellectuals’ activism and relationship to power and politics through the history of the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP), a group of activists who decided to make the hermetic border between the societal space and the prisons more porous. The GIP, founded in 1970 by Michel Foucault, Jean-Marie Domenach, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, and including thinkers and writers like Hélène Cixous, Daniel Defert, Gilles Deleuze, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Genet, aimed at providing information on carceral conditions in France and in the United States. These intellectuals interviewed prisoners, family members, guards, and published their findings in pamphlets to spread awareness about the inhumane conditions prisoners were forced to live in. Thanks to the work of Artières, Zancarini-Fournel, Harcourt, Zurn and Dilts's work, the GIP slowly emerges from the shadows. However, very few of the Anglophone articles and books dedicated to the group look at the GIP from a French and European historical and philological perspective, underlining the specificity of this group and activism in French intellectual history. My dissertation thus aspires to highlight and better understand the place of the GIP in contemporary French history, history of French activism, prison history as well as in French intellectual history. As the GIP archives are currently being translated into English, my work reveals the historical intricacies of this group with French contemporary events (such as the events of May '68), and its relationship to other forms of activism in the 1970s: feminist activism, legal activism, psychoanalytic activism and global prison activism. In my dissertation, I argue that these overlapping types of activism displaced the main lines between two conceptions of the intellectual in twentieth-century France: l’intellectuel universel and l’intellectuel spécifique. According to me, the GIP, by rejecting the figure of the universal intellectual yet showing the failure of the specific intellectual, discloses a crisis in the mid-70s French intelligentsia, leading on the one side to a new definition of l’intellectuel engagé. My research on the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP) draws on a three-tiered methodological approach: close textual analysis of primary source material; interpretation of primary texts through theoretical frameworks; and historical contextualization of both primary documents and broader socio-cultural framework through archival research and testimonies. My original and translation constitute a new perspective on the role of intellectuels engagés— particularly philosophers and key figures of the “French Theory” movement. By reflecting on the concept of engaged intellectual from the 1894 Dreyfus affair to the debates about the Nouveaux Philosophes, my project also brings about a fundamental investigation about the genealogy of the intellectuals —particularly philosophers and the so-called “French Theory”— and their roles in French politics.

Abortion remains a controversial contemporary social issue, spawning disparate and strongly held opinions among the American public. Pro-life activists play a central role in opposing abortion, mobilizing a disinterested public to public activism, and collectively working to restrict abortion access. This study focused on pro-life activism in Mississippi, the state with the most restrictive laws governing abortion, abortion clinics, and abortion doctors. Contrary to previous studies and media portrayals that homogenize pro-life activists and public pro-life activism, I find that diversity, rather than consensus, characterizes Mississippi pro-life activists who engage in public activism and direct action to stop abortion. Specifically, this study focuses on the diversity in turning points that propel activists into public activism, the multivalent ways activists construct abortion as a moral problem, and the ways activists create and use strategies of action to disseminate their worldviews and to stop abortion.

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