This thesis considers the limitations of redress measures for injustices against Indigenous peoples in Canada and seeks to provide an alternative account of reconciliation that aims towards addressing these limitations. Current reconciliation and treaty processes designed to address Indigenous claims have resulted in a disconnect between material and symbolic or affective harms and are insufficiently reciprocal and receptive to the multiplicity of conflicting accounts of history to meaningfully effect a transformation of Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations. Furthermore, current processes aim towards closure with respect to past injustices instead of establishing lasting political relationships through grappling with diverse perspectives on those injustices. This thesis engages with these challenges by exploring Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations in Canada through the lens of Hannah Arendt’s relational, non-instrumental account of politics and recent literature on agonistic reconciliation in order to propose an alternative account of living in reconciliation through treaty relations. / Graduate

Hannah Arendt explored the duality of the privately and publicly constructed realms which serve, through our thoughts and our actions, to position us in the world. She draws a distinction between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa, challenging prior conceptions of the radical division between the two. / I examine, in Arendt's work, the concepts of solitude and isolation and how these inform her discourse on reflective thinking. It is my argument that the distinction between these two concepts cannot be drawn as neatly as she attempted to do. These two states of being in fact meet in the figure of the pariah as critical thinker, as well as storyteller, and finally as a catalyst for public action. / I submit that there is a subtextual theme of temporality within Arendt's work and then move to demonstrate how this theme expresses the nature and context of thinking and judging, in relation to action. / Finally, I draw upon Arendt's distinctions between thinking and judging, arguing that one cannot be extracted from the other and that the two cannot be defined as autonomous, in the context of critical thinking. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2006.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago Divinity School, March 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toledo, 2009. / Typescript. "Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy." "A thesis entitled"--at head of title. Bibliography: leaves 54-55.

Thèse (M.A.)--Université Laval, 2003. / Bibliogr.: f. [215-223]. Publ. aussi en version électronique.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago Divinity School, March 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Texte remanié de: Th. doct.--Philo. pol.--Paris 7, 1997. / Bibliogr. p. 319-331.

In this conceptual thesis I explore a paradox inherent in sustainability, namely that to 'sustain' something it needs to be allowed to emerge into something different than it currently is. Moreover, it is not always knowable in advance what that ‘something’ will be. I also argue that education is fundamentally about sustainability, as its role is to allow/encourage a human being to emerge into someone different than he/she currently is. I assert, however, that whilst this is education’s role, it currently, and paradoxically, works against itself by defining the human subject in advance (as a particular ‘ideal’ kind of rational autonomous being), hence closing the matter of what a human can grow into before education even starts. I argue that complexity thinking and what Osberg (2015) calls complexity- compatible thinking, posthumanist/posthuman and feminist thinking provide logics to approach the issue of emergence, including the emergence of what it is to be a human subject. It is through engaging with these logics to keep the abundant possibilities of the future radically open that my thesis makes a contribution to the field of education and sustainability. To make such a contribution I first of all identify that Biesta (2006, 2013) and his ‘pedagogy of interruption’ are working within the logic of complexity thinking. In his theory Biesta identifies how fleeting moments can interrupt existing rational autonomous understandings of human subjectivity. Whilst acknowledging that one cannot programme such ‘fleeting moments’ into education, I draw on ideas from Arendt, Mouffe, Rancière and Masschelein and Simons to encourage the possibility of such moments - moments which open up spaces in which, through acting and speaking with others, who one is as an initium, a beginner can emerge. However, emergence of the new raises the important issue of ethics. I argue that in her two-fold concept of forgiveness and mutual promising Arendt provides a way to develop an immanent ethics arising from horizontal relationships between people speaking and acting together. Finally, I focus on the fleeting moment or event of interruption itself. Drawing on Arendt, Loidolt, Keller and Braidotti I argue that this can be understood as a first-person intersubjective encounter under conditions of plurality. I understand plurality as speaking and acting together with unique others open to the stance one expresses and vice versa. In intersubjective encounters one does not reveal an inner essence to others. Instead who one is emerges intersubjectively, in and through the encounter, creating a surplus, something new that was not in the world before. I also argue how such encounters have the potential to be ethical encounters. I then go beyond Arendt and draw on posthumanist and posthuman thinking to consider the possibility of intersubjective first-being ethical encounters with(in) the wider natural world. I argue that allowing some time for school understood as skholé – a safe space, protected from politicisation by the issues of the day, to reflect and explore who one is, and how one can act in the world – has an important role in encouraging, valuing and reflecting on such encounters. I conclude that education which understands sustainability as an emergent process builds a bridge between education as a sustainable and education as a democratic process. In such an education who one is as a subject appears through intersubjective encounters, bringing into the world the possibility of the emergence of new, unexpected ways of knowing, being and acting essential for sustainability.

Departamento de Filosofía / La presente tesis tiene por finalidad analizar la migración internacional en América Latina, desde la perspectiva de la libertad política de Hannah Arendt, dentro de un contexto de globalización y desarrollo humano, donde Chile emerge como un referente de la inmigración en la región. Desde esta perspectiva, el fenómeno migratorio tiene características complejas de analizar y Los estudios actuales sobre la migración internacional en América latina, desde diversas áreas del saber, han arrojado cifras y datos que si bien permiten describir los avances y desafíos frente al fenómeno, no advierten la pérdida de los espacios de aparición donde los hombres ejercen su libertad política. La propuesta de esta tesis es que el análisis del fenómeno migratorio se dirija filosóficamente hacia la crítica social que pone en el centro del debate público la creciente explotación abusiva de la fuerza de trabajo que sobre los inmigrantes recae, pues a los cerca de 34 millones de inmigrantes latinoamericanos que están fuera de su país, no se les ve como a seres humanos sino como animales laborantes que han de elevar la productividad de las empresas y aumentar sus ganancias en un mundo que cada vez les es más ajeno.