Some personal or collective histories can never be completely integrated into the continuum of one's emotional life. Such stories produced in traumatic times or in disastrous events are likely to remain only partially understood or accepted. Examining the human consequence of traumatic events such as the enslavement of Africans in the United States or the attempted extermination of the Jewish people in Europe is one challenging focus of this work. It is comparatively productive, however, if these events are approached from the perspective of the trauma they have produced-an approach that suspends chronological and geographical barriers of time and space. The trilogy by postmodern French artist Charlotte Delbo, an Auschwitz survivor who narrated her story in testimonial form, offers that insight into trauma, as does the postcolonial work of Toni Morrison. The first volumes of both trilogies, "Aucun de nous ne reviendra" and "Beloved" expose the damage done to individuals and collectivities in terms of trauma by revealing the extent to which living at the edge of life and witnessing horrific acts of massive death and destruction shape and impact not only victims but the societies to which they return. Attempting to work through those strikingly traumatic experiences further highlights attitudes commonly found in narratives of survival. "Une connaissance inutile" and "Jazz," the second volumes of the trilogies, enhance that kind of understanding, while both point at the necessary impossibility of forgetting the traumatic experiences that remain clearly undigested. Events such as senseless extermination of an entire people and the brutal exploitation of an entire race were not only not avoided, but systematically promoted by the communities in question. "Mesure de nos jours" and "Paradise," the last volumes of the trilogies, clearly document the lack of attentiveness to the pleas of survivors and emancipated slaves by their respective communities after liberation and emancipation. Even though support was not shown by these communities in the aftermath of the traumatic occurrences, this should not disengage us from our gravest responsibility: to bear witness to the sufferings of an excluded other whose processes of recovery and working through remain elusive.

In monopolizing political power, the state claims to possess the best idea towards leading a society and solving its problems. While these claims may vary according to regime, all face the eventual failure of expectation on the part of its subjects. No regime can master all the variables in running the country, and so it must convince their subjects otherwise of its legitimacy, despite the reality of their failure. The apparatchiks discourse is the interaction of the states discourse and that of its institutions. This discourse is used to uphold the states legitimacy through the expertise of its institutions. The most insidious application of this involves attacking dissidents who point out the states failure. Paul Ricoeur, in his work on character and identity, demonstrated the tension between two halves of human personality, the ipse, which is initiated by the self, and the idem, by society. The apparatchiks discourse can attack this ipse and try to reduce the dissident to a state derived idem. Thus the discourse becomes a weapon in the struggle between the state and the dissident. This dissertation examines the apparatchiks discourse through the works of four authors, Victor Serges Ville Conquise, Sil est minuit dans le siècle, and Laffaire Toulaév, Ammianus Marcellinus Res Gestae, Denis Diderots Essai sur la vie de Sénèque and Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron, and George Orwells Burmese Days, Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Despite the differences in time and culture, a thread runs through their works that reveals a continuous form in this discourse in political activity and, more importantly, in the lives of individual people. Despite this similarity, there is an important degree of difference between these works. Some texts explore the discourse as a means of understanding political activity and its role in human lives, while others use it both to destroy and uphold specific people. Lastly, some try to banish the discourse completely. Through these similarities and differences, this study will explore the use, abuse, and impact of the apparatchiks discourse on representations of the individual.

This dissertation is a study of how some displaced Caribbean and Italian American women examine identity within a literary tradition that considers them "Other." I have chosen four culturally diverse novels to explore, each one written by a different female author: Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, Maryse Condé's La migration des curs, Rosario Ferré's The House on the Lagoon, and Tina De Rosa's Paper Fish. I identify the causes of the protagonists' displacement, and analyze the actions they take to make themselves heard in a tradition that has formerly silenced them. The role of the mother is especially important in these novels, for the unstable relationship each protagonist has with her mother parallels her uncertainty with regard to her mother country and her mother language. All of the protagonists, with one exception, enter an unhealthy marriage which further pushes them into a marginalized space. Ultimately, they are not only labeled "Other" because of their ethnicity, but also because of their gender. I argue that through the text, the protagonists carve out an identity they were previously denied. In Western literature, there has been little authentic representation of characters considered "Other." In authoring her own text, however, the "Other" writes for herself. The appropriation and revision of the Western canonical text, the usurpation of power through writing, and the determination to reveal the ethnic experience are all strategies these authors employ to establish their presence within the dominant literary tradition.

The subject of this thesis revolves around the Western view of nature and its social origins. The author advances the subject through a comparison of two ancient texts: Hesiods Works and Days and the Old Testament book of Proverbs. He concludes that the Western view of nature gestated in agricultural societies of small-farmers who saw themselves as being both part of and separate from the natural world. Their ability to control nature being limited, they saw civilization as fulfilling a limited agricultural role in the cosmos, as being different but part of and not controlling the whole. In the last chapter, the author moves to discussing the forces at play within the Western view of nature that have resulted in the environmental situation of the twenty-first century. The author advances that a view of the physical realm as secondary, or degraded vis-à-vis the realm of the intellect entered Christianity through Platonic philosophy, and therefore is not original to the Western view of nature. Furthermore, he contends that the original interaction of Western man with nature was through physical work, and that both Platonic philosophy and modern science have influenced this original relationship.

The primary goal of this thesis is to examine how the city is read in the works of four nineteenth-century authors: Charles Dickens <I>Great Expectations</I> (1860), Honoré de Balzacs <I>Le Père Goriot</I> (1834), Fernán Caballeros <I>La Gaviota</I> (1849), and Madame de Staëls <I>Corinne ou lItalie</I> (1807). They show the city not just as a setting, but as a character. At times, nineteenth-century urban life becomes so overwhelming to urban newcomers, that the geographical space and its society imprison residents. The nineteenth-century city was marked by change: industrialization, population shift from rural areas to urban capitals, and changes in political regime. Therefore, a characters journey through the city presents him or her with challenges. The first chapter traces how the author maps out the city for the reader. It examines the forces working against the characters as they undergo their urban journey. The reader discovers the citys geography and society along with the characters. The second chapter examines the criminal nature of the city in <I>Le Père Goriot</I> and <I>Great Expectations</I>. The third chapter examines womens position in urban society in all four works. As women could not negotiate the geographical space of the city, they must negotiate its interior society, its salons. Marriage is seen as an imprisoning institution for women and even talented independent women face difficulties. Money and love/lust complicate womens negotiation and often lead to social destruction. The fourth chapter examines how characters are able partially to surmount the urban space through successful negotiation, by incorporating themselves in the urban social world or by escaping the city altogether to find a better life abroad. Negotiating the urban space and its society can prove both destructive and empowering. For some of the characters examined, the city proves to be overwhelming; others have more relative success in surmounting the difficulties they face. The nineteenth-century city proves to be a mythic place whose truth must be discovered through exploration of its society and spaces.

My dissertation utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to analyze Argentinas Dirty War; in it, I argue that our view of the Other is the key to not repeating the past. Literature has long been accepted as a resource for understanding culture; this dissertation moves beyond literature, and includes photography, art, and film to demonstrate how artists have represented and responded to this period of political oppression. Adopting a psychoanalytic approach for my research, I begin with a literary analysis of multiple texts which exhibit features of what Anne Whitehead calls trauma fiction, texts in which the narrative voice displays the repetition and fragmentation of memory caused by trauma; I also include the paintings of two artists, whose works have not previously been analyzed, but which fall into this category. I examine two photographic exhibits, using them to reveal how Freuds theories of mourning and melancholia function. I also use the exhibits to explain the connection between photography and loss, and how photography fits within Lacans understanding of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, the Real, and the gaze. My investigation of Tununa Mercados En estado de memoria is the first to apply the psychoanalytic theory of phantom trauma to her text; I argue that the pathologies from which the narrative voice suffers are exacerbated by, but not exclusively the result of trauma experienced as an adult. I conclude with an examination of three films which deal with the long-lasting effects of the Dirty War on Argentine society; I propose that it is not enough to narrate the past; the portrayal of the Other should include an element of horror; furthermore, we must acknowledgeand give voice tothose unspoken feelings, and desires, wherein we identify, not only with the victim(s), but also with the aggressor(s) in order to prevent the repetition of the past.

Thèse de doctorat : Sciences de gestion : Nancy 2 : 1999. / Bibliographie. Index.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Comparative Literature, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Feb. 8, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-05, Section: A, page: 1649. Adviser: Barbara Klinger.

Proefschrift--Amsterdam. / "Bibliografie": p. 257-258.

Thèse--University of Paris. / "Ouvrages consultés": p. [261]-266.