Partial Minds argues that contemporary American novels strategically break conventionally-defined norms for the representation of fictional minds to highlight unusual character thoughts. Certain states of mind—including traumatic experiences, conflicting feelings, some memories, and the simultaneous possession of multiple identities—are more difficult to represent than others, and so some authors or narrators reject conventional cognitive representations, such as naming feelings, if they seem poor tools for effectively communicating that character’s exceptional quality to the reader. For example, the trauma of Marianne in Joyce Carol Oates’s We Were the Mulvaneys is represented by the narrator, her brother Judd. But in attempting to represent the state of Marianne’s mind on the night she was raped, Judd finds that simply turning to a verbalized account of her thoughts, such as “I felt terrible,” or a seeming-omniscient gloss of her mental state, such as “She suffered incredible mental turmoil,” is insufficient and incommensurate with the traumatic and painful mental state she must have endured. In cases like these, authors and narrators reject conventional models of representation and turn to partial minds to effectively articulate to the reader the mental state that the character experiences. These more effective representations are pivotal in communicating to the reader a more adequate—whether from a mimetic, synthetic, or thematic perspective—understanding of characters’ experiences. Partial minds are often the very required conditions for readers to empathize with a character. By looking at several different instantiations of partial minds in recent American novels, I show how this technique both heightens the value of cognitive narrative criticism and revises the way we read many of literature’s most interesting characters.

"2004". / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media & Philosophy, Department of Critical and Cultural Studies, 2005. / Bibliography: p. 315-327. / Introduction -- Aporias and openings in the architecture of the mind's eye: deconstructing pure visuality in Descartes -- Visuality, universal flesh and phenomenal circularity: visio-corporeal generality with Merleau-Ponty -- Corporeal envisionings as power-knowledge: Foucault and diffuse visio-governmentality -- The grammatology of visuality: visio-corporealising Derrida's "science" of the trace -- Conclusion. / The conception of visuality within what Jacques Derrida understands as the 'metaphysical epoch' demands revision in order to produce a fully post-metaphysical theory of visuality. Drawing upon the corporeal phenomenology of perception in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the politico-cultural conception of visuality in Michel Foucault and the trace philosophy of vision in Jacques Derrida, visualities are theorised here as dynamic 'corporeal tracings' immanently bearing politico-cultural forces. Elements of these three major thinkers are here brought into generative dialogue and welding which, for instance, relocates the corporealism of Merleau-Ponty in terms of the trace dynamics conceived by Derrida and which in turn insists upon the visio-corporeality of general writing that Derrida largely elides. A rereading of Rene Descartes on vision is advanced in the light of this theory that deploys Derrida's deconstructive method to detect the aporias and self-deconstructions within a characteristic metaphysical discourse of pure visuality that overtly elides both corporeality and the trace (understood in the theory of corporeal tracings as inseparable). -- Merleau-Ponty is critiqued from a post-dualist position on the role of the mind and the body in the experience of visuality, Foucault's ideas on bodies, visualities and diffuse powers are developed through the notion of'visio-govemmentality' and Derrida's conceptions of grammatology and the trace are redefined in terms of an emphasis on visiocorporeality. New terms and concepts emerge from these engagements that extend and elaborate visuality theory in terms of fully post-metaphysical domains of understanding. There is a commitment throughout to three theoretical positions: corporealism, culturalism and holism or what is termed here 'total contextualism'. These positions enable the fully post-metaphysical theorisation of visualities as dynamic and complex corporeal tracings encompassing both human bodies and total visio-corporeal contexts. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 327 p

This thesis presents Hegel’s account of abstract ‘understanding’ (Verstand) and asserts that his thought is to be read as primarily presenting a critique of abstract understanding. Verstand involves the methodological supposition of a self-subsistent fundament of what it speaks of, and hence the critique of understanding is the critique of the supposition of self-subsistent fundaments. Grasping his account and reading him in its critical light yields a very different image of Hegel than the caricature of ‘totalizing systems’. The dimension of the Verstandeskritik has been relatively neglected in Hegel-reception and misunderstandings result from trying to ‘understand’ Hegel, by overlooking the topic of ‘understanding’ in his work as critique. Many caricatures result from understanding Hegel as a proponent of what he actually critiques (‘absolute knowing’ is often understood as a mega-understanding). The thesis then addresses the historically influential criticisms raised by his contemporary, F.J.W. Schelling, to give a voice to a Hegel that has been hitherto drowned out by caricatures that began with Schelling.

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<p>Intensively industrialized animal agriculture, or factory farming, poses many challenges for our notions of “life” and how it should be treated. Factory farming’s mass instrumentalization and exploitation of animals potentially unsettles both our most basic notions regarding the justice of sacrificing certain lives in order to improve other lives, and our decisions about which lives belong to each category. This thesis examines the factory farm as a site that relies upon and produces particular lessons about life. The first chapter explores factory farming’s insistence that economically useful features of animals can be endlessly manipulated and optimized, summarily rendering disposable all other aspects of their lives. Recent work on “neoliberal” economic ideology identifies the emergence of similar conclusions about <em>human</em> life under neoliberalism, yet animal life remains largely un-theorized in this context. Meanwhile, the field of critical animal studies is generating a rich body of work theorizing our exclusion of animals from full ethical and political consideration, but has yet to grapple with how the factory farm brings to bear its own economizing logic that intensifies the “othering” of animal life. The resulting pedagogy of life reverberates throughout the range of cultural responses to factory farming. Chapter Two discusses factory farm designer Temple Grandin’s work in order to illustrate how attempts to situate the site within ostensibly non-economic narratives of life such as ecology, comparative epistemology, and spirituality reveal ways that those narratives can become complicit with the factory farm’s neoliberal pedagogy. Chapter Three examines current representations of vegetarian identity, demonstrating that even resistant responses can reinscribe the factory farm’s sacrificial economy. The thesis concludes that alternative futures for critical resistance to the factory farm depend upon a more thorough apprehension of its conceptual reach, and concerted pedagogical and ethical work through and beyond its framing of both human and animal life.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>When environmental philosophy began as a political movement, one of its original goals was to transform people's lifestyles. This required appeals to everyday intuitions and emotional writing evoking the intrinsic value of nature. This style exists in institutional environmental philosophy today, but sits uneasy with academic pressure toward rigor and careful analysis. The first half of my thesis criticizes various problems in environmental philosophy regarding these issues and arguments for other moral principles that displace intrinsic value. I attempt to return the concept of intrinsic value to a prominent place in environmental philosophy, not as a popular intuition, but as an answer to one central philosophical question: the point of human existence. Engaging with particular topics in ecology, biology, phenomenology, ethology, complexity theory, and the assemblage theory of Deleuze and Guattari, the second half of my thesis builds a concept of selfhood that I hope is adequate to answer that question of why humanity should bother ensuring its survival.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This dissertation is a theoretical study of the relationship between digitality, knowledge, and power in the age of Big Data. My argument is that human medical research on psychedelic substances supports a critique of what I call "the data episteme." I use "episteme" in the sense developed by philosopher Michel Foucault, where the term describes an apparatus for determining the properties associated with the epistemic condition of scientificity. I write that the data episteme suppresses bodies of knowledge which do not bear the epistemic virtues associated with digital data. These include but are not limited to the capacities for positivistic representation and translation into discrete digital media. Drawing from scientific reports, I demonstrate that certain forms of knowledge regarding the therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics cannot withstand positivistic representation and digitization. Henceforth, psychedelic research demands frameworks for epistemic legitimation which differ from those predicated on the criteria associated with the data episteme. I additionally claim that psychedelic inebriation promotes a form of thinking which has been called, by various theorists, "negative," "abstract," or "idiosyncratic" thought. Whereas the data episteme denies the existence of negative thought, psychedelic research suggests that this mental function is essential to the successful deposition of psychedelic substances as adjuncts to psychotherapy. For the reasons listed above, psychedelic science provides a uniquely salient lens on the normative operations of the data episteme. In the course of suppressing non-digitizable knowledge, the data episteme implements what Foucault conceptualizes "knowledge-power," a term which affirms the fact that there is no meaningful difference between knowledge and power. Here, "power" may be defined as the power to promote but also to retract conditions on which phenomena may exist across all sites of social, intellectual, and political construction. I write that the data episteme seeks to both nullify the preconditions for negative thought and to naturalize the possibility of an infinite expansion of human mental activity, which in turn figures mentality as an inexhaustible resource for the commodity of digital data. The data episteme therefore reifies the logic of ceaseless economic proliferation, and as such, abets technologized capitalism. In the event that the data episteme fulfills its teleological goal to become total, virtually all that is thinkable would yield to economic subordination. I present psychedelic science as a site where knowledge which challenges the data episteme is empirically necessary, and which, by extension, attests to the existence of that which cannot be economically subsumed. / Doctor of Philosophy / In the age of Big Data, scientists draw upon the ever-expanding quantities of data which are produced, circulated, and analyzed by digital devices every day. As data grow in number, digital tools gain in their ability to yield precise and faithful information about the objects they represent. It would appear that all forms of knowledge may one day be perfectly replicated in the form of digital data. This dissertation claims that certain forms of knowledge cannot be digitized, and that the existence of non-digitizable knowledge has important implications for both science and politics. I begin by considering the fact that digital tools can only produce knowledge about phenomena which permit digitization. I claim that this limitation necessarily restricts the sorts of information which digital devices are capable of generating. I also observe that the digital turn has inaugurated a novel mode of capitalist economic production based on the commodity of digital information. Thus, the increasing dependence of scientific authority on digital methods is also a concern for political economy. I argue that the reliance of scientific authority on digital data restricts the scope of scientific inquiry and makes ceaseless economic expansion appear both necessary and inevitable. It is therefore critical to indicate sites of research and practice where non-digitizable knowledge plays an essential role in informing scientific processes. Such an indication is not only pertinent to scientific research, but points up the ways in which data facilitate unregulated economic growth. Psychedelic drug research serves as my lens on digitality and political economy. Specifically, I explore the ways in which quantitative and computational methodologies have been used and critiqued by scientists who study the psychiatric benefit of psychedelics on human consciousness. Taking a historical approach, I demonstrate that psychedelic scientists have always faced the paradoxical task of translating the unusual and ineffable effects of psychedelics into discrete, measurable variables. This quandary has become more pronounced in the age of digital tool use, as such tools rest on the logic of metrical and discrete analysis. I suggest that the therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics can only be fully revealed by methodological techniques which explicitly address the epistemic limitations of digital data. Noting that the ascendance of Big Data is contemporaneous with a rise of interest in psychedelics as adjuncts to psychotherapy, I assert that psychedelic science provides abundant materials for a critique of the ostensive epistemic authority of digital data, which operates as an alibi for technologized capitalism.

My dissertation draws upon ancient political philosophy (Plato and Aristotle) and 20th century hermeneutic thought (Heidegger and Gadamer) to argue that our judgment and understanding is always “situated” within a world, or horizon, shaped by the projects, practices, and traditions in which we are engaged. This means that judgment never starts from scratch. The exercise of judgment, in evaluating competing arguments in politics or law, in trying to understand a philosophical text, in deliberating about how to act in this or that circumstance, is always informed by preconceptions and commitments that we have not justified in advance. In this sense, our judgment is always “prejudiced.” But contrary to a familiar way of thinking, the prejudicial aspect of judgment is not some regrettable limitation. Certain prejudices, I argue, can actually enable good judgment rather than hinder it. The primary goal of the dissertation is to clarify the concept of prejudice and to draw out its implications for politics, ethics, and philosophy. What does it mean to reason from within the world? What room does such reasoning allow for human agency and political reform? By drawing upon Heidegger’s notion of “Being-in-the-World” and Gadamer’s notion of “horizon,” I develop the idea that our life circumstance is an intelligible perspective that informs our deliberation and judgment. Moreover, our life perspective provides the basis for a kind of situated agency. After elaborating the situated conception of understanding, I show that it is implicit in Aristotle’s notion of practical wisdom (phronesis) and in Plato’s notion of dialectic. My goal is to bring out a link that is often overlooked between their philosophy and 20th century hermeneutic thought. By reading each in light of the other, we gain a deeper understanding of what it means to reason from within the perspective of our lives.

This dissertation examines the scope and limitations of the re-appropriation of the term barbarism by modern Jewish intellectuals in conversation with Third World social movements. Emmanuel Lévinas is my paradigmatic example of this re-appropriation, as his Talmudic interpretations illuminate this process, and his work is located on the axis of the encounter between Jewish and decolonial thinking. I contend that Lévinas follows a classic line of modern European interpreters who expressed their discomfort with the description of the Jewish people as barbaric. While this discomfort can be traced within this orthodox interpretation of Lévinas, I argue that his particular solution for the problem can only be explained by a more heterodox exploration. Lévinas’ positive re-appropriation of the term is part of contextual conversations that he sustained with other peoples characterized as barbarians (i.e. Third World decolonial theorists). While this re-appropriation was originally conceived in order to establish an East-East revolutionary conversation between Eastern European rabbinical interpreters and other radical Eastern projects (i.e. Maghrebi Marxism) it became an East-South decolonial conversation between Jewish and Afro-Caribbean/Latino-American intellectuals. This conversation, however, ultimately challenges the apologetic Jewish re-appropriation of exteriority in the concert of multiple barbarians. I explore the limitations of Jewish thought to engage with this community and cross from an apologetic to a critical barbarism. This dissertation, in conclusion, seeks to make an original contribution in the interrelation between Jewish and post-colonial studies. I aim to do so by first, demonstrating that the Jewish return to classical sources is historically and conceptually a decolonial counter-narrative that was influenced by (and in turn influenced) Third World discourses; second, explaining the reasons and consequences of the persistence of Jewish imagery and influences in Third World decolonial theory; third, exploring the limits of Jewish thinking and the benefits of the expansion of Jewish apologetical dialogues into barbaric critical conversations. And finally, challenging most contemporary scholarship in modern Jewish philosophy, which holds that Jewish thought and the modern re-reading of its sources can only be understood in the context of Western consciousness.

The marks I make in clay have different characteristics, and the physical mark of one’s fingertips or visual record of the hand is personal and intimate. This visible activity is the evidence of my constant presence and control within each object. Its repetitive meditation produces a private relief from my persistent anxieties. This exploration for me is not only visual, but also physical. This is the start of my infatuation with the idea of pattern. It has its own discrete visual language and modes of communication; and through my research I am developing a method of intercommunication.