This thesis focuses on the figure of an abyss residing at the heart of metaphysics, and argues that thinking in light of its destabilising connotations opens up the possibility of attempting to take responsibility for the violence immanent to any and all politico-philosophical positions. It argues that this abyss represents a void or lack always already underpinning the attempt to posit universal or essential premises, and that it is precisely this lack which may be mobilised to unsettle the totalising claims of ontology. It demonstrates that the abyss occupies a central space in the political philosophy of Leo Strauss and Jacques Derrida, positing that the attempt to secure against it, qua Strauss, precludes the possibility of gesturing towards the taking of responsibility for the violence inherent to politico-philosophical projects. It traces the ethico-political implications of this response through a series of interventions enacted by eight followers of Strauss surrounding the recent Bush administration in the spheres of intelligence production, think tanks, and the media in the context of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, arguing that this securitising logic reflects an ontological totalisation which underpins the totalising politics they propound. It then shows that operating in light of the implications of the abyss, following Derrida, creates a space within which the imposition of totalising ontological claims may be resisted. Mobilising a conceptualisation of 'Deconstruction and/as Resistance', it exposes three assumptions underpinning the Straussian response, the Schmittean friend/enemy binary, the notion of the 'regime', specifically in terms of the opposition of 'tyranny' and democracy residing at its core, and the concept of justice as amounting to the 'reason of the strongest'. It is the intention of this thesis to call for an endless resistance to the imposition of totalising narratives and principles in the hope that the violence of these may be subverted, and the violence which inheres in any and all projects be taken responsibility for.

The WM sector in Nairobi is a failure. Collection rates are deplorable, regulations go unenforced and the municipal landfill is desecrating the environment and killing neighbouring slum dwellers. This paper focuses on the exclusion and marginalization of the slums adjacent to Nairobi’s landfill, Korogocho and Dandora, and uses a post-structuralist theoretical framework to conceptualize a just response to these exclusions and theorize an inclusive approach to waste policy in Nairobi. Building on the work of Jacques Derrida, I present a ‘deconstructive ethic’ for development that is dedicated to mitigating and overcoming the production of alterity, and reintegrating excluded communities and knowledges into the sites of knowledge and policy creation. This ethic is used to formulate a five-part response to the conditions of exclusion experienced in Korogocho and Dandora, and to engage these populations in finding participatory solutions to the city’s waste problem.

L’objectif poursuivi dans cette thèse est de rendre compte de l’émergence, dans la réflexion philosophique de l’après-guerre, d’une préoccupation pour les questions de l’affect et de la corporéité. Nous abordons cette orientation affective et sensible de la pensée avec les œuvres des philosophes français Emmanuel Levinas et Jacques Derrida, qui l’ont infléchie dans le sens d’une prise en compte de la fragilité et de la précarité de l’existence. Cela donne lieu à deux pensées incarnées. Le corps est chez Levinas à la fois ce qui pose dans l’être et permet de se vouer à autrui. Chez Derrida, c’est l’écriture qui fait sortir hors de soi, venant espacer et différer l’identité. Le défi sera de montrer que l’écriture relève, elle aussi, du registre de la corporéité. Les deux pensées reconnaissent ainsi au corps une place importante dans l’élaboration d’une nouvelle conceptualité qui se produit aux interstices de la vie et de l’œuvre. On a affaire dans les deux cas à des écritures vivantes, poétiques, métaphoriques, qui affectent le lecteur et ouvrent ainsi des avenues nouvelles pour penser les questions éthiques et politiques. Les deux philosophes engagent de la sorte la métaphysique et l’ontologie dans un mouvement, allant du même vers l’autre, et faisant du sentir et du pâtir le lieu même d’une nouvelle expérience philosophique. Nous en rendons compte en termes d’une orientation matérialiste de la pensée ainsi que d’une notion de subjectivité conçue, à travers le prisme de l’hospitalité, comme ouverture à l’autre.

This question usually arises out of Derridean deconstruction: what is the relationship between writing and death? This dissertation, however, explores Jacques Derrida's evocation of the living-dead for purposes of theorizing what might be thought of as Derrida's "poetics of the crypt." The first section, "The First Partition: Without the Door," proposes the term "cryptomimesis" to describe how, in Derrida's writing, (the) "crypt" functions as the model, method and theory of a formal poetics based upon the fantasy of incorporation. Cryptomimesis is a writing practice that leads one to understand language and writing in spatial terms of the crypt-a contradictory topography of inside/outside. Such writing also produces a radical psychological model of the individual and collective "self" configured in terms of phantoms, haunting and (refused) mourning. This dissertation also argues that Derrida's poetics of the crypt exist in a certain relationship of correspondence with the Gothic and examines how Derrida's writing intersects or "folds" into that genre, taking as a premise that each is already inhabited, even haunted, by the other. Sections such as "'Darling,' It Said": Making a Contract With the Dead," and "The Question of theTomb," develop this notion of "correspondence" by examining a set of texts written by two American Gothic writers. The discussion posits that the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King give insight into Derrida's preoccupation with inheritance and legacy while illuminating his concern, in terms of writing, with the uncanny institution of architecture. This dissertation attempts to theorize Derrida's writing practice in spatial terms by drawing upon Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's theory of the phantom and the crypt. It demonstrates how cryptomimesis involves the production of an uncanny imaginary space by playing with thetic referentiality. Final sections, "An Art of Chicanery" and "Inscribing the Wholly Other: No Fixed Address," develop the notion that to suspend the thetic relation is to confound (classical) distinctions between subject and object or "self" and "other." Above all, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate how, in Derrida's work, cryptomimesis is about writing the other and how such writing, predicated upon revenance and haunting, problematizes notions of the "subject," "autobiography," and "transference" and, therefore, problematizes textuality itself. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

"The Mestizo Consciousness" is a research based on the work of the Mexican-American researcher Glória Anzaldúa and her definition of people who live between the borders of the dualism of society, whether they are borders of race, physical borders between countries, moral borders or political, linguistic or sexual borders. By first analysing the place of the mestizo, we will follow the development of this "non-place" from Alzaldúa onwards and the way in which it affects the individual and society. To do this, we will draw on the thought and experience of the authors we have called upon, such as Alzandúa herself, Derrida in "The Monolingualism of the Other" and the life and philosophy of the indigenous Yanomami people, starting with Davi Kopenawa's "The Fall of Heaven". We will show that dualism has been and continues to be present in our society, how it directly affects the life and philosophy of each individual and we will think about the empowerment of those who are outside this model, which passes less through the recognition of this dualism, than through the affirmation, acceptance and admiration of each characteristic that defines the individual in his or her difference. KEY WORDS: ANZALDÚA, DERRIDA, KOPENAWA, METIZA, CONSCIOUSNESS, DECOLONISATION, BORDERLANDS

Modern understandings of nostalgia sharply distinguish it from memory and often construe its relationship to the past as reactionary, fanciful, or retrograde. This dissertation reconsiders that valuation by engaging the formative sources that contribute to philosophical understandings of nostalgia and provide resources for thinking it otherwise. It reexamines time and memory in continental philosophy and U.S. cinema to argue that nostalgia does important work often overlooked in present conceptions, work that repositions relations with the past to generative, animating effect. The project analyzes the temporal issues nostalgia elicits, highlights its affective contours, and repositions its power to mediate and rework memory. It maintains that the role nostalgia plays in human experience is more propulsive than regressive, making it more attuned to time’s tensions and demands than previously thought. Chapter one narrates the history of nostalgia, beginning with the work of Johannes Hofer. Origins in medical nosology establish a diagnostic frame of reference that grounds nostalgia’s reception as pathology while also revealing its persistent instabilities. Martin Heidegger and, especially, Jacques Derrida bring the temporal vectors of those instabilities into sharper focus. Chapter two shows how Heidegger’s work provides a useful understanding of time and moods, but ultimately remains tethered to a nostalgia for presence (nostos). Chapter three brings Derrida’s thinking on time and the trace into conversation with psychoanalysis to isolate a more capacious approach, one that indulges nostalgic desire but also frustrates it (algos). The remaining chapters turn to film and develop an understanding of the moving image based on its ability to capture passing time, the eminent object of modern nostalgic experience. Chapter four engages critical literature on the uses of nostalgia in film and reconsiders George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973), a pivotal work often reproached by critics and scholars. Chapter five advances a close reading of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011) and his estranged relationship with philosophy. That relationship informs his work and often takes nostalgic recollection as an orienting concern. The film in question situates nostalgia as a propulsive screen affect that facilitates the work of mourning in the wake of loss and discontinuity. The dissertation concludes by sketching out horizons for future research and turning to insights contained in Augustine’s Confessions that further illustrate the form of nostalgia explored throughout.

Denna text kommer att kretsa kring min komposition Historien om en ensemble en dirigent och en Bellman, det filosofiska begreppet dekonstruktion och de tankar som uppstod när jag fördjupade min kunskap om detta filosofiska tankegods, vilket resulterade i en mängd idéer och ledde i sin tur fram till kompositionen Historien om en ensemble en dirigent och en Bellman. Som inledning till denna text kommer jag börja med att göra en kort presentation av min tolkning av begreppet dekonstruktion med utgångspunkt i texten Den okända texten av Anders Olsson. I efterföljande kapitel kommer jag att presentera min dekonstruktiva läsning av konsertformen där jag talar om de tecken jag anser ryms i det begreppet. Denna läsning ligger sedan som grund till min fortsatta diskussion om främst min egen musik och hur jag applicerat den i Historien om en ensemble en dirigent och en Bellman. Syftet med denna text är att ge exempel på hur mitt dekonstruktiva förhållningssätt kan öppna upp nya vägar inom komposition genom att lyfta blicken från enbart det ljudande resultatet och även ta i beaktande det performativa skeendet i rummet – detta för att förhoppningsvis få en tilltänkt publik att tvingas aktivera deras lyssnade och perception genom både inbjudande och subversiva gester och tekniker. / <p>Till dokumentationen hör även följande verk: Historien om en ensemble en dirigent och en Bellman</p>

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This interdisciplinary dissertation, The Rhetoric of Wolves, attempts to answer a simple, yet broad question: What do we talk about when we talk about wolves? While even the “we” here is contentious, as there are many perspectives and positions through which the wolf is figured, there are also many kinds of wolves, but no “real” wolf. That is, this dissertation takes seriously the contention that has recently arisen in the environmental humanities and animal studies through the late work of Jacques Derrida and others that figurations of “the animal” matter, not only for multi-species relations and coexistence, but for how the subject and polity are constructed and normalized. As these discourses put “the animal” into question, that is, how the animal functions as a discursive resource in socio-political issues, so too does this dissertation question how “the wolf” functions discursively in contemporary socio-political issues in North America. To address these questions, this dissertation utilizes a Foucaultian-inspired genealogical analysis of the discourse around “the wolf” understand how rhetoric about wolves coalesces into what I call “rhetorical assemblages” that vie to become regimes of truth that are used to attempt to settle the identity of the wolf and human-“animal” relations through the productive capacity of various power/knowledges that are historically and materially grounded. To do so, this dissertation examines and analyzes the rhetoric of a series of case studies in North America where figurations of wolves produce “the wolf” variously as man-hunting machines, outlaws that disrupt the natural order, illegal immigrants threatening family and tradition, and always already potential terrorists who must be productively managed through a biopolitics that attempts to make good the expectations of the dominant neoliberal frame of contemporary social and political life. / Graduate / 2023-08-15