Les sciences des religions acceptèrent l’universalité de la religion comme une prémisse indéniable dès sa fondation. Néanmoins, certaines réserves peuvent être émises. Cette thèse poursuit la problématisation de l’universalité de la religion, entamée par un groupe d’auteurs de la critical religion, et oriente la réflexion sur les conditions d’intelligibilité de cette croyance par l’entremise d’une analyse discursive déconstructiviste contextualisant l’universalité de la religion dans son épistémè. Plus précisément, cette thèse propose que la croyance en l’universalité de la religion soit supportée par des réseaux de croyances métaphysiques et ontologiques. La déconstruction des conditions d’intelligibilité du concept de l’universalité, juxtaposée à celle de la réification de la religion, expose des jeux de langage délimités et circonscrits par une ontologie moderne. Ces jeux de langage ontologiques sont déployés par des démarcations radicales où des séries dichotomiques, le sujet et l’objet par exemple, circonscrivent les discours dans une clôture métaphysique. Bref, cette thèse déconstruit le signifié transcendantal « religion » et expose les conditions d’intelligibilité de l’universalité de la religion, c’est-à-dire les jeux de langage ontologiques modernes étroitement tissés et calqués sur l’ontologie classique où les discours auxquels la grande majorité des approches en sciences des religions adhèrent puisent leur intelligibilité.

How forgivable is a musicological text on deconstruction two decades after its assimilation by the other "humanities" disciplines? Moreover, how forgivable is a discipline as a whole which has allowed one of the most challenging aspects of post-war critical theory to pass it by to this extent? In no other field are Laing's remarks more likely to resonate today than that of critical musicology. Even the adoption of the critical epithet itself is a relatively recent phenomenon. However, it is indicative of an emergent desire for musicology to finally engage with contemporary critical discourse in general. Such a call has been made from "outside" the profession by cultural critic Edward Said, who calls for an end to "the generally cloistral and reverential, not to say deeply insular, habits in writing about music." [Musical Flaborations, p.58] From "within" the field, Susan McClary laments that the crucial critical debates are "almost entirely absent from traditional musicology." [Feminine Endings, p.54] Likewise, what is increasingly unforgivable according to Ruth Solie is "our customary methodological behindhandedness [sic]" [Musicology & Difference, p.3]. Various routes away from the methodological backwaters have been suggested. For instance, in a conference paper in 1984, Richard Middleton defined a twofold approach which appears to combine aspects of structuralism and Marxism. Middleton called firstly for a move in to "semiology, broadly defined and stressing the social situation of signifying practise: this should take over from traditional formal analysis." [quoted in Shepherd, Music as Social Text, p.209] Secondly, this should be supplemented with an "historical sociology of the whole musical field, stressing critical comparison of divergent sub-codes of the 'common musical competence': this should take over from liberal social histories of music" [ibid., p.209] As a method for introducing this new musicological mode, Middleton recommends the inclusion of popular music as a field of study. Indeed, his implication is that such a challenge to the classical hegemony would naturally entail a move towards this twofold approach, and would by itself open up "a golden opportunity to develop a critical musicology" [Studying Popular Music, p.123]. In this sense, an expansion of the field of study could lead to a necessary adoption of new methodologies.

Magíster en Ciencias de la Ingeniería, Mención Matemáticas Aplicadas. Ingeniero Civil Matemático / En este trabajo se estudia un sistema de partículas cuya dinámica está determinada por mecanismos de ramificación y selección. Cada una de las $N\in \mathbb{N}$ partículas del sistema espera un tiempo exponencial de tasa $\tau > 0$ para generar un nuevo individuo posicionado, relativo al padre, según una medida de probabilidad $\mu$ en $\R$. Inmediatamente después de un evento de ramificación se elimina la partícula que está más a la izquierda dejando la cantidad de individuos constate. Si $\max x^N(t)$ es la posición de la partícula de más a la derecha a tiempo $t\geq 0$ entonces bajo ciertas hipótesis sobre $\mu$ se prueba que $\frac{\max x^N(t)}{t} \stackrel{t\to\infty}{\longrightarrow} v_N $ c.s., donde $v_N$ es una constante determinista, y que $v_N\nearrow v < \infty$, donde $v$ es la velocidad de la partícula de más a la derecha del sistema anterior pero sin el mecanismo de selección. El resultado principal de esta tesis determina una cota para la velocidad de convergencia de $v_N$ a $v$. Específicamente se prueba que $\liminf_{N\to\infty }(v - v_N)(\log N)^2 \geq C$ donde $C$ es una constante explícita dependiente de la transformada de Laplace de $\mu$. Finalmente se estudia un sistema similar a tiempo discreto y se exploran extensiones para el caso en que entre tiempos de ramificación las partículas se mueven según un proceso de Lévy.

This thesis presents possibilities of meaning and communication in the light of the deconstructive thinking of Jacques Derrida. The central claim of the thesis is that meaning and communication are not only possible in deconstructive thinking but that their complex and contradictory relationship with one another is at the heart of that thinking. Deconstruction will be posited as an applied understanding of the generative (that is, lived) processes of meaning and communication. Deconstruction, the thesis argues, is not, as has hitherto been suggested, a process which undermines or negates the possibility of meaning or communication. Rather, the thesis concludes that provisional possibilities of meaning are contextually resigned acts of faith, whilst faith in the impossibility of future communication is the sense of faith. Where meaning stops and communication begins is where deconstruction's faith in impossibility makes that future possible. The thesis highlights six specific contexts within which meaning and communication are provisionally and generatively explored: Derrida's writing on meaning and communication; Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy's meaningful and communicative congruities; S0ren Kierkegaard's impossible marriages; John Cowper Powys's 'marriage'; the 'realities within reality' of the 'Stonehenge' chapter of Powys's A Glastonbury Romance; and, the author's own conceptions of 'act of faith' and 'sense of faith' employed in line with the previous contexts read through John Llewelyn's 'imagination'. These six contexts are underpinned by five principal questions: what is communication? what is meaning? who or what communicates? who or what means? and, where does meaning stop and communication begin?

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

This paper will seek to provide a detailed analysis of the creative and technical elements of the filmmaking process as they pertain to the thesis project, Notes on Forgiveness. Attention will be given to the conceptual framework of the project, specifically the genre the film seeks to work through and beyond, the theoretical aspects of the feminist gaze, and the post-modern elements that were initially incorporated into the screenwriting process. Further, details will be provided on the pre-production and production phases of the project, including creative aspects such as the cinematography, production design, sound design, and technology. A discussion of the logistical aspects, such as budget constraints, insurance concerns, and contract negotiations, will likewise be provided, as they constituted a large aspect of the production timetable. Throughout all of these discussions, analysis will be provided on the implementation of the original plot directives described in the screenwriting process.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Filosofía mención Epistemología / No autorizada su publicación a texto completo, según petición de su autor / La tesis plantea un examen en torno al cuasi-concepto de «sobrevida» (survie) en Jacques Derrida. En tal examen, se propone que la “sobrevida” tiene la estructura del temprano concepto de “huella” (trace) y que se implica, políticamente, con lo que nuestro autor alrededor de los noventas llama “lógica espectral” o “fantología”. Que tal implicación sea de carácter político, quiere decir que en la obra de Derrida no habría un giro ético-político a partir de los años ochentas o noventas sino lo que él llama, en Parages, una variación de “motivos más que de temas”. Considerando esta variación derridiana de motivos, el desarrollo de la investigación involucra, por una parte, trazar líneas vinculantes entre el motivo de la “sobrevida” y la cuestión de la “escritura” y la “huella” bajo lo que se podría denominar la deconstrucción del presente viviente, a partir de sus primeros trabajos respecto de la fenomenología de Edmund Husserl. Por último, se propone cierta política de la sobrevida, que, más allá del presente viviente y con la intensidad de lo imposible, atañe a la lógica de la espectralidad o fantología (hantologie), desarrollada en sus textos más tardíos. En dicha vinculación se propone, ante la pertinencia política de la afirmación de la vida, desplegar el concepto de “sobrevida” como la operación que desconstruye la forma fenomenológico-trascendental de denominar lo vivo de la vida. Bajo el índice de la “huella” que desbarata cualquier plenitud o cualquier distinción entre presencia/ausencia, la operación que denominamos “política de la sobrevida” consistiría en un sobrevivir que, como escribe Derrida en Espectros de Marx, está “más allá de la vida o la muerte efectiva, más allá del presente vivo en general”

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy / In 1990, Derrida added an introduction to his earliest long work, his student mémoire of 1954, which explained that he found in that work a “law” that had continued to impose itself across his oeuvre. This dissertation investigates selected works of the early Derrida, from that first student work of 1954 up to segments of Of Grammology, to demonstrate how Derrida’s “law” developed at least as far as his early system in 1967, as a basis for approach to Derrida’s overall oeuvre. / XL2018

Thesis advisor: Richard Kearney / The argument of this dissertation is that futurity is a central theme of phenomenology, because it is central to a proper understanding of two pillars of the phenomenological method, namely, constituting consciousness and intentionality. The centrality of futurity to phenomenology first manifests itself in all three levels of Husserl's constituting consciousness via the three-fold distinction within futurity between protention, expectation, and anticipation. This analysis of futurity within constituting consciousness reveals that the object of futurity must bear a necessary relation to our horizons of constitution, but an analysis of anticipation itself suggests that futurity cannot be solely contained within those horizons. In turning to that which opens the subject to what is beyond its own horizons of constitution, we see that futurity enables Levinas to insert a level of passive-ication into intentionality, and thereby into ethics and constituting consciousness as well. The consequences of this for phenomenology manifest themselves most clearly in Derrida's parallel analyses of futurity (via the notions of differance and the messianic) and the promise. Through this latter we see the fundamental necessity of both constituting consciousness and intentionality for the phenomenological subject. The dissertation concludes with a brief examination of how these conclusions might apply to the philosophy of religion via an analysis of the question of the possibility or impossibility of the divine. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

In recent years, human rights discourse has become increasingly intertwined in the justifications presented for Western wars and interventions. The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the problems implicated in human rights based justifications of war and violence. To achieve this aim, this work makes three primary contributions to International Relations scholarship. First, the thesis provides a robust critique of Michael Walzer's conception of ethical responsibility and his rights based justification of war. Second, I describe an alternative understanding of ethical responsibility that follows from the work of Jacques Derrida, ethics as response. And third, I demonstrate, thorough a reading of the 2003 Iraq War, how ethics as response can provide us with a better understanding of what it means to act ethically in times of war. The central argument presented in this thesis is that rights based justifications of war are predicated upon the belief that moral rules of conduct help us to resolve questions of ethical responsibility in war: moral rules tell us what the right thing to do is and show us how we can act in a morally justified way. This thesis argues that moral rules narrow our understanding of ethical responsibility by promoting adherence to the law rather than responsibility to other people. In contrast, ethics as response provides a model of ethical action that denies the possibility of satisfaction and, thereby, advocates sustained engagements with the consequences of violent action. Ultimately, the idea of ethics as response calls our attention to the uncertainty and uncontrollability implicated in violent actions justified in the name of human rights.