In this thesis, I use a close reading of the silent films of Charlie Chaplin to examine a question of listening posed by Jean-Luc Nancy, “Is listening something of which philosophy is capable” (Nancy 2007:1)? Drawing on the work of Nancy, Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Spivak, I consider a claim that philosophy has failed to address the topic of listening because a logocentric tradition claims speech as primary. In response to Derrida’s deconstruction of logocentrism, Nancy complicates the problem of listening by distinguishing between <em>l’e´coute</em> and <em>l’entente</em>. <em>L’e´coute </em>is an attending to and answering the demand of the other and <em>l’entente</em> is an understanding directed inward toward a subject. Nancy could deconstruct an undervalued position of <em>l’e´coute</em>, making listening essential to speech. I argue, Nancy rather asks what kind of listening philosophy is capable of. To examine this question, I focus on the peculiarly dialogical figure derived from Chaplin that communicates meaning without using speech. This discussion illustrates how Chaplin, in the role of a silent figure, listens to himself (<em>il s’e´coute</em>) as other. Chaplin’s listening is Nancean resonance, a movement in which a subject refers back to itself as another subject, in constant motion of spatial and temporal non-presence. For Nancy, listening is a self’s relationship to itself, but without immediate self-presence. Moving in resonance, Chaplin makes the subject as other as he refers back to himself as other. I argue that Chaplin, through silent dialogue with himself by way of the other, makes his listening listened to. Chaplin refused to make his character speak because he believed speech would change the way in which his work would be listened to. In this way, Chaplin makes people laugh by making himself understood (<em>se fait entendre</em>) as he makes himself listened to (<em>se fait e´couter</em>). In answer to Nancy’s question, I conclude philosophy is capable of meeting the demand of listening as both <em>l’entente</em> and <em>l’e´coute</em> when it listens as Chaplin listens.

Student Number : 9803321X - MA Dissertation - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / The primary aim of this dissertation is to trace the ways in which Yvonne Vera’s final two novels, Butterfly Burning and The Stone Virgins, provide a discursive space for the enunciation of subaltern histories, which have been silenced in dominant socio-political discourse. I argue that it is through the deployment of ‘poetic language’ that Vera’s prose is able to negotiate the voicing of these suppressed narratives. In exploring these questions, I endeavour to locate Vera’s texts within the theoretical debates in postcolonial scholarship which question the ethical limitations of representing oppressed subjects in the Third World, as articulated by Gayatri Spivak, in particular. Following Spivak’s claim that subalternity is effaced in hegemonic discourse, I focus on the ways in which Vera’s inventive prose works to bring the figure of the subaltern back into signification. In order to elucidate how this dynamic operates in both novels, I employ Julia Kristeva’s psycholinguistic theory of ‘poetic language’. I argue that Kristeva’s understanding of literary practice as a transgressive modality, which is able to unsettle the silencing mechanisms of dominant monologic discourse, critically illuminates the subversive value of Vera’s fictional style for marginalised subaltern narratives.

<p>The following inquiry begins with one simple question: who is the margin? In other words, what is the referent of the term margin? Is it possible for language to capture connotations of an intended and supposed reality beyond its own limits? My supposition is that margin is a valuable concept to critical studies of the hegemonic order and dominant culture in various contexts. It is therefore necessary to expose the term itself to a critical analysis by attempting to trace its position in different discourses. The intention is to illustrate that the term margin is not merely an abstraction, confined within the framework of intricate theoretical rhetoric.</p><p>In a deconstructive analysis of Gender Trouble by Judith Butler and Can the Subaltern Speak? by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, based on the work of Jacques Derrida, I study the significance of the term margin and explore how the use or non-use of concrete examples affects the reception of both the term margin and ultimately the text as a whole.</p><p>The study of these two texts reveals that some of the very same critique raised by Butler and Spivak is itself applicable to the authors’ own theory production. Consequently, the authority of Butler and Spivak is put to the test through deconstructive analysis by disclosing the discrepancies between concrete examples, the authors’ philosophical stance as well as statements and positions found in other examples of their intellectual work.</p>

The following inquiry begins with one simple question: who is the margin? In other words, what is the referent of the term margin? Is it possible for language to capture connotations of an intended and supposed reality beyond its own limits? My supposition is that margin is a valuable concept to critical studies of the hegemonic order and dominant culture in various contexts. It is therefore necessary to expose the term itself to a critical analysis by attempting to trace its position in different discourses. The intention is to illustrate that the term margin is not merely an abstraction, confined within the framework of intricate theoretical rhetoric. In a deconstructive analysis of Gender Trouble by Judith Butler and Can the Subaltern Speak? by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, based on the work of Jacques Derrida, I study the significance of the term margin and explore how the use or non-use of concrete examples affects the reception of both the term margin and ultimately the text as a whole. The study of these two texts reveals that some of the very same critique raised by Butler and Spivak is itself applicable to the authors’ own theory production. Consequently, the authority of Butler and Spivak is put to the test through deconstructive analysis by disclosing the discrepancies between concrete examples, the authors’ philosophical stance as well as statements and positions found in other examples of their intellectual work.

This study has two aims and addresses two areas of investigation. The first aim is to examine, in four novels and their textual worlds, what role is played by collective self-images and essentialist identities in maintaining power structures in regard to gender, class, norms for mental functions, and ethnicity. Whether, and if so, how, the novel’s deconstruction of language and images can function as resistance to hegemonic oppression? What does the encounter between the privileged collective and the marginalized look like in the novel, and what happens in this encounter? The project’s second aim is to probe what criticism of, and what strategies for resistance to, various power structures reading can provide. To what extent is it possible to speak of responsibility for, and in, the reading of fictional works? What role is played by the (un)expected and the conditionality in the poetical novel’s ethical demands on the reader? What might reading as an ethical practice mean and entail? The dual aim situates this dissertation in an interdisciplinary field between ethics, literary studies and aesthetics. In this study despair is the fundament on which the ethical reader stands to approach literature. Rather than discovering meanings, finding examples, or experiencing empathy, it is being engaged in the conditions determined by suffering and injustice that constitutes ethical reading. The novels Drömfakulteten (The Dream Faculty) by Sara Stridsberg, Hevonen häst (Hevonen Horse) by Annika Korpi, Montecore by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, and Personliga pronomen (Personal Pronouns) by Daniel Sjölin comprise the material for the study. They are analysed in terms of deconstructive hermeneutics. Theories brought to bear are primarily Gayatri Spivak’s post-colonial and Emmanuel Levinas’ phenomenological thinking about ethics, together with ideas from, among others, Derek Attridge, Judith Butler, and Sara Ahmed. The readings of the novels are done via four points of entry: identity, the body, the human, and the post-political, as part of the project’s work process, with each reading leading to new questions and critical interventions. The analysis points to a responsibility in relation to identity, a practice where oneself is shifted and transformed. This responsibility also encompasses accountability for the normative orders that need to be changed. Literary projects per se cannot achieve this, but they can be read as a stab at resistance, material for the reader to elaborate upon. This responsibility is an ethical practice that is not completed, that has uncertainty inscribed in its very essence, and that is reinvigorated with each new reading.

Originating from a disenfranchisement with the contemporary definition and realisation of Westernised architecture as a commodity and product, this thesis seeks to explore alternative examples of positive socio-spatial practice and agency. These alternative spatial practices and methodologies are drawn from participatory and grass-roots development agency in informal settlements and contexts of economic absence, most notably in the global South. This thesis explores whether such examples can be interpreted as practical realisations of key theoretical advocacies for positive social space that have emerged in the context of post-Second World-War capitalism. The principal methodological framework utilises two differing trajectories of spatial discourse. Firstly, Henri Lefebvre and Doreen Massey as formative protagonists of Western spatial critique, and secondly, John F. C. Turner and Nabeel Hamdi as key advocates of participatory development practice in informal settlements. These two research trajectories are notably separated by geographical, economic and political differentiations, as well as conventional disciplinary boundaries. However by undertaking a close textual reading of these discourses this thesis critically re-contextualises the socio-spatial methodologies of participatory development practice, observing multiple theoretical convergences and provocative commonalities. This research proposes that by critically comparing these previously unconnected disciplinary trajectories certain similarities, resonances and equivalences become apparent. These resonances reveal comparable critiques of choice, value, and identity which transcend the gap between such differing theoretical and practical engagements with space. Subsequently, these thematic resonances allow this research to critically engage with further appropriate surrounding discourses, including Marxist theory, orientalism, post- structural pluralism, development anthropology, post-colonial theory and subaltern theory. 5 In summary, this thesis explores aspects of Henri Lefebvre's and Doreen Massey's urban and spatial theory through a close textual reading of key texts from their respective discourses. This methodology provides a layered analysis of post-Marxist urban space, and an exploration of an explicit connection between Lefebvre and Massey in terms of the social production and multiplicity of space. Subsequently, this examination provides a theoretical framework from which to reinterpret and revalue the approaches to participatory development practice found in the writings and projects of John Turner and Nabeel Hamdi. The resulting comparative framework generates interconnected thematic trajectories of enquiry that facilitate the re-reading and critical reflection of Turner and Hamdi's development practices. Thus, selected Western spatial discourse acts as a critical lens through which to re-value the social, political and economical achievements of participatory development. Reciprocally, development practice methodologies are recognised as invaluable and provocative realisations of the socio-spatial qualities that Western spatial discourse has long advocated for, and yet have remained predominantly unrealised in the global North.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak gilt als eine der Gründungsfiguren des postkolonialen Feminismus. Ihr Profil als postkoloniale Theoretikerin gewann sie mit der Veröffentlichung ihres Werkes In Other Worlds – Essays in Cultural Politics. In ihren Texten weist Spivak auf Widersprüche innerhalb der Nationen des Globalen Südens hin. Sie fokussiert, u. a. mit Hilfe der analytischen Konzepte Repräsentation (representation) und Subalternität (subaltern), insbesondere auf die problematische Rolle von Geschlechter- und Klassenverhältnissen in postkolonialen Widerstandsbewegungen, auf den Gegensatz zwischen den indischen Eliten und den unteren Bevölkerungsschichten und auf die gewaltsame Unterdrückung von Frauen des Südens.