This thesis is an enquiry into the Marquis de Sade, his writing and the perversion known as sadism. The narrower focus of this thesis investigates the problem of the meeting of violence and language in Sade's novels and the implications for cinema. The procedure has been to adopt the Critical and Clinical approach to philosophy that brings together both the literary style of Sade and the clinical symptoms of sadism. This method canvasses a number of Sades novels to consider the psychoanalytical definition of sadism before moving on to discuss the expression of sadism through language. Finally, the model of sadism and language is then applied to a number of films to discuss how violence within the context of sadism functions through language within cinema. The general results show how speech and action can be defined as equivalent forms of sadian violence when expressed through language in both literature and cinema. This occurs, furthermore, through the transcendent model of violence where both speech and action refer to a higher order of violence and this is put at the service of the senses through language. The major conclusions reached suggest that language in literature and cinema can be a demonstrative form of the higher order of violence. Sadism draws out the violence and excess of the world by reflecting it within language. In doing so, violence is designated with a quality of the erotic through this excess. Finally, each act of violence within literature and cinema is an attempt to overcome taboos through transgression. The breaking of a taboo creates an amount of excess but also reinstates the taboo in what becomes an empty act of transgression. The excess is expressed through violence within language and deed according to a transcendent function of language in literature and cinema.

In what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze labelled Control Societies, mechanisms reminiscent of censorship – that is, restriction of information that administrators of power wish to regulate the spreading of – are present in the concept of copyright. This kind of censorship has theadvantage of not being scrutinized by public eyes in the way that the work of institutionalized censorship agencies such as the Swedish Statens Biografbyrå was. It is not unlikely that expanded possibilities for punishing anyone who spreads copyrighted material will result in larger and larger areas that may not be accessed, as the avoiding of conflict and repressive actions will emphasize the behaviour to take detours around information that is deemed taboo and therefore suspicious and dangerous. The ACTA trade agreement is one proposed tool for such extended possibilities for punishment. This essay does not however claim that copyright and censorship are the same – but rather that the institutional execution of power that was previously a matter of state censorship has a lot of similarities with current and prognosticated application of copyright laws by corporations. While claiming to protect the individual, the disciplinary power executed actually aims to protect the one executing it; the purpose of the power structure is to replicate itself.

This essay is reading the Swedish author Stig Larssons debut Autisterna [The Autists] (1979) in the light of Gérard Genettes narratology and the time philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. The focus of the essay is time and how it is seemingly dissolved. The essay maps out a chronology of the non-chronological novel and from there discusses the breaking up of the empirical time. The essay uses Deleuze to explore the time-image of the novel to see how it is built up in the text for example by literary anyspace-whatevers. Hence the title, Anytime-whatever. We see in the novel an anachronistic relationship between story and narrative which cuts through the episodes of the novel like a modernist film creating disconnected space and temporal sequences.

Taiwan had been colonized by different regimes and thus experienced several waves of immigration in history. Traditionally, there are two forms of writings in Taiwanese language (not Chinese language) --The Chinese character and the Romanized Taiwanese in different historical perspectives -- as a result , it can be problematic especially in its written form. The establishment of the newspaper Tâi-oân-hú-siâⁿ Kàu-hōe-pò which was founded in 1885 had gradually increased the works of Taiwanese literature. This research analyzes the writing problems of Taiwanese literature in the aspects of Epistemology and Aesthetics. It had different totalitarian rules in modern Taiwan have caused two big controversies in the ways of writing systems in Taiwanese literature. Along the controversies on Taiwanese language and its writings that I quoted, the thinking of the movement of ¡§consistency between speech and writing¡¨was originated from the modern Japanese literature, especially the viewpoint¡§inner man¡¨and¡§scene. On the other hand, language issues in European philosophy already has a very long tradition of reflection, which, at first appearance, considers of philosophy that language as merely a tool to represent thinking. After the linguistic turn and the rise of literature, European philosophy of thinking about language problems, has transformed the thinking about language problems from the appearance from the classical theory into the viewpoint that regards language as the material and the machine to my research. This research embarks from the idea of¡§consistency between speech and writing¡¨in the ¡§scene¡¨ regarding the epistemological mechanism, and the philosophy developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty as to body language, body language as an expression of ideas, reflecting on the perception and cognition mechanism of Taiwan philology system, whit which is formd during this ¡§abstract movement¡¨ . And is how the ¡§abstract movement¡¨ becomes as abstract machine? This research employed Gill Deleuze¡¦s concept of ¡§body without organs¡¨ and ¡§machine¡¨ to analyze the writing problems of Taiwanese literature. From the viewpoints of Deleuze and Guattari, the issue about written forms of Taiwanese literature can be considered as a progress from epistemological mechanism into the ¡§machine¡¨, and thus forms a virtual power of aesthetics.

In what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze labelled Control Societies, mechanisms reminiscent of censorship – that is, restriction of information that administrators of power wish to regulate the spreading of – are present in the concept of copyright. This kind of censorship has the advantage of not being scrutinized by public eyes in the way that the work of institutionalized censorship agencies such as the Swedish Statens Biografbyrå was. It is not unlikely that expanded possibilities for punishing anyone who spreads copyrighted material will result in larger and larger areas that may not be accessed, as the avoiding of conflict and repressive actions will emphasize the behaviour to take detours around information that is deemed taboo and therefore suspicious and dangerous. The ACTA trade agreement is one proposed tool for such extended possibilities for punishment. This essay does not however claim that copyright and censorship are the same – but rather that the institutional execution of power that was previously a matter of state censorship has a lot of similarities with current and prognosticated application of copyright laws by corporations. While claiming to protect the individual, the disciplinary power executed actually aims to protect the one executing it; the purpose of the power structure is to replicate itself.

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This study seeks to understand the forces initiating and sustaining colonialism, specifically the German colonial expansion in Africa. The history of this colonialism, and the relations between Germany and Africa, is difficult to understand holistically, given its complex and contentious nature. In order to best comprehend the composite interactions within the expansion of German control over Africa, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theory of deterritorialization will provide the interpretative framework. This analysis begins by grappling with the notion of deterritorialization and then relates the theory to the social, cultural, economic and political manifestations of German colonial expansion. By taking a broad perspective upon the diverse articulations of power in Africa, the multiple elements of colonial control and resistance are manifest. In conclusion, this study finds difference, syncretism and negotiation between German and African to determine the history of German colonialism in Africa.

This thesis investigates in which ways Samuel R. Delany’s novel Hogg challenge the discourse of normality as stipulated, supported and maintained by the capitalist Oedipal repression of desire. Drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the Anti-Oedipus, this thesis explores how Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of desire as a free and productive force can be seen as a disruptive element in a society that relies on repression of the subject for its stability. Furthermore, this thesis explores how the novel questions the understanding of civilisation being dependent on the individual’s submission to the Oedipus triangulation and in extension the Oedipal capitalist separation between the public and the private sphere. Ultimately, the main argument claims that Oedipal repression of desire only allows desire to invest in a restricted number of representations, making other identities than the heteronormative suspicious or invisible.  Hogg depicts a society where capitalism commodifies everything, and need the Oedipal subject to ensure its stability. The characters in the novel that do not subject themselves to the capitalist discourse escape the subjection to the Oedipal triangulation, and are thus free to invest their desire in any way they choose, primarily in non-heterosexual and salirophiliac activities. These characters can be seen as schizoid subjects that are constantly threatening to expose the fragility of the social structure by embodying a contrast to the hegemonic discourse and therefore constantly question its authority as main creator of reason and reality.

This study of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s first four published novels seeks to examine the manifestations of four different philosophical concepts in these works. Each novel will be taken as a primary example of Robbe-Grillet’s interrogation of either time, space, difference or repetition. The title of this work, ‘Philosophical Conceptions of Time, Space, Difference and Repetition in the Early Novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet’, as apparently uncomplicated as it is, is useful not only for directly implicating the topics to be examined, but also for what it does not directly allude to. By making reference neither to Robbe-Grillet’s involvement in the movement of the Nouveau Roman nor the theoretical ideas he developed, the title demonstrates one of the main approaches employed here; for Robbe-Grillet’s novels will be examined first and foremost for the textual qualities they exhibit, and will not be tested against the author’s statements, as is most often the case in studies of Robbe-Grillet. When examining these novels, we will thus neither support our study with quotations from Robbe-Grillet’s many interviews and public statements, nor concern ourselves with the apparent objectivity or subjectivity of the novels’ narrators, nor will we base our examinations of the philosophical concepts found in the novels on questions of subjectivity or objectivity. It will become clear throughout our work that Robbe-Grillet’s novels, particularly the early novels that are the focus of this work, have been very well researched and from many different perspectives, yet in spite of the proliferation of texts dealing with these novels certain standard readings have evolved that impinge on the advancement of our understanding of Robbe-Grillet’s complex works. We will argue that this is precisely because these readings actually negate the multiple interpretations that the novels demand and that these standardised readings therefore work as fixed central points around which almost all analyses of the novels revolve. It is thus the aim of this work to complicate these dominant readings by engaging with the ways in which the novels both offer and deny different interpretations, a strategy that ultimately results in the impossibility of a sole fixed reading. In choosing this approach to study the novels, we wish to concentrate solely on the non-representative aspects of these novels. That is to say, the novels will not be treated here, as they are by many critics, for the way they present themselves on the surface as merely concerned with an interrogation of narrative strategies, characterisation or with an application of Robbe-Grillet’s theoretical modus operandi. Rather we will argue that the texts simultaneously invite a deeper reflection on philosophical concepts. The possibility the novels offer to consider the four philosophical concepts that are the focus of this study will be remarked by the novels’ continual engagement with these ideas so as to suggest finally the opportunity of conceiving of these concepts in a literary discourse. Thus, the philosophical concepts which will be deployed in examining Robbe-Grillet’s novels aim to elucidate not strict equivalences between a given concept and its expression in the novel, but rather the ways in which the novels themselves can be seen to propose their own conceptions of these philosophical notions. Thus, each of these chapters will ostensibly deal with a particular philosophical notion, yet they can be seen to work towards a similar shared goal; for each section of this study will propose that it is impossible to isolate a single unifying thesis or central controlling identity through which the texts can be examined. Instead, we will suggest that the novels are governed by a logic of difference in itself, a philosophical notion which, as we will see throughout this work, operates outside of the notion of identity and which favours fluid, unstable and continuously evolving relationships of its constituent parts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Duquesne University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-118).