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This thesis concerns the practice of ‘psychogeography’ in London, England, and the ways in which psychogeographic writings provoke in city-dwellers an acute sense of disorientation, as though the everyday were otherworldly. My study is intended as a response to Guy Debord’s claim that ‘psychogeography’ investigates “the precise laws […] of the geographical environment” on “the emotions and behaviour of individuals” (Debord qtd. in Coverley 88): any revolutionary enterprise must point to the future, the very notion of which can only be imprecise and un-empirical – psychogeography is not necessarily an exception. I argue that for Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair, the psychogeographic imperative is rather to imagine the implosion of Londonscape as it is well known, since only spatial structures that thus unravel may offer mystical insights that are, as yet, unspoiled by neoliberal/Thatcherite politics and the accompanying ambition to re-vamp English history in a nostalgic light. This study presents psychogeography not simply as a strategy of political resistance but as a visceral and metaphysical experience; it draws upon SF theories of worlding and the philosophical notion of Dasein to address some concerns that have arisen in post-imperial Britain, such as the desire to define English identity, i.e., ‘Englishness.’ / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation studies Alan Moore’s and Iain Sinclair’s use of psychogeography to examine the city of London. Psychogeography is an implosive, fragmented writing style that estranges the meaning of the urban everyday. Subject to psychogeographic depiction, London becomes a city altogether foreign, if not to say fantastical. I argue that psychogeography is both a strategy of political resistance and a visceral experience – one that could influence common ways of reading English history and culture (i.e. ‘Englishness.’)

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the boundary between human and other created by virtual worlds in contemporary science fiction novels. After a close reading of the three novels: Surface Detail, Existence, and Lady of Mazes, and the application of contemporary literary theories, the boundary presented itself and led to the discovery of where the human becomes other. The human becomes other when it becomes lost to the virtual world and no longer exists or interacts with material reality. Each of the primary texts exhibits both virtual reality and humanity in different ways, and each is explored to find where humanity falls apart. Overall, when these theories are applied to real life there is no real way to avoid the potential for fully immersive virtual worlds, but there are ways to avoid their alienating effects.

This thesis, which is written in French, examines the problems of translating modem Scottish literature into French. To illustrate them, a case study on The Crow Road by lain Banks will be undertaken. A short introduction first establishes the content of the thesis, its different parts and the strategy that we have adopted to tackle our main problem. This is identified as the cultural "otherness" of Scottish writing, which has been to a greater or lesser degree occulted in French translations of Scottish Literature. Chapter I looks at theoretical aspects of translation from a thematic point of view ranging from a philosophical approach, through a linguistic one to various cultural approaches, with specific reference to Eugene Nida and Lawrence Venuti. Chapter II examines Scotland as a nation and as a country with important linguistic and cultural differences from its southern neighbour. We will see how important this separation is in literature and how some theorists have dealt in particular with the problem of translating the vernacular. Chapter III is devoted to the analysis of the French translations of four Scottish authors, James Kelman, William McIlvanney, Irvine Welsh and lain Banks. It examines passages from the texts but also emphasises the strategies adopted by the translators. Chapters IV and V focus on respectively on lain Banks and The Crow Road in order to provide thorough social and cultural contextualisation before considering ways of translating the novel. Chapter VI considers a number of potential strategies for translating sections of The Crow Road: a 'domesticated' one, a Nabokov style, the use of a French dialect and finally one using Venuti's concepts. The conclusion suggests that translators are free to choose between competing strategies, or even to mix them, but that what is crucial is to have a thorough knowledge of the source culture, and a conscious and apparent strategy, before approaching works as culturally laden as contemporary Scottish novels. The Translator may have to have the courage to offend against existing French translation norms if translation is to be truly trans cui tural.

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The Canadian artist IAIN BAXTER&, known before 2005 as Iain Baxter, created an innovative Conceptual Art practice in the mid-60s that continues to make important contributions even today. He has maintained a strong collaborative element in his art, as witnessed by his role in the short-lived group IT (1965) and N.E. THING CO. (1966-1978)--an actual incorporated company consisting of BAXTER& and his first wife, Ingrid Baxter as chief officers--and by the addition of an ampersand to his legal name in 2005 to signify the open-ended quality of his work that relies on viewers‘ contributions to help determine its meaning. This dissertation introduces the term "Pop-inflected Conceptual Art" to describe how BAXTER& merges his use of information technologies, modern and ubiquitous materials, and pedestrian activities with a desire to question the received role and purpose of art through an epistemological approach. By presenting BAXTER&‘s key influences—Zen Buddhism, as described by D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, and the communications theory of Marshall McLuhan—this study describes five underlying principles that inform BAXTER&‘s work individually and in unison. These principles are: his preference for foregrounding the banal; creation of the "infoscape" that merges the natural world and the constant stream of information within North American culture; proclivity for experimenting with such unlikely media as plastics and telecommunication media; understanding of art‘s kinship with language; and usage of pseudonyms. This study describes the core terms of McLuhan‘s theory in order to analyze this thinker‘s significance for BAXTER&‘s work; moreover, it presents how the above five principles are evident throughout the three main divisions in BAXTER&‘s artistic career: before, during, and after his tenure with N.E. THING CO. Through an analysis of key examples of many of this artist‘s works, this study also determines affinities to both established Pop artists and his Conceptual Art peers, while distinguishing how his Zen and McLuhanesque hybrid approach, which includes a consistent reliance on humor to communicate definitively his ideas, sets him apart from these groups of artists and foregrounds his role as the precursor to such younger Vancouver photoconceptual artists as Ian Wallace, Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, and Stan Douglas.

Il est difficile de ne pas concevoir l’utopie du côté de la rupture : division spatiale originelle, tension temporelle, désaccord critique. Pourtant les théories et attaques des anti-utopistes voient dans l’utopie un monde illusoire voire inutile, clos, signant la fin des temps et potentiellement dangereux pour l’humanité. Et si l’utopie n’était pas le programme de la société meilleure à réaliser, mais bien au contraire une pratique transgressive, une apparition de discontinuité dans notre « ici et maintenant », un excès qui vient doubler le réel plutôt qu’un possible à réaliser dans le futur ?Iain M. Banks est un auteur de science-fiction contemporain original et audacieux, qui, conscient des dangers inhérents à l’utopie, a su jouer avec ces limites pour proposer une société utopique totalement inédite : cette utopie s’appelle la Culture. Comment réinvestir singulièrement l’utopie ? Comment la science-fiction – et plus précisément le genre du space-opéra – permet-elle de mettre en scène des problématiques politiques dignes d’un intérêt philosophique ?Iain M. Banks imagine une utopie tout entière tournée vers la rencontre, la proximité, la nouveauté. Subvertissant les traditions utopique et science-fictionnelle, le Cycle de la Culture est traversé par l’altérité et le conflit. Ces deux caractéristiques sont les fils directeurs de cette thèse qui vise à reconceptualiser l’utopie dans une perspective philosophique, politique et littéraire, en travaillant les représentations du discours utopique au sein du laboratoire science fictionnel.Ce discours prend ici trois formes : dystopie, hétérotopie, (e)utopie. Ensemble, elles dessinent une « culture utopique radicale ». / It is difficult not to conceive utopia as a rupture: through original spatial division, temporal tension, critical discordance. Yet, theories and attacks from anti-utopians consider utopia as an illusory world, even useless, enclosed, marking the end of times and potentially dangerous for humanity. What if utopia was not the programme of a better society to realize,but instead a transgressive practice, an apparition of discontinuity in our « now and here », an excess which overtakes reality rather than a possible that has yet to be realized in the future? Iain M. Banks is a contemporary, original and audacious science-fiction author, who,aware of the inherent dangers of utopia, has known how to challenge these limits in order to provide a completely unique utopian society: this utopia is called the Culture. How to critically reinvest utopia? How can science fiction – and more precisely the genre of space-opera – depict political issues, worthy of philosophical enquiry? Iain M. Banks imagines a space for utopia, entirely oriented towards encounter,proximity, and novelty. Subverting science-fictional and utopian traditions, notions of alterity and conflict span the Culture Cycle. These two characteristics are the guiding principles of this dissertation, which aims at reconceptualizing utopia through a philosophical, political and literary perspective, by way of analysing the representations of utopian discourses within the science-fictional laboratory. These discourses take three shapes: dystopia, heterotopia, (e)utopia. Together, they outline a “radical utopian culture”.

Zugl.: Mannheim, Univ., Diss., 2007

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This thesis explores a contemporary literary movement that has been called ‘the new nature writing’, framing it in its wider historical and cultural context of the last forty years. Drawing on recent developments in cultural geography, it explores the way such terms as ‘landscape’ and ‘place’ have been engaged with and reinterpreted in a diverse project of literary re-mapping in the British and Irish archipelago. It argues that the rise of environmentalism since the late 1960s has changed and destabilised the way the British and Irish relate to the world around them. It is, however, concerned with challenging the term ‘nature writing’ and argues that the literature of landscape and place of the last forty years is not solely concerned with ‘nature’, a term that has come under some degree of scrutiny recently. It sets out an argument for reframing this movement as an ‘archipelagic literature’ in order to incorporate the question of community. In understanding the present uncertainties that pervade the questions around landscape and place today it also considers the effects of such political changes as the partial devolution of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on the British and Irish relationship to the land. The literature that it takes as its subject often explores the way personal and communal senses of identity have found a renewed focus in a critical localism in opposition to more footloose forms of globalisation. Through a careful negotiation of Marxist and phenomenological readings of landscape, it offers an overview of what is a considerable body of literature now and what is developing into one of the most consistent and defined literary movements of the twenty-first century.