No / There have been no studies in organization research of conferences as part of the world of work. This paper describes a reflexive ethnographic study of one management conference. It finds that upon arrival at the places and spaces of the conference processes of self-making as conference attendee are set in train. Self-making subsequently takes place within processes of domination and subordination, achieved through fear, infantilization, disparagement and seduction. Reading this through the lens of Freudian-informed interpretations of the Hegelian master/slave dialectic, the paper argues that conferences are one of the means of control over academic, managerial and professional employees. Control is achieved through dialectical interactions between conference and employee.

This thesis explores the psychological development of liminal characters in four late-twentieth-century British novels. Studies of Julian Barnes’s Flaubert's Parrot, A. S. Byatt’s Possession, Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by using D. W. Winnicott’s transitional-objects theory and Jessica Benjamin’s intersubjective theory, show how characters who are little more than infants socially and psychologically attempt to transcend the transitional, liminal status defined by Victor Turner. With the aid of significant objects or equal other subjects, these characters, whose subjective self-constructions at the beginning of the novels have become stalled in an immature position of emotional development or been inhibited by dominating individuals, progress psychologically towards controlling their own subjectivity.

No description available.

This dissertation explores the intimate relationship between irony and romantic subjectivity, by drawing on feminist psychoanalytical theory, via an examination of the shiftings of irony, and humor, in the works of the Swedish romanticist P. D. A. Atterbom (1790–1855). It looks at the critical role played by irony in the formation of Romantic subjectivity, and explores irony’s potential to undermine dualistically gendered notions of subject-object relations. For Atterbom, irony is an aesthetic concept closely related to drama, informed not only by German Romantic-ironic theorists such as Friedrich Schlegel and Jean Paul, but also by the works of Shakespeare, Ludwig Tieck, and E. T. A. Hoffmann. The thesis follows the shiftings of Romantic irony in Atterbom’s major literary texts: the cycle of poems Blommorna [The Flowers] (1811), where the Ovidian transformations are used metafictively to play with the relation between poet, poem, and reader; and the literary satire Rimmarbandet [The Rhyme Band] (1810), which, inspired by Tieck’s Der Gestiefelte Kater (1797), uses the metafictive theatre-in-the-theatre motif, as well as carnivalesque and grotesque motifs to expose contrived theatricality and homosocial misogyny in the prevailing culture. The dynamic between the satirist’s subject and the attacked object is a polarized power struggle, where revolt is followed by submission. In this respect, Romantic satire is here conservative. In the fairy tale play Lycksalighetens ö [Island of Felicity] (1824–27), tragedy’s irony is a dialectic between the ideal and the real that strives to create both inner and outer renewal. The play reaches out metafictively to the reader and turns her/him into the poet of a new version of the fairy tale. The reading/writing process inscribed in the work thus becomes a form of renewal and liberation from grief, and old, patriarchal gender roles. Finally, the humorous, unfinished idyll Fågel Blå [Blue Bird] (1814, 1818, 1858) is a work in many pieces, a fragment, a sketch and a non finito that together stages a restorative creative process, where the reader is asked to take part in joining together the scattered parts of Blue Bird itself. To conclude, irony is a feature of Romanticism, which makes the Romantic, literary subject relational and dialogical, open to its Other, and herein lies a form of ethics and an escape from a conventional, patriarchal notion of the self. I discuss this with Julia Kristeva’s theories on how subjectivity changes when it becomes poetic and Jessica Benjamin’s Winnicott-influenced theory of how play can offer a way out from patriarchy’s strict gender roles. The shiftings of irony in Atterbom’s work show a development from the satirical subject, where an aggressive form of self-assertion conceals a lack of individuality – via tragedy’s painstaking efforts to integrate repressed aspects of the self – to the idyll’s more harmonious subject, who has the capacity to laugh at him/herself and see both the grotesque in the holy, and the holy in the grotesque.

This thesis addresses the role of the birth complex in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy and in Richard Wagner’s operas. I see the birth complex as characterised by a dialectical relation between flesh and light, which is itself polarised by the tension between desire and anxiety. A structural determinant of the human relation to the world, this complex in my argument is of special importance for understanding the roles given to and assumed by women. Wagner gave the birth complex its first comprehensive elaboration through his operas. This, I contend, is the aspect of Wagner’s work that Nietzsche in his writings particularly reacted to through the ambivalent fascination it awakened in him. I argue that, even after Nietzsche’s break from Wagner, the birth complex remains central in his philosophy. The primary reference I build on here is Otto Rank’s theory of birth trauma, as set out in Das Trauma der Geburt (1924). To me, Rank’s theorisation of the trauma of birth is a translation into psychoanalytic language of Nietzsche’s philosophy, which itself arose with a translation into philosophical language of Wagner’s operas. In this thesis I build especially on Rank’s formulation of the tension between desire and anxiety and on his suggestions concerning the causes of the undoing of women. However, Rank did not take into account what I contend is a key aspect of both Nietzsche’s and Wagner’s work: the role of light in its dialectical relation with the flesh. By flesh I mean the interiority of the mother’s body and, by extension, the human body insofar as it is conceived through its relation to the maternal body. In the first main section of my PhD, I propose a theoretical understanding of the birth complex through an analysis of Nietzsche’s philosophy. I start with his writings pro and contra Wagner, showing that what Nietzsche primarily sees in Wagner’s operas is the birth complex. I then go on to argue that Nietzsche’s philosophy of life and of creativity is an exploration of the ways in which birth could be overcome. The second main section of my PhD is dedicated to Wagner, with largely text-based readings of three operas. I first discuss the extent to which death in Der fliegende Holländer and in the Freudian conception of the death drive is a mask for birth. I then tackle Tristan und Isolde and its famous celebration of night and death, in order to investigate whether love can be reduced to the birth complex. The last chapter of this section presents a close analysis of Das Rheingold and especially of its first scene and of Wagner’s indications on lighting. In a third and shorter section, I show that Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s and Richard Strauss’s Elektra pursued and reviewed this fundamental preoccupation of Nietzsche’s and Wagner’s work in proposing a further formulation of the birth complex that incorporates the scene of matricide. Finally, as a coda to the thesis, I explore the extent to which the uses of stage lighting pioneered by Adolphe Appia have been coming to terms with the birth complex.

This study and the accompanying design project explore postmodern identity construction as a nomadic state of being in relation to the shared experience of space. The potential of the relationship between postmodern identity and physical space is explored both theoretically and through practical application. The main theory explored is ‘third space’, with specific reference to the concept of ‘thirdness’ as articulated by American psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin (in Frosh&Baraitser 2009). This study examines how shared spaces can, through narrative reframed by ontology (Somers 1994), be seen as physical manifestations of the ‘third space’ as envisaged by the likes of Homi K Bhabha (1994) and Edward Soja (1996). The notion of ‘thirdness’ is used to explore the relationship between individuals and shared space. ‘Thirdness’ is also paralleled to Ubuntu. ‘Thirdness’ is investigated as a means to access shared relational spaces that provide an abundance of symbolic narratives that can be gathered and integrated into the self. This study explores how being connected through shared space has the potential to be constructive in identity formation in the wake of unstable postmodern identity. This study uses a design process adapted from Karl Aspelund (2006) as an approach to the research. In the context of this study, design is seen as more than the resulting artefact. It encompasses the thought process, the methods used and steps taken to reach a particular research outcome. This study attempts to form a synthesis between the theoretical research conducted and design praxis in the form of the design outcome. As inspiration for the design action, the design process followed in this research facilitates the exploration of theory that is perhaps unfamiliar to design discourse. The steps in the process allow the refinement of concepts, application of the theory in a practical environment (a paper making workshop) and finally, the visualisation of the theory via the design artefact (an animated short). The medium of animation is selected purposively in order to convey the interpretive narrative derived from the process. The paper produced in the workshop reflects the theory, inspires the narrative of the animation and is used to create the environment and characters of the animation, which, in turn, embody the overarching concepts of the study. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Visual Arts / unrestricted