Issu d’une réflexion sur notre rapport à l’environnement, à l’espace et au paysage, mon projet de maîtrise propose une réflexion sur l’art in situ dans des lieux extérieurs ainsi que sur les diverses modalités d’interventions en lien avec la nature. Ce faisant, mes travaux tentent de proposer une perception particulière des sites investis. Mon attention se porte sur les rapports dynamiques qui s’établissent entre la nature, le paysage, le site et la culture. Je m’intéresse aux rencontres hétéroclites entre des éléments qui ne proviennent pas du même lieu ainsi qu’aux espaces illusoires que proposent ces rencontres. Mon travail tente d’établir une relation entre l’espace perçu et l’espace vécu par le biais de l’expérience que procurent mes installations. Je m’intéresse à l’art qui est là où l’on ne s’attend ni à le trouver, ni à en faire.

The study, “Between honor and shame: Martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 6-7 within the socio-cultural arena”, presents a look at how the community viewed martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42 from the perspective of honor and shame. The chief objective is to determine whether or not the community supported or challenged the notion of the martyrs’ death being either honorable or shameful. In order to reach a satisfactory conclusion to this objective, this study set as goals the identification of key themes which shed light upon the views of the community in regard to the martyrs, as well as the investigation of the community’s understanding of honor and shame found in 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42. This study incorporates a contextual analytical method comprising of an analysis of sociocultural vocabulary, an analysis of the socio-cultural vocabulary within the Greek text of 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42 and a synthesis of the analysis of both the socio-cultural and the Greek context. As criteria for the study of the socio-cultural context the aspects of sacred-profane, pure-impure, the patron-client relationship and the relationship between individual and group(s) are implemented. Core-findings of this study may be divided into two main categories: evidence in defence of an honorable conduct during death, and evidence in defence of the dishonorable manner of death. Evidence in defence of honorable conduct during death, are: • The martyrs remain completely loyal and devoted to God (their Chief-Patron), His laws and • the customs of the forefathers. • They are portrayed as being bodily whole. • They safeguard their set-apartness. • They remain pure – especially in the ritualistic sense. • As individuals belonging to the collected identity of various groups, the martyrs prove themselves loyal and honorable. Evidence in defence for the dishonorable manner in which the martyrs die, are: • Torture was deemed disgraceful by the community and would therefore degrade honor. • Mutilation went into the very fabric of the wholeness of the body by destroying the bodily unity, thereby disqualifying a person to come into the realm of the sacred. • Certain members of the community would regard the martyrs’ rejection of the lesser patrons’ favor as disrespectful and therefore as dishonorable conduct. Despite this evidence, it is still found that the community could remain undecided on how to judge the martyrs and martyrdom. Therefore, it is proposed, and successfully implemented, that an emotional argument might be the key to tipping the scale toward viewing the martyrs and martyrdom as honorable. It must therefore be concluded that the community would have indeed challenged the notion of martyrdom being honorable, for torture and mutilations in themselves, were regarded as being disgraceful. Yet the community would have been persuaded to accept the honor of the martyrs because of their honorable conduct and the emotional appeal made by the author of Maccabees. / Thesis (MA (Greek))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

The study, “Between honor and shame: Martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 6-7 within the socio-cultural arena”, presents a look at how the community viewed martyrdom in 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42 from the perspective of honor and shame. The chief objective is to determine whether or not the community supported or challenged the notion of the martyrs’ death being either honorable or shameful. In order to reach a satisfactory conclusion to this objective, this study set as goals the identification of key themes which shed light upon the views of the community in regard to the martyrs, as well as the investigation of the community’s understanding of honor and shame found in 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42. This study incorporates a contextual analytical method comprising of an analysis of sociocultural vocabulary, an analysis of the socio-cultural vocabulary within the Greek text of 2 Maccabees 6:18-7:42 and a synthesis of the analysis of both the socio-cultural and the Greek context. As criteria for the study of the socio-cultural context the aspects of sacred-profane, pure-impure, the patron-client relationship and the relationship between individual and group(s) are implemented. Core-findings of this study may be divided into two main categories: evidence in defence of an honorable conduct during death, and evidence in defence of the dishonorable manner of death. Evidence in defence of honorable conduct during death, are: • The martyrs remain completely loyal and devoted to God (their Chief-Patron), His laws and • the customs of the forefathers. • They are portrayed as being bodily whole. • They safeguard their set-apartness. • They remain pure – especially in the ritualistic sense. • As individuals belonging to the collected identity of various groups, the martyrs prove themselves loyal and honorable. Evidence in defence for the dishonorable manner in which the martyrs die, are: • Torture was deemed disgraceful by the community and would therefore degrade honor. • Mutilation went into the very fabric of the wholeness of the body by destroying the bodily unity, thereby disqualifying a person to come into the realm of the sacred. • Certain members of the community would regard the martyrs’ rejection of the lesser patrons’ favor as disrespectful and therefore as dishonorable conduct. Despite this evidence, it is still found that the community could remain undecided on how to judge the martyrs and martyrdom. Therefore, it is proposed, and successfully implemented, that an emotional argument might be the key to tipping the scale toward viewing the martyrs and martyrdom as honorable. It must therefore be concluded that the community would have indeed challenged the notion of martyrdom being honorable, for torture and mutilations in themselves, were regarded as being disgraceful. Yet the community would have been persuaded to accept the honor of the martyrs because of their honorable conduct and the emotional appeal made by the author of Maccabees. / Thesis (MA (Greek))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

In his 1987 essay "Canadian Poetry After Auschwitz," Michael Greenstein argues that A.M. Klein's mock-heroic poem, The Hitleriad (1944), ultimately fails to portray the severity and tragedy of the Holocaust because "it lacks the necessary historical distance for coping with the enormity" of the event (1). Greenstein's criticism is interesting because it suggests that in order for a writer to adequately represent the horrors of a traumatic event like the Holocaust it is "necessary" for him to be distanced from the event. While Greenstein specifically addresses historical (or temporal) distance, Canadian authors writing about the Holocaust have also, inevitably, had to negotiate their geographical and cultural distance from the historical event as well. Not surprisingly, their works tend to be immensely self-reflexive in nature, reflecting an awareness of the questions of authority and problems of representation that have shaped critical thinking about Holocaust literature for over half a century. This dissertation examines the role that distance has played in the creation and critical understanding of representative works of Canadian Holocaust literature. It begins with an extensive analysis of the poetry and prose of geographically-distanced poet A.M. Klein, whose work is unique in the Canadian literary canon in that it mirrors the shifting psychological state of members of the Canadian Jewish community as news of the Holocaust slowly trickled into Canada. This is followed by a discussion of the Holocaust texts of Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen, both of whom experimented with increasingly graphic Holocaust imagery in their works in response to the increasingly more horrifying information about the concentration camps that entered the Canadian public conscience in the 1960s. The dissertation then turns its attention to the uniquely post-memorial and semi-autobiographical works of two children of Holocaust survivors, Bernice Eisenstein and J.J. Steinfeld, before focusing on the Holocaust works of Timothy Findley and Yann Martel, both of whom produce highly metafictional novels in order to respond to the questions of appropriation and ethical representation that often surround works of Holocaust fiction created by non-Jewish writers. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of Anne Michaels' novel Fugitive Pieces—a text that addresses all three types of distance that stand at the center of this dissertation, and that illustrates many of the strategies of representation that Canadian writers have adopted in their attempts to negotiate, highlight, erase, and embrace the distance that separates them from the Holocaust.

This essay explores the application of zoomorphism and anthropomorphism in Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi. The novel, rather than being a mere shipwreck-narrative or a miraculous tale with religious overtones, is also a story about the complicated and perhaps inevitably divided relationship between humans and animals. This essay introduces the fields of ecocriticism and animal studies and defines anthropomorphism and zoomorphism in the context of literary criticism. The essay goes on to discuss the layers of meaning behind the names and naming of the two main characters using Burke’s rhetoric of identification, analyses the anthropomorphism and religiosity in the novel’s two stories, and analyses the two accepted readings of the novel from a zoomorphic perspective. The essay looks at the human-animal divide and its problems in literature, going into Derrida’s animal philosophy to provide a counterpoint to a view derived from Cartesian dualism. In a straight reading of the novel, the first story is regarded as metaphoric while the second story is regarded as literal. There is an alternative reading where it is left to the reader to decide which story is true, but this essay argues that this reading negates a metaphoric interpretation of either story and therefore dismisses the straight reading. Instead, this essay proposes a third, zoomorphic reading, fully compatible with the straight reading, where anthropomorphism is employed to externalize human actions onto animals, but where zoomorphism is employed to project animals onto humans in order to externalize their cannibalism. In the zoomorphic reading, both stories are interpreted as vehicles of projection while avoiding the logical pitfall of the alternative reading.

This thesis is set out with the purpose to investigate the potential shifts in how victory is presented in the duration of contemporary conflicts. The argumentation is focused on how democratic states, involved in wars, seem to announce different statements regarding victory in its outreach to its inhabitants. This paper will study the case of the American administration of George W. Bush, who initiated and ruled during the first years in the Global War on Terror. By investigating the seven annual State of the Union speeches in a combined quantitative–qualitative method, with Martel’s theoretical framework on victory, the analysis searched after such potential shifts or static usage of the linguistics approach to victory. The answer to the stated research question according to the study conducted by this author is that the publicly announced implications of victory have been subjected to an ongoing shift during the examined time period.

本論文旨在重新思考人與動物之間的倫理關係，企圖擺脫西方哲學傳統之下人類中心的立場。透過哈洛威《同伴物種宣言》與《當物種相遇》中同伴物種的概念來閱讀馬泰爾的《少年Pi的奇幻漂流》，這樣的倫理關係得以透過建基於「關係性」上而實現，而非以西方哲學傳統下的人／動物之二元對立為基礎。在這樣的倫理關係中，人與動物在會面時透過「回視」達到溝通。也在會面中，人與動物與彼此「成為共在」，並且共同形塑彼此的主體性。此外，《少年Pi的奇幻漂流》中可見擬人化的口吻敘述老虎理查‧帕克的故事，本文將解釋在這種擬人化中可以看見同伴物種倫理的實踐。 本論文由五個章節組成。第一章包含《少年Pi的奇幻漂流》相關評論，並回顧西方哲學傳統之下人與動物的關係。第二章意圖闡明在哈洛威脈絡之中同伴物種的概念，尤其是「關係性」和「成為共在」。透過檢視Pi和理查‧帕克在救生船上的種種細節，本文認為Pi和理查‧帕克的關係可被視為同伴物種的關係。第三章聚焦在「回視」的動作，作為同伴物種間建立雙向溝通的方式。本文也將透過「回視」深入分析Pi和理查‧帕克溝通上的（不）可能性。第四章將《少年Pi的奇幻漂流》中兩個版本的故事讀為兩種動物敘事的並置。兩者皆從擬人化的角度去敘事，但是其中一個版本透露出同伴物種倫理的實踐，另一個版本則回歸到傳統人類中心式的解讀。第五章為本文之總結，主張蘊含同伴物種倫理的動物敘事能夠幫助我們理解如何透過關注生活中真實存在的動物去重新思考人與動物之間的關係。 / The thesis aims to rethink an ethical relationship between humans and animals that is separated from the anthropocentric stance in the Western philosophical traditions. Reading Yann Martel’s Life of Pi in light of the ethics of companion species in Donna Haraway’s The Companion Manifesto and When Species Meet, I would like to contend that this ethical relationship take shape while it is founded on relationality, instead of the human/animal dichotomy. Acts of respect need to be exerted by human and animal participants when they meet. And in the meeting, they become with each other in the relationship in which their subjectivities are co-constituted by each other. The narrative of Pi living with Richard Parker employs a kind of anthropomorphism endowed with ethics of companion species. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is a review of research on criticism of Life of Pi and discussions of human/animal relationships in the Western philosophical framework. Chapter Two aims to elucidate the concepts of companion species in Haraway’s context, including relationality and becoming-with. By examining the details in Pi and Richard Parker’s life on the lifeboat, I argue that they are in a companion-species relationship. Chapter Three focuses on the act of respect, the practice for the companion species to evoke mutual responses. The (im)possible communication between Pi and Richard Parker will be analyzed. Chapter Four reads the two versions of the story of Life of Pi as a juxtaposition of two kinds of animal narratives. Both told from anthropomorphic perspective, the story with the animals is registered with ethics of companion species while the story without animal returns to the traditional anthropocentric interpretation. Finally in Chapter Five, I conclude that animal narrative that is entailed with ethics of companion species enables us to rethink the human/animal relationship by attending to real animals which are physically beside us.

Magical realist fiction is marked by a striking abundance of animals. Analysing magical realist novels from Australia and Canada, as well as exploring the influence of two seminal Latin American magical realist narratives, this thesis focuses on representations of animals and animality. Examining human-animal relationships in the postcolonial context reveals that magical realism embodies and represents an idea of feral animality that critically engages with an inherently imperialist and Cartesian humanism, and that, moreover, accounts for magical realism's elusiveness within systems of genre categorisation and labelling. It is this embodiment and presence of animal agency that animates magical realism and injects it with life and vibrancy. The magical realist writers discussed in this dissertation make use of animal practices inextricably intertwined with imperialism, such as pastoral farming, natural historical collections, the circus, the rodeo, the Wild West show, and the zoo, as well as alternative animal practices inherently incompatible with European ideologies, such as the Aboriginal Dreaming, Native North American animist beliefs, and subsistence hunting, as different ways of positioning themselves in relation to the Cartesian human subject. The circus is a particular influence on the form and style of many magical realist texts, whereby oxymoronically structured circensian spaces form the basis of the narratives‟ realities, and hierarchical imperial structures and hegemonic discourses that are portrayed as natural through Cartesian science and Linnaean taxonomies are revealed as deceptive illusions that perpetuate the self-interests of the powerful.

This study uses the Tibetan mandala, a Buddhist meditation aid and sacred artform, as a secular critical model by which to analyse the complete fictions of author David Mitchell. Discussing his novels, short stories and libretti, this study maps the author's fictions as an interconnected world-system whose re-evaluation of secular belief in galvanising compassionate ethical action is revealed by a critical comparison with the mandala's methods of world-building. Using the mandala as an interpretive tool to critique the author's Buddhist influences, this thesis reads the mandala as a metaphysical map, a fitting medium for mapping the author's ethical worldview. The introduction evaluates critical structures already suggested to describe the author's worlds, and introduces the mandala as an alternative which more fully addresses Mitchell's fictional terrain. Chapter I investigates the mandala's cartographic properties, mapping Mitchell's short stories as integral islandic narratives within his fictional world which, combined, re-evaluate the role of secular belief in galvanising positive ethical action. Chapter II discusses the Tibetan sand mandala in diaspora as a form of performance when created for unfamiliar audiences, reading its cross-cultural deployment in parallel with the regenerative approaches to tragedy in the author's libretti Wake and Sunken Garden. Chapter III identifies Mitchell's use of reincarnation as a form of non-linear temporality that advocates future-facing ethical action in the face of humanitarian crises, reading the reincarnated Marinus as a form of secular bodhisattva. Chapter IV deconstructs the mandala to address its theoretical limitations, identifying the panopticon as its sinister counterpart, and analysing its effects in number9dream. Chapter V shifts this study's use of the mandala from interpretive tool to emerging category, identifying the transferrable traits that form the emerging category of mandalic literature within other post-secular contemporary fictions, discussing works by Michael Ondaatje, Ali Smith, Yann Martel, Will Self, and Margaret Atwood.