Love Song is an essay about romance, passion, obsession, attraction, Eros, intoxication, infatuation, to fall in love and love. Love songs, as artworks, are almost always directed towards a nameless “you” and this essay wants to talk to you. The text might be seen as a way to create and rewrite something, a performance to understand other performances, a dwelling on past relationships, a love letter, or just a text for me to vent you with others that have been thinking about you. I would love to hear Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Chris Kraus, Beyoncé, Bell Hooks, Anaïs Nin and Taylor Swift talk to each other about art and romances, but because that is an impossible dream I try to connect them and many other thinkers, artists and singers through language. One of them, Roland Barthes once wrote: "Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had worlds instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my worlds."[1] Love Song is, more than anything else an attempted to touch you, a strategy to better understand the way you made and make me feel.   [1] Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse – Fragments, original: Fragments d’un discours amoureux, 1977, translation from French: Richard Howard, Edition du Seuil, 1978, p. 73.

MyVice speaks about the guilt I feel regarding the amount of beauty products I own. About these Things I collect and I just cannot control how many I buy... About my addiction to the rituals connected to these Things. About the obsession with beauty products within our homes. About the daily beauty rituals of a woman which are meant to produce the final result of appearance that she really was Born Like This... About the advertising connected with beauty industry. About beauty product testing on the internet. About being superficial and the senselessness of it. The final result is made of a video projection connected to art installation and book publication.

The overarching question of the study was how common mutual love is, and to what extent attachment relates to relationship asymmetries. Four research questions and four hypotheses were posed and explored using a cross-sectional survey design with data analyzed using quantitative methods. Instruments were employed to measure passionate love, companionate love, partner value, emotional involvement and attachment. All four hypotheses found partial support. The main result show that a) asymmetries are relatively common on all scales b) mutual love means increased satisfaction, but mainly for women c) for most couples partners take turn at being the strong link, and this fluctuating dynamic leads to increased satisfaction c) attachment anxiety is related to asymmetries in romantic obsession rather than general passion d) avoidance in men relate to asymmetries in passionate love whereas avoidance in women relate to asymmetries in companionate love e) it seems common to have some form of positive illusions about whether one’s relationship is mutual or not. Finally, disagreeing about emotional involvement affects satisfaction more than actual asymmetries in love. The conclusion drawn is that honest communication is more important than mutual love.

The work ethic has been a popular topic for public comment and for research in the social sciences. The work ethic is usually understood to embody the values, beliefs and principles an individual has in relation to work. Work is an important dimension of human experience. Governments and employers are particularly interested in increasing productivity and competitiveness in connection with work and the work ethic is perceived as an important catalyst in achieving these goals. The main point of reference for discussion about the work ethic in the past century has been Max Weber's Protestant ethic thesis. Weber's thesis has attracted much criticism over the years and contemporary writers have suggested that alternative conceptions of the work ethic do exist. Despite widespread agreement that this is the case, consensus has not yet been reached on how such conceptions should be defined or how they may manifest in an individual. The majority of research on the work ethic has been limited to the collection of quantitative data using one of several survey instruments that are available. Fewer studies have collected data on the work ethic using a qualitative approach and yet, this is exactly what is required to achieve progress in identifying the range of conceptions that may exist. This study occurs in the context of teacher education and the work ethic has relevance to teachers and teacher educators for several reasons. Teachers, through the explicit and hidden curriculum they provide, have some responsibility for inculcating a work ethic in their students. It follows that it is important to understand the work ethic of teachers on this basis alone. A most logical starting place for accomplishing this task is during their career preparation. This study advocates explicit examination of preservice teachers' conceptions of the work ethic and exploration of how this might affect their career and curriculum decision making processes. This research is primarily intended to inform teacher educators who wish to pay attention to these things in their programs, along with researchers from other disciplines who are interested in the work ethic. Inspired by a pragmatic philosophy, this study utilised a mixed method research design to investigate the conceptions of the work ethic held by a group of preservice teachers studying in Brisbane, the capital city of the state of Queensland, Australia. Priority was given to the first phase of the research, which was to identify the qualitative conceptions of the work ethic held by the preservice teachers. The second quantitative phase was intended to complement and expand those findings by demonstrating that an established instrument in the measurement of work ethic could be used to profile conceptions of the work ethic held by an individual. The first phase of the research adopted a phenomenographic approach to identify nine conceptions of the work ethic held by a group of 22 preservice teachers. A courtship metaphor was used to characterise each of the nine conceptions which were labelled as Honeymoon, Monogamist, Serial Monogamist, Arranged Marriage, Celibate, Obsession, One-night Stand, Hedonist and Polyamorist. The second phase of the research used quantitative techniques involving factor analysis and linear modelling to link anonymous responses from 411 preservice teachers to the Occupational Work Ethic Inventory (OWEI) with the nine conceptions identified in the first phase of the research. It was found that the OWEI could be used to profile an individual's orientation to the work ethic conceptions that were defined. This research responded to calls in the literature for a better understanding of the characteristics of the people who choose to become teachers. It also suggested ways in which teacher education could be improved to prepare preservice teachers better through socialisation practices and the university curriculum. This study confirms that there are qualitatively different conceptions of the work ethic that may provide an alternative to the traditional Weberian conception. A technique is proposed to associate OWEI responses with the model of nine work ethic conceptions. Suggestions are also made with respect to potential improvement of the OWEI.

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This dissertation examines lesbian and queer desire in texts in Catalan and Spanish written in Barcelona, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires from the 1960s to the present. In the texts, desire includes but is not limited to the erotic; it encompasses issues of queer textuality, relationality, and literary transmission. I focus on the works of three authors who have spent the majority of their lives in Barcelona. However, the city appears almost incidentally in their works; the genealogies that the authors trace are transnational. The texts combine literal movement (through exile or diaspora) and a metaphorical sense of being “out of place” that prompts writers to take refuge in writing. I demonstrate that despite depicting affinities beyond the family and nation, the works reveal the persistence of familial and national ties, albeit in spectral or queer ways. Rather than tracing continuous lines of descent that emphasise origins, the works are principally concerned with futurity and fragmentation, as in Michel Foucault’s reading of genealogy. Chapter One on Maria-Mercè Marçal’s La passió segons Renée Vivien (1994) traces a literary genealogy from Sappho to Renée Vivien in fin de siècle Paris to Marçal. The novel represents a merging of literary desire and erotic desire; Marçal’s search for symbolic mothers turns out to be a search for symbolic lovers that is oriented towards the present and future. In Chapter Two, I posit that in Cristina Peri Rossi’s La nave de los locos (1984) “happiness” consists of being open to chance and unpredictability unlike in conventional “happy” scripts in which a valuable life is believed to consist of (heterosexual) marriage, children, and property ownership. In Part II I argue that through fragmentation, allegory, and ambiguity, Peri Rossi’s El libro de mis primos (1969) contests authoritarian discourse without itself becoming a site of hegemonic meaning. In inviting the reader’s collaboration, it ensures authorial legacy. Part I of Chapter Three is an analysis of the temporality of obsession in Flavia Company’s Querida Nélida (1988). I propose that obsession and melancholia may point to a utopian future rather than signalling an entrapment in the past. My study of Melalcor (2000) in Part II suggests that queer forms of relationality that are not centred on procreation and monogamy offer ethical models of sociality. Part III focusses on Company’s return to biological family in Volver antes que ir (2012) and Por mis muertos (2014). The resurgence in these texts of family members who have died signals that just as the queer haunts the family, the family haunts the queer.

This study focuses on the following schizophrenic related elements to be found in the postmodern society and to be represented in selected contemporary video artworks: 1) creation of an alternative world and 2) disturbance in meaning. To confirm that the creation of an alternative world and disturbance in meaning is present in postmodern society, the following elements are investigated as symptoms of schizophrenia and characteristics present in contemporary society: 1) fragmentation, 2) withdrawal from reality, 3) misinterpretation of memories and 3) the creation of 'word salad'. In order to draw a parallel between schizophrenia and the postmodern society, the postmodern theories of Simon Gottschalk, Fredric Jameson, Kenneth Gergen, Jean Baudrillard, Andreas Huyssen, Gilles Deleuze en Paul Virilio as well as the medical studies involving schizophrenia by the Schizophrenia Foundation of South Africa, the University of Iowa se Department of Healthcare and D Sue, DW Sue en S Sue are used. In both conditions of schizophrenia and postmodern society, reality and meaning are altered. This study concludes that schizophrenic related elements are present in the postmodern society and therefore these elements are represented in the selected video artworks of the artists Eija-Liisa Ahtila and myself.AFRIKAANS : Hierdie studie fokus op die skisofrenie-verwante elemente wat voorkom in die postmoderne samelewing naamlik: 1) alternatiewe wêreldskepping en 2) versteuring in betekenisgewing en wat uitgebeeld word in geselekteerde kontemporêre videokunswerke. Fragmentering, onttrekking van realiteit, waninterpretasie van herinneringe en die skepping van 'woordslaai' word as simptome van skisofrenie en as kenmerkende eienskappe in die postmoderne samelewing ondersoek om die argument te versterk dat alternatiewe wêreldskepping en versteuring in betekenisgewing teenwoordig is in die postmoderne samelewing. Die postmoderne teorieë van Simon Gottschalk, Fredric Jameson, Kenneth Gergen, Jean Baudrillard, Andreas Huyssen, Gilles Deleuze en Paul Virilio sowel as die mediese studies deur die Schizophrenia Foundation of South Africa, die University of Iowa se Department of Healthcare en D Sue, DW Sue en S Sue aangaande skisofrenie, word gebruik om parallelle tussen die postmoderne samelewing en die mediese toestand van skisofrenie in hierdie studie te trek. Daar word vasgestel dat realiteit en betekenis in beide toestande van skisofrenie en die postmoderne samelewing verbuig en hervorm word. Die gevolgtrekking van hierdie studie is dat skisofrenie-verwante elemente wel voorkom in die kontemporêre samelewing en dus uitgebeeld word in die geselekteerde videokunswerke van die kunstenaars Eija-Liisa Ahtila en myself. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Visual Arts / unrestricted