This thesis examines the projects outlined by the Situationist philosophers and their impact on revolutionizing consciousness. Alongside of this examination this thesis demonstrates how the appropriate rhetorical means in conjunction with street art—specifically the work of Banksy—may lead to the successful implementation and execution of the Situationist's projects. This thesis examines the concept of the spectacle as developed by the Situationists as its object of critique and the concepts of culture, unitary urbanism, psychogeography, détournement and dérive as the framework in which the spectacle can be successfully critiqued in order to foster a more critical consciousness. In addition to this framework my claim is that the aforementioned elements are accomplished by the work of Banksy and his ability to alter the material conditions of our reality through his rhetorical construction of material enactments by creating appropriate and kairotic works which provide life to the Situationist's projects and affords the potentiality of revolutionizing consciousness. In Figure 1. Banksy critiques the idea of spectacularization. There is a fear that technology will distract individuals’ from living and experiencing their lives to the fullest, that their desire to record moments will get in the way with actually living through experiences. In fact the concept of recording events, for many people, is bringing more life to those events than the event itself. We’re currently living in a society where the record of the thing itself is greater than the thing itself. Of course, whenever something is recorded it can be spectacularized--elevated to a greater degree of importance--and shared with many. At the same time, urban architectural achievements have become idols unto themselves. People visit the Eiffel Tower for the purposes of visiting the Eiffel Tower. Even in the act of being a tourist or a spectator we are being placed in positions of passivity. The goal is to absorb whatever man made phenomena has been constructed for the purposes of enjoying it intrinsically without understanding why. In their article "Rhetoric and Materiality in the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art" Kenneth Zagacki and Victoria Gallagher rhetorically analyze the complex and interwoven spaces of the North Carolina Museum of Art. Their research claims that "the move from symbolicity to materiality involves a shift from examining representations (what does a text mean/what are the persuader's goals) to examining enactments (what does a text or artifact do/what are the consequences beyond that of the persuader's goals) and, as Carole Blair suggests, to considering the significance a particular artifact or text's material existence: What does it do with or against other artifacts? And how does it act on persons?" (Zagacki and Gallagher 172). This move from the purely symbolic importance of a text or artifact to its materiality is exceptionally important when discussing how potential Situationist projects can be materialized into and implemented effectively in the real world. The Situationists were essentially radical realists—their critiques need to exist in the most material form possible in order to generate the conscious liberation that they desired. That being said Margaret LaWare and Victoria Gallagher "...suggest that material rhetorics contribute to discourses of public identity by inviting visitors to see and experience landscape (or physical context) around them in new, and very much embodied ways" (as cited in Zagacki and Gallagher 172). The recursive nature of material rhetorics allows us to analyze exactly how environment's are affecting individual's subjectivities and how they too can go about affecting their world in new ways. I turn to this article specifically for the methodology that Zagacki and Gallagher construct in order to discuss in a more concrete fashion the rhetorical complexity of these spaces and their potential affect on visitors: we argue, through two material enactments of the human/nature interface that we characterize as ‘‘inside/outside’’ and ‘‘regenerative/transformative.’’ By ‘‘inside/outside,’’ we refer to the experience of moving (1) between constructed spaces, such as a museum space or an urban landscape, to less constructed, more organic spaces such as the outdoor park or the rural landscape; and (2) between what we refer to as natural history and human history. By ‘‘regenerative/transformative,’’ we mean moving (1) from natural states to human-constructed states and back again to nature, and (2) from one state of understanding to another. The capacity to create spaces of attention that call forth particular experiences reveals the potential rhetorical impact and reach of the Museum Park’s material forms. (173) The framework established here is specifically most affective when discussing these specific spaces—not every material space will have an inside/outside which would lend itself to phenomenological observation. However, for the purposes of this project, I find it important to reflect on how the "static/dynamic" enactments produced by the space harboring Banksy's work functions as a method to produce the "concrete/utopia" enactment by détourning expectations of space via messages whose kairotic nature—its location in time and place—and content create a specific psychogeography which can revolutionize our expectations and engagement with the world.

This thesis presents a new platform called See the Reason, built upon a tree- structured argumentation model called the Counter/Assumption model. In the Counter/Assumption model, a topic is posted first, then under that topic, reasons for and against, and for each reason, counterarguments, and for any counterargu- ment, more counterarguments. The model enables us to systematically determine whether a claim is “tentatively true” or “tentatively false,” in an effort to motivate people to make their side’s claims tentatively true and the opposing side’s claims tentatively false, thus encouraging conflict. Research suggests that debates with more conflict are better, so this thesis investigates whether Counter/Assumption model encourages better debates. In this thesis, we have students debate on See the Reason and the closest existing platform, CreateDebate. We measure the number of uncaught bad ar- guments, the user satisfaction, and how far into the Interaction Analysis Model the debates progress. We find promising evidence that See the Reason progresses further into the IAM and encourages more logical debates, but sacrifices usability at the same time.

Human Subjects is a collection of eight short stories that explore the role of identity, otherness, and personhood in contemporary life. Two sex workers try to buy new faces after a botched plastic surgery, a young girl struggles to find her place in a religious sweat cult, mixed race orphans commune with ghosts in a Korean orphanage, best friends embark on a road trip across America in search of a mother. Human Subjects works to tell stories about deeply felt wants and desires from perspectives at the margins, caught in a state of in between. This collection grapples with what it means to be a subject, and what it means to be subjected.

The "linguistic turn" in early twentieth-century philosophy established that through language we not only live in a world but create it as well. Language, in this sense, incorporates the entire range of media and cultural artifacts through which we create and share meaning. In contemporary post-industrial societies, photographic images play a central role in communicating and creating the world in which we live. In part, this increasingly visually oriented culture is possible because we tend to equate what we see in photographs with what is real. Photographs, however, bring to light a vision of the world, not the world itself. From the inception of photography, traditions of aesthetic interpretation have challenged this dominant view. Here, the created image becomes a vehicle for the artist's unique expression. Proponents of social scientific and critique of ideology perspectives, however, reject the aesthetic view and typically see art objects as social constructs, instruments which enhance and maintain a certain social order. Each of these perspectives ultimately holds that the meaning of photographs can be determined objectively. At the same time, each presents a world view which tends to exclude the insights of the others. Any attempt to preserve the apparent insights of these views must, then, transcend the basic contradictions and incompatibilities between them. Philosophical hermeneutics holds that the presumption of an absolute, objective grounding represents a failure to grasp the nature of the path toward understanding, a path which can never arrive at its destination because it always exists in history. It argues that (1) the photograph cannot be transparent to the world for the world is constituted in our representations of it; (2) art is a creation whose origin and meaning always exceeds the artist's own understanding of it; (3) critique is not the application of universal reason but a reading from a particular vantage point and is always grounded in a tradition of its own. Most importantly, however, it calls us to recognize the participatory nature of all understanding, the universality of language and provides a criterion for assessing the relative value of our interpretations across the entire language world.

Abstract not available

This study takes a phenomenological approach to squirt kayaking. It looks to examine mystical states of consciousness, as defined by William James, and flow theory, as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and focuses on what these experiences mean for participants of the squirt kayaking community. The study poses three research questions. (1) Do squirt kayakers experience mystical states of consciousness through squirt kayaking, and what does this experience mean? (2) Do squirt kayakers experience flow states of consciousness through squirt kayaking, and how was this experienced? (3) What is the mystery zombie or the mystery trance state, and how is it experienced? By posting messages on online message boards dedicated to squirt kayakers twenty participants responded to the post and were then contacted by telephone for an interview based off of an original questionnaire created for this study. The results show that mysticism and flow does occur through the squirt kayaking medium. Four primary themes emerged from the data about the experience and are as follows: defies expression, serious leisure, different realm, and the trance. Results indicate that there is not a distinctive difference between mysticism and flow, although further research should be done to support this. Also this study would suggest that further research be conducted concerning the build-up of carbon dioxide in the brain and its effects on mystical experiences. Implications of this research to look to challenge the concept of mysticism and flow by broadening what recreation offers its participants. Keywords: charc, flow, mystery trance, mystery zombie, mysticism

Parsimony, sometime referred to as simplicity, is an effective criterion of theory choice in the case of Quantum Mechanics. The Copenhagen and Bohmian interpretations are rival theories, with the Bohmian interpretation being more parsimonious. More parsimonious theories have a higher probability of being true than less parsimonious rivals. The Bohmian interpretation should thus be preferred on these grounds.

This study takes a phenomenological approach to squirt kayaking. It looks to examine mystical states of consciousness, as defined by William James, and flow theory, as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and focuses on what these experiences mean for participants of the squirt kayaking community. The study poses three research questions. (1) Do squirt kayakers experience mystical states of consciousness through squirt kayaking, and what does this experience mean? (2) Do squirt kayakers experience flow states of consciousness through squirt kayaking, and how was this experienced? (3) What is the mystery zombie or the mystery trance state, and how is it experienced?By posting messages on online message boards dedicated to squirt kayakers twenty participants responded to the post and were then contacted by telephone for an interview based off of an original questionnaire created for this study. The results show that mysticism and flow does occur through the squirt kayaking medium. Four primary themes emerged from the data about the experience and are as follows: defies expression, serious leisure, different realm, and the trance.Results indicate that there is not a distinctive difference between mysticism and flow, although further research should be done to support this. Also this study would suggest that further research be conducted concerning the build-up of carbon dioxide in the brain and its effects on mystical experiences. Implications of this research to look to challenge the concept of mysticism and flow by broadening what recreation offers its participants. Keywords: charc, flow, mystery trance, mystery zombie, mysticism

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until June 1, 2010. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-296)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until June 1, 2010. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-296)