Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 253 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-253). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

In this thesis, it is my intention to use Heideggerean phenomenology to build an account of two seemingly disparate areas of humour. Firstly, humour that arises out of a shift between ontological categories - specifically, between the ‘human’ and the ‘object,’ on one hand, and the ‘human’ and the ‘animal’ on the other; and, secondly, between objects and bodies failing. In doing so, I hope to elucidate the ‘hermeneutic condition’ of all humour, understood in Heidegger’s terms as the phenomenon of world. A hermeneutic condition is not to be thought of along the vein of a ‘necessary and sufficient condition’ of something being comical. There have been a number of attempts to try to pinpoint such a condition, with theories gravitating towards the ‘big three’ of incongruity, superiority and release. Personally, I am not convinced that there is such a condition - I think it more likely that certain types of humour share some traits, but there are no traits shared by all humour that can act as a marker that humour is afoot. Similarly, a hermeneutic condition should not be understood as a causal condition - I am not claiming that something is funny because of this condition. Rather, my suggestion is that the phenomenon of world is a necessary condition of humour’s intelligibility – we are the sort of creatures that can make and comprehend jokes because we are in-the-world, in Heidegger’s sense. I will suggest that it is only for Dasein that either getting the joke or failing to get the joke is a possibility, and this is precisely because only Dasein has this hermeneutic condition. Developing this claim necessitates the pursuit of a thoroughly worlded phenomenology, and to that end I want to suggest Heidegger’s work as an ideal foundation. Moreover, I will suggest that the humanlike objects and animals which amuse us are tacitly playing with this being-in-the-world, and the object and body failing has the potential to disclose this nature of this world to us. In this way, I hope to demonstrate that there is much to be gained from the phenomenological analysis of these two types of humour.

Bhānds are wandering comedians, widely dispersed in Pakistan and North India. While their art constitutes a persistent mode of performed practice in Pakistan, it is not given recognition by dominant culture. The thesis explores the caste, class, ethnic and literary biases that motivate this ostracism, and in turn how bhānds play with these status distinctions in performance. This interaction creates a dynamic mode, which is able to expose, negotiate and subvert hegemonic power structures, and, in so doing, continually adapts itself to changing socio-cultural contexts. Appreciation of these practices and their effects on the social norm has hitherto been lacking, precisely because of the cultural marginalisation which attempts to place the bhānd within a fixed definition of identity. In order to redress this imbalance, I explicate the bhānd’s aesthetics and socio-cultural mediation through multiple contemporary and historical manifestations. Contemporary reinventions range from stand-up comics in the nuptial rites, to carnivalesque comedians of the popular Punjabi theatre and socio-political commentators on satellite television. By extracting the bhānd from the prejudices of historiography, the thesis explores historical lineages between the bhānd and Sanskrit jesters and Sufi wise fools, arguing that this Indo-Muslim synchronism perpetuates the bhānd's presence in South Asia. This re-reading aims conceptually to release the bhānd from contemporary and historical constraints as a shape-shifting mode, which may be seen to continue generating innovative forms and practices for theatre and performance in Pakistan today.

Leora Farber Kim Berman

archives@tulane.edu / 0 / Amy Crum

This thesis tracks my journey as an artist as I developed personally and as my performance piece moved from conception to implementation. The story begins with what I understood to be a lack of material written for and about a specifically targeted audience. The thesis goes on to discuss how that need could be met, how I could be the catalyst for change and how that process could change my life forever. I have also included my experience as a solo performer whose previous training had prepared me only for collaboration with other actors. This thesis also discusses my process of creating and developing I’m not a writer… but I got a story to tell and concludes with reflections on my final performance. / text

Beginning a research project at the Johannesburg City Library in 2013 was the catalyst for the body of work presented here for my Masters dissertation. Since it had been closed for renovations, and reopened in 2012, the Library was filled with boxes of books waiting to be ordered and put away, and old furniture piled up in empty rooms. There was a tension between the structure of the library, an institution whose purpose is to order and classify knowledge, and the state of its contents, which were disorderly and messy. This paradoxical relationship between mess and order is one which I have mobilised in my practical work, and other case studies upon which I have drawn. Through them, I argue that the tension between mess and order can be a productive space for knowledge/artistic production. I look at sites like the Johannesburg City Library as examples that present a strategy for display that I have found to be useful in my practical work. These strategies include presenting piles or heaps of papers, which prompt the viewer to sort through, pick something up, or find something amongst the ‘mess’. I use the term ‘serendipity’ to describe the experience of ‘coming across’ something on one’s own. The serendipitous experience is one that gives the discovered object an air of specialness, something that ‘I have found, that therefore must have some special relationship to me’. A presentation by Shireen Ally on her paper, Material Remains illustrates this point through an anecdote she shared, about the neglected archives of the administration of the former Bantustan, KwaNgane. In my own work I mobilise the fragment as an important tool for freeing text of being bound to one specific meaning. A text read as a singular phrase, can adopt many meanings, often personal, in that they are imagined by the viewer. By freeing text of its contextual ‘order’, one opens possibility for another kind of serendipity, one that is formed through the implication that a piece of text can relate to a viewer in a very personal way. I invoke the theory of performativity in relation to display strategies of mess and fragmentation. A performative speech act is one that changes the ontological status of the subject that is being implicated by the speech act. Because fragmented pieces of text, displayed ‘messily’ do not have prescribed categories (meanings), they enable the viewer to enact his or her own meaning-making. Through this, the fragment comes into being as part of the given category; the ontological status of that phrase is changed through he act of categorising. This reminds us that all categories are in fact constructed and are not inherent to the subject of classification. Here, the form of the Rolodex as a device that holds both my written and practical research embodies the theory of performativity as it allows for pages to be taken out and put back, can be read from any point, facilitating non linearity and fragmentary text. Paradoxically, the Rolodex also performs the function of an ordering mechanism.

A dissertation in fulfilment of the Degree of Masters of Arts in Fine Arts (MAFA) at the University of Witwatersrand 2014 / Catherine Wood describes our society today as an entanglement between languages, time, space, intimacy, drama and diversity (Wood 2012: 10). Ian Chambers affirms that the notion of communicating or recounting with greater multi-­‐dimensionality, enacting or displaying more than one perspective at the same time, seems to better facilitate the complexity involved in communication itself (Chambers 2000: 25). Interaction in today’s context is therefore a complex experience that can position many modes of engagement in the same moment. The following dissertation explores the process of translating more than one visual language – here, painting and performance. It explores how the interdisciplinary nature of visual languages can interpret experience as multifaceted, lending greater perspective to concepts, issues and subject matter. Walter Benjamin suggests that this is only possible because languages “are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what they want to express” (Benjamin 1969: 72). Benjamin’s text introduces the idea of translation between languages as a mode, a natural way of interaction. I will use his concept of translation to explain my interest in the conflation between painting and performance, and how this process reflects on a particular experience our current context.

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Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Lorilee S. Garbowski. / M.S.V.S.