[pt] Segundo correntes de pensamentos que anunciam a condição distópica promovida pelo que se convencionou nomear capitalismo global integrado, entra em crise a noção de Humano. Guiados via satélite a transitar por mapas digitais, aventa-se que este trajeto histórico nos conduziu até a rua sem saída deste suposto realismo capitalista. É este o cenário labiríntico de uma sociedade do cansaço, em que os poderes governamentais articulados pelo capital se infiltram pela frágil divisão entre cultura e natureza. O sono, segundo o pesquisador Jonathan Crary, simboliza a última fronteira entre as versões mais atualizadas de uma tecnocracia objetiva que se apodera dos corpos para anestesiar o sensível e, portanto, normatizar os modos de vida a partir também da reorganização da percepção. Na esteira, portanto, de respostas acerca do que fabrica mundos – e suas consequentes formas de habitá-lo – e acerca da emergência de ventilar outros possíveis desdobramentos, esta dissertação debruça sobre a experiência onírica ressignificada como gesto estético-político. Pode o sonho agir como uma mediação – ou como manifestação – de disputa de imaginários capaz de despertar para uma forma de vida sympoiética? É pelo reencantamento do mundo, a partir de um lirismo onírico – e onírico aqui no sentido amplo e do senso comum – que este trabalho será conduzido, visando uma exploração topográfica na tentativa de constituir outra paisagem de mundo. / [en] Oneilyrical Imaginism: A cartography crossing landscapes. According to groups of thought that announce the dystopic condition promoted by what has been called integrated global capitalism, the notion of Humanism plunges into a crisis. Guided by satellite to navigate on digital maps, it is revealed that this historical route led us to a dead-end in a supposed capitalist realism. This is the labyrinthic scenario of a society of weariness, in which governmental powers articulated by capital infiltrate the fragile division between culture and nature. Sleep, according to researcher Jonathan Crary, symbolizes the last frontier between the most up-to- date versions of an objective technocracy that seizes bodies to anesthetize the sensory and therefore normalize lifestyles from the reorganization of perception. In the wake, therefore, of answers about what creates worlds - and their consequent ways of inhabiting it - and about the emergence of letting out other possible outcomes, this dissertation focuses on the dream experience resignified as an aesthetic-political gesture. Can the dream act as a mediation - or as a manifestation - in a dispute of imaginaries be capable of promoting a sympoietic way of life? It is t rough the re-enchantment of the world, from a dream perspective – here in a broad and common sense – that this work will be conducted, aiming at a topographic exploration in the attempt to constitute another landscape of the world.

This study explores the representation of the hero in Lawrence and Andrew Wachowski’s Matrix film trilogy, which comprises The Matrix (Wachowski, Wachowski&Silver 1999), Matrix Reloaded (Wachowski, Wachowski&Silver 2003a) and The Matrix Revolutions (Wachowski, Wachowski&Silver 2003b). Special reference is made to how Neo embodies a postmodern view of heroism. This implies an exploration into the relationship between Neo, the protagonist and hero in the Matrix trilogy, and his mythological predecessors, as well as the relationship between the representation of Neo and ideas concerning heroism. In order to further understand the nature of heroism in the Matrix trilogy, the ideas of two philosophers, namely Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), are explored and compared. It is argued in this study that the heroism presented to the viewer by the Matrix trilogy can be interpreted as being representative of the meeting of the apparently contradictory ideas of these two philosophers. Both of these philosophers, though striving for a heroic ideal, arrived at vastly different conclusions. This study, whilst considering the nature of heroism in these two views, also seeks offer an examination of the relationship that Nietzsche’s and Chesterton’s writings have to one another. This examination is not an attempt to take sides with either of these philosophers, but merely to point out certain aspects of their two distinctive viewpoints as they relate to the films in question. This study especially seeks to investigate the claim that Neo is the embodiment of the Übermensch, the figure that most clearly resembles Nietzsche’s heroic ideal. Chesterton’s views of heroism are referred to in order to counter-balance and contextualise Nietzsche’s views on this. Mainly ethical aspects of the character and narrative of the hero are focused on in this study in order to show, firstly, that these more abstract aspects are implicit in the representation of the hero in the Matrix trilogy, and secondly, that the hero belongs to a moral taxonomy. The final aim of this study is to present a coherent view of the many facets of heroism that incorporates an assessment of how philosophy, ideology and semiology underpin the visual. / Dissertation (MA (Visual Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Visual Arts / unrestricted

The aim of this MA thesis was to analyze the correspondences and differences between the individual philosophers and writers from the loosely formed intellectual group of Euro- American pragmatism. The thesis utilizes a chronological approach, starting with the early signs of transatlantic pragmatism in Immanuel Kant's philosophy, and traces this development throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century. In addition to the comparison of philosophical similarities and dissimilarities of the examined authors, each chapter also considered the possible uses of pragmatic techniques in pedagogy and education. Therefore, besides the examination of differing epistemologies of writers of transatlantic pragmatism, this thesis also aims to offer educational suggestions, ideas and practical methods for an educator. The first chapter of the thesis is designed to introduce the theme of the work at large. The second chapter of the thesis analyzes the rudimentary signs of pragmatism, in the revolutionary ideas of Immanuel Kant and Johan Gottlieb Fichte. This chapter focuses on the genesis of subjective idealism, subjective category creation and Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, along with his lectures on vocations. The third chapter surveys the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his approaches towards the...

A presente tese parte da afirmação reiterada e desconcertante desse filósofo francês de que ele não seria, de modo algum, um \"teórico do poder\", para mostrar que, para além das discussões em torno de se o primeiro Foucault (da arqueologia dos saberes), o segundo (da genealogia do poder), ou o terceiro (da ética e das condutas individuas), seria o mais importante, o \"melhor\", é possível falar numa unidade no que diz respeito à trajetória do seu pensamento e que essa unidade se dá em torno das relações políticas entre os homens, o que faz com que ele seja, eminentemente, um pensador da política, ou melhor, do político. Só que a política tal qual ele a entende não tem nada a ver com a aquela dos teóricos da política ou do poder e, sim, com a relação que ele passou a perseguir em um determinado momento dessa trajetória: a relação entre governantes e governados. Essa relação, cuja percepção se tornou possível por meio do conceito de governamentalidade, gestado no ano de 1978, constitui-se numa nova \"grade de leitura\" para a política, que permite: 1) dar um basta à idéia de que haja, nesse âmbito, modelos universais que possam dar respostas a todos os tipos de questões--modelos esses que legitimam a existência de \"intelectuais universais\", incumbidos de conceber esses modelos e apresentá-los aos \"explorados\" e \"ignorantes\", prometendo-lhes a sua libertação, bem como da \"vida política\" nas atuais democracias representativas--; 2) conceber uma noção de liberdade--enquanto uma relação entre governantes e governados que não possui limites a priori--que escapa à da tradição liberal que, gestada nos séculos XVII-XVIII, se tornou hegemônica no Ocidente a partir do século XIX, não só no plano discursivo, mas enquanto realidade sócio-econômica global. Onde quer que existam essas relações--e elas sempre existirão, para Foucault, do micro ao macro--é necessário que seja possível, sempre, pô-las sob questão; o que só acontece quando o pensamento é deixado solto para ser capaz de levantar o maior número de conflitos possível--e não de consensos--; para, crítico, apontar o maior número de problemas a serem resolvidos dentro do âmbito dessas. Algumas dessas relações irão, então, se sustentar, conseguir se justificar; outras, não, terão que ser revistas, num interminável trabalho de extensão dos limites da liberdade humana. Essa nova noção de liberdade, por sua vez, traz consigo a possibilidade de interrogação do fenômeno da subjetividade, na medida em que são sujeitos, sempre, os que participam dessas relações entre governantes e governados. Por isso, o presente trabalho se esforça em mostrar percursos intelectuais que, tendo sido percebidos e diretamente abordados por Foucault (caso de Kant e de Platão) ou não (segunda clínica lacaniana e perspectivismo ameríndio), mantêm, na ênfase que dão ao sujeito, uma visada em comum com a empreitada foucaultiana. / This thesis initiates itself by the reiterated and astonishing declaration by this French philosopher that he would not be, under any circumstance, a \"power theoretician\", in order to show that, beyond the debates on whether it would be the first Foucault (the archeology of knowledge one), the second (genealogy of power one), or the third (the ethics and the individual conduct one), the most important one, the \"best\", it is possible to talk about a unity in what concerns the trajectory of his thought and that such unity concerns the political relations between men, which results in that he is, eminently, a thinker of politics, or rather, of the political. Except that politics as he understands it has nothing to do with that of the theorists of politics or of power but with a relationship that he began to pursue somewhere along such a trajectory: the relationship that exists between the governing and the governed. Such a relationship, whose perception became possible by means of the concept of governmentality, conceived in the year of 1978, constitutes itself as a \"grid of understanding\" for politics, which allows to: 1) declare that we\'ve had enough of the idea that there shall exist, in such domain, universal models that may answer all kinds of questions--models which legitimate the existence of \"universal intellectuals\", held responsible for conceiving such models and for presenting them to the \"exploited\" and \"ignorant\", promising their liberation, as well as of \"political life\" in current representative democracies--; 2) to conceive a notion of liberty--as a relationship between the governing and the governed which has no a priori limits--that escapes from the liberal tradition one which, created along the XVII/XVIIIth century, became hegemonic in the West since the XIXth century, not only on the discursive level, but as socio-economic global reality. Wherever such relations exist--and they will always do, for Foucault, from micro to macro--it is necessary that it be possible, always, to put them open to question; that which only occurs when thought is left free to be able to raise the highest number possible of conflicts--and not consensuses--, in order to, critic as it is, point out the highest number of problems to be solved in such domain. Some of those relationships will be able, then, to sustain themselves, to justify themselves; others, won\'t, they will have to be modified, in an interminable labor of extending the limits of human liberty. This new notion of liberty, by its turn, carries along with itself the possibility of the inquiry of the phenomenon of subjectivity, as it is that it is always subjects that participate in such relations between the governing and the governed. For this reason, this thesis makes an effort to present intellectual paths which, having been noticed and approached by Foucault (the case of Kant and Plato) or not (second Lacanian clinic and Amerindian perspectivism), maintain, in the emphasis they give to the subject, a common viewpoint with the Foucauldian enterprise.

This dissertation explores the ways in which the everyday (in)securities of people in southwestern Ukraine can illuminate our understanding of contemporary political life. Rather than using traditional units of analysis or given categories—the state, the individual, identity—the dissertation focuses on relations between people in and connected to a single village to develop a novel framework for analyzing politics and the political. The dissertation opens with an interrogation of the practical and theoretical challenges associated with current conceptualizations of security; our understanding of the political; and the role of ethnography in theorization and presents a research design meant to address those challenges. Drawing upon extensive participant-observation and other immersion-based research in a post-Soviet borderland wedged between Ukraine and Slovakia, and using an analytical tool I call “togetherness,” the thesis presents an ethnographic account of social interactions, economy, and authority in this largely Hungarian-speaking rural area. The third part of the dissertation applies the idea of an ontological shift and draws on complex systems and structuration theory (Luhmann and Giddens, respectively) to rethink the ethnographic analysis and to highlight relationships between structural and existential realms of political life. Here, the concept of security becomes central to the theorization, and the overall argument illuminates the intimate relationship between the idea of security and the political. Ultimately, this approach allows us to expand the scope of political ethnography: theorizing beyond thick description; integrating broader perspectives without losing the texture of the local; and developing an approach to research that can be replicated in other settings.

In the first chapter of my doctoral thesis, entitled The Political Implications of Nietzsche's Perspectivism, I argue that due to conflicting passages present throughout his oeuvre, Nietzsche is best understood as a twofold metaphysical sceptic. That is, a sceptic about the existence of the external world, and consequently, as a sceptic about such a world's correspondence to our perspectives. Nietzsche presents a threefold conceptualization of 'nihilism' and a twofold one of the 'will to power.' Neutral nihilism is humanity's inescapable condition of having no non-humanly created meanings and values. This state can be interpreted positively as an opportunity to create one's own meanings and values, or negatively as a terrifying incentive to return to dogmatism. The will to power is life before and as it becomes life, the unqualified will to power, and all the realities in it, the qualifiable will to power. The combination of these ontological concepts brings me to my second chapter and to the determination of Nietzsche's general epistemology: perspectivism. Perspectivism is an admittedly created, ontologically derived interpretation of knowledge, which both entails and goes beyond relativism. Nietzsche's perspectivism is constructed to support any norm that allows for univocal evaluations, not just Nietzsche's. Moreover, it can be derived from any ontology that conceptualizes life as a unit of growth and decay and human beings as creators of all their perspectives. These two elastic concepts allow me to propose, in my third chapter, that, although his texts disavow an all-inclusive democracy in favour of a new spiritual aristocracy, on the one hand, the proper political implications of perspectivism allow for democracy, while on the other hand, Nietzsche can be read as disapproving of an all inclusive or representative democracy, yet as approving of the direct democracy that arises naturally among elite peers.

This dissertation explores the ways in which the everyday (in)securities of people in southwestern Ukraine can illuminate our understanding of contemporary political life. Rather than using traditional units of analysis or given categories—the state, the individual, identity—the dissertation focuses on relations between people in and connected to a single village to develop a novel framework for analyzing politics and the political. The dissertation opens with an interrogation of the practical and theoretical challenges associated with current conceptualizations of security; our understanding of the political; and the role of ethnography in theorization and presents a research design meant to address those challenges. Drawing upon extensive participant-observation and other immersion-based research in a post-Soviet borderland wedged between Ukraine and Slovakia, and using an analytical tool I call “togetherness,” the thesis presents an ethnographic account of social interactions, economy, and authority in this largely Hungarian-speaking rural area. The third part of the dissertation applies the idea of an ontological shift and draws on complex systems and structuration theory (Luhmann and Giddens, respectively) to rethink the ethnographic analysis and to highlight relationships between structural and existential realms of political life. Here, the concept of security becomes central to the theorization, and the overall argument illuminates the intimate relationship between the idea of security and the political. Ultimately, this approach allows us to expand the scope of political ethnography: theorizing beyond thick description; integrating broader perspectives without losing the texture of the local; and developing an approach to research that can be replicated in other settings.

A presente tese parte da afirmação reiterada e desconcertante desse filósofo francês de que ele não seria, de modo algum, um \"teórico do poder\", para mostrar que, para além das discussões em torno de se o primeiro Foucault (da arqueologia dos saberes), o segundo (da genealogia do poder), ou o terceiro (da ética e das condutas individuas), seria o mais importante, o \"melhor\", é possível falar numa unidade no que diz respeito à trajetória do seu pensamento e que essa unidade se dá em torno das relações políticas entre os homens, o que faz com que ele seja, eminentemente, um pensador da política, ou melhor, do político. Só que a política tal qual ele a entende não tem nada a ver com a aquela dos teóricos da política ou do poder e, sim, com a relação que ele passou a perseguir em um determinado momento dessa trajetória: a relação entre governantes e governados. Essa relação, cuja percepção se tornou possível por meio do conceito de governamentalidade, gestado no ano de 1978, constitui-se numa nova \"grade de leitura\" para a política, que permite: 1) dar um basta à idéia de que haja, nesse âmbito, modelos universais que possam dar respostas a todos os tipos de questões--modelos esses que legitimam a existência de \"intelectuais universais\", incumbidos de conceber esses modelos e apresentá-los aos \"explorados\" e \"ignorantes\", prometendo-lhes a sua libertação, bem como da \"vida política\" nas atuais democracias representativas--; 2) conceber uma noção de liberdade--enquanto uma relação entre governantes e governados que não possui limites a priori--que escapa à da tradição liberal que, gestada nos séculos XVII-XVIII, se tornou hegemônica no Ocidente a partir do século XIX, não só no plano discursivo, mas enquanto realidade sócio-econômica global. Onde quer que existam essas relações--e elas sempre existirão, para Foucault, do micro ao macro--é necessário que seja possível, sempre, pô-las sob questão; o que só acontece quando o pensamento é deixado solto para ser capaz de levantar o maior número de conflitos possível--e não de consensos--; para, crítico, apontar o maior número de problemas a serem resolvidos dentro do âmbito dessas. Algumas dessas relações irão, então, se sustentar, conseguir se justificar; outras, não, terão que ser revistas, num interminável trabalho de extensão dos limites da liberdade humana. Essa nova noção de liberdade, por sua vez, traz consigo a possibilidade de interrogação do fenômeno da subjetividade, na medida em que são sujeitos, sempre, os que participam dessas relações entre governantes e governados. Por isso, o presente trabalho se esforça em mostrar percursos intelectuais que, tendo sido percebidos e diretamente abordados por Foucault (caso de Kant e de Platão) ou não (segunda clínica lacaniana e perspectivismo ameríndio), mantêm, na ênfase que dão ao sujeito, uma visada em comum com a empreitada foucaultiana. / This thesis initiates itself by the reiterated and astonishing declaration by this French philosopher that he would not be, under any circumstance, a \"power theoretician\", in order to show that, beyond the debates on whether it would be the first Foucault (the archeology of knowledge one), the second (genealogy of power one), or the third (the ethics and the individual conduct one), the most important one, the \"best\", it is possible to talk about a unity in what concerns the trajectory of his thought and that such unity concerns the political relations between men, which results in that he is, eminently, a thinker of politics, or rather, of the political. Except that politics as he understands it has nothing to do with that of the theorists of politics or of power but with a relationship that he began to pursue somewhere along such a trajectory: the relationship that exists between the governing and the governed. Such a relationship, whose perception became possible by means of the concept of governmentality, conceived in the year of 1978, constitutes itself as a \"grid of understanding\" for politics, which allows to: 1) declare that we\'ve had enough of the idea that there shall exist, in such domain, universal models that may answer all kinds of questions--models which legitimate the existence of \"universal intellectuals\", held responsible for conceiving such models and for presenting them to the \"exploited\" and \"ignorant\", promising their liberation, as well as of \"political life\" in current representative democracies--; 2) to conceive a notion of liberty--as a relationship between the governing and the governed which has no a priori limits--that escapes from the liberal tradition one which, created along the XVII/XVIIIth century, became hegemonic in the West since the XIXth century, not only on the discursive level, but as socio-economic global reality. Wherever such relations exist--and they will always do, for Foucault, from micro to macro--it is necessary that it be possible, always, to put them open to question; that which only occurs when thought is left free to be able to raise the highest number possible of conflicts--and not consensuses--, in order to, critic as it is, point out the highest number of problems to be solved in such domain. Some of those relationships will be able, then, to sustain themselves, to justify themselves; others, won\'t, they will have to be modified, in an interminable labor of extending the limits of human liberty. This new notion of liberty, by its turn, carries along with itself the possibility of the inquiry of the phenomenon of subjectivity, as it is that it is always subjects that participate in such relations between the governing and the governed. For this reason, this thesis makes an effort to present intellectual paths which, having been noticed and approached by Foucault (the case of Kant and Plato) or not (second Lacanian clinic and Amerindian perspectivism), maintain, in the emphasis they give to the subject, a common viewpoint with the Foucauldian enterprise.