Few philosophers, today, are doing more than simple recognition of Levinass debt to phenomenology when a thorough explication of how phenomenological methodology impacts Levinass work is needed. This dissertation is the needed discussion of methodology that has been so absent in Levinas as well as in so many of his interpreters. The purpose, herein, is to synthesize Levinass work, explicating it in terms of transcendental methodology, the result of which reveals Levinass claims to be more defensible when understood in these terms than when the full rigor of this methodology is not properly grasped. First, to connect Levinas to transcendental phenomenology a correct perspective of the phenomenological tradition is needed. I argue that phenomenology is a methodology that discloses those horizons that condition experience such that appearance takes on meaning. I further argue that it is important to see this disclosure as something open-ended and ongoing rather than a method capable of fully revealing a final telos. Levinas fits into this methodology by providing the ethical as just such a horizonal condition, while his constant returning to this theme highlights the need to keep reworking the description of its meaningful impact on experience. Second, I defend Levinas from those who claim his work cannot be phenomenological, based on what they see as an implied Jewish tradition informing his description. I argue that what must be understood is that Levinass reference to God, Biblical stories, and Jewish wisdom impose an unsettling language that is introduced to replace traditional phenomenological language that does not always allow for the goals phenomenology sets for itself. This imposition does not use the Jewish tradition to make his argument but as a vocabulary far better at describing the ethical condition than what is commonly used in phenomenology. The final step of explication involves the actual application of the methodology, now understood aright, to Levinass claims about the other, the self, and the ethical. The result is that once we understand the ethical as the infinite originative horizon out of which the conscious ego emerges, later interpretations of Levinas will be able to successfully move beyond his work.

At the dawn of the Large Hadron Collider era, the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism remains the most appealing theoretical explanation of the electroweak symmetry breaking, despite the fact that the associated fundamental scalar boson has escaped any direct detection attempt. In this thesis, we consider a particular extension of the minimal Brout-Englert-Higgs scalar sector implemented in the Standard Model of strong and electroweak interactions. This extension, which is a specific, "twisted", realisation of the generic two-Higgs-doublet model, is motivated by a relative phase in the definition of the phenomenologically successful CP and custodial symmetries. Considering extensively various theoretical, indirect and direct constraints, this model appears as a viable alternative to more conventional scenarios like supersymmetric models, and gives grounds to largely unexplored possibilities of exotic scalar signatures at present and future collider experiments.

In this thesis, I will examine how objects are given narrative voices by memorial museum curators, and how these narrative qualities facilitate ethical and critical relations between museumgoers and traumatic histories. My two main points of contention arise out of these questions: 1. What does it mean for an object to be a witness in the context of trauma? 2. What might the material dimensions of witnessing accomplish in regards to museumgoers understanding of and ability to respond to their memorial museum experience? Instead of being silent witnesses to the past, I propose that objects can become contact points of ethical engagement and understanding when it concerns traumatic events in history. The ability and necessity of seeing objects as more than mere things to be manipulated by language and curatorial framing is crucial in cases of trauma, as they can become portals that can help overcome the “constitutive failure of linguistic representation in the post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima, post-Vietnam era” (Leys, p. 267f). This thesis will contribute to the theoretical and museological conversation concerning objects and their representation in the aftermath of trauma, with an emphasis on interobjectivity as a tool to combat consumptive empathy. Stressing the dialogic and relational functions of material witnesses will underscore the ultimate responsibility of the museumgoer to take on the role of secondary witness, a position that is perhaps fraught with unclear obligations, but is nevertheless crucial in the transmission of difficult histories. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-08-17 11:27:55.134

With a view to Jacques Derrida's rearticulation of Plato's khoral myth I consider the possibility of non-oppositional difference within a relational economy - a notion that Derrida seems quite resistant to. By framing a discussion in terms of Derrida's critical interaction with phenomenology, looking specifically to Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, I attempt to mark the context from which deconstruction emerges as a philosophical position. In a general sense, I deal with Derrida's conception of the relational space in-between persons, places and things, and the implications of his appropriation of khora for thinking about how we properly relate to one another.

This thesis seeks to understand how and if the popular claims that hockey is an integral part of the culture in Toronto and Montreal are referenced, oriented to, and/or negotiated in everyday life. Taking the cases of the moves of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens from Maple Leaf Gardens and the Montreal Forum, respectively, the thesis asks: What can these similar cases tell us about the culture of the cities in which they occurred and, if it is possible, in what ways can the culture of the cities (as a shaping force) be made recognizable in the discourse generated in, around, and by the moves? The perspective taken is a 'radical interpretive' approach, involving a critical blend of interpretive theories and methodologies - including semiology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and dialectical analysis - that aim to reflexively question the themes that the cases themselves bring to light. The thesis thus concerns itself with issues of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and modernity as well as the concomitant questions of identify, commitment to place, and practical social action in the modern city.

This thesis sets out to explore some of the ways in which videogames use space as a means of expression. This expression takes place in two registers: representation and embodiment. Representation is understood as a form of expression in which messages and ideas are communicated. Embodiment is understood as a form of expression in which the player is encouraged to take up a particular position in relation to the game. This distinction between representation and embodiment is useful analytically but the thesis attempts to synthesise these modes in order to account for the experience of playing videogames, where representation and embodiment are constantly happening and constantly influencing and shaping each other. Several methods are developed to analyse games in a way that brings these two modes to the fore. The thesis attempts to arrive at a number of spatial aesthetics of videogames by adapting methods from game studies, literary criticism, phenomenology, onomastics (the study of names), cartographic theory, choreography and architectural and urban formation analysis.

This thesis attempts a paradigmatic shift in the focus of ballad study towards embodiment, moving from ‘representation’ towards ‘experience’ and with an emphasis on ‘process,’ as opposed to ‘product.’ The originality lies in the development of a new approach which explores words, music and embodied aesthetic experience as they come together and create meaning in performance, conceived of as ‘presence’ (Porter 2009). Ideas from philosophy are connected with concepts from ethnomusicology and folklore and brought to bear upon broad issues in the study of expressive culture. While the focus here is on the ballad experience in a Scottish context, ultimately the questions asked attend to dimensions of experience that do not emphasise cultural-boundedness. The emphasis is not on my experience as a fieldworker, nor on fieldwork descriptions, but rather on the development of new theoretical methodologies that can be extended and applied to other cultural forms. To that end, I am little concerned with texts, variants and versions, transcriptions and collections which traditionally constitute the subject matter of ballad studies. What is presented is a convergence of contemporary disciplinary approaches, pushing the boundaries of the existing framework of ballad and folksong studies to include dimensions of cultural experience rarely considered in this field. Working within the wider interpretative framework of hermeneutic phenomenology, theories of embodiment are used as a means to introduce ideas from embodied cognition. The development of ideas is concerned with describing how our embodied experience of the world informs the processes of meaning-making, how human cognitive capacities are at work in the experience of ballad singing and how the structure of the ballad reflects and shapes these capacities. Embodied philosophy and contemporary theories of metaphor are central in this endeavour. Ultimately, this work seeks to find a legitimate way of talking about the ephemeral, intangible yet real quality of embodied aesthetic experience—the shivers and chills of the Maysie—that avoids metaphysical explanations and that makes sense in a secular, humanistic framework. The aim is not to demystify experience in a reductionist sense, but to offer an interpretation that is less about ‘transcendence’ and more about the creative processes present.

This thesis aims to bring to wider attention the work of the Parisian theologian and philosopher Jean-Yves Lacoste (part of the so-called ‘theological turn’ in French phenomenology). Lacoste (whose most recent work, Etre en Danger (2011), articulates what he describes as a ‘phenomenology of the spiritual life’), has previously published monographs in the phenomenology of liturgy (Expérience et l’absolu: Questions disputées sur l'humanité de l'homme, 1994; ET: Experience and the Absolute: Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man, 2004); hope and eschatology (Note sur le temps: essai sur les raisons de la mémoire et de l'espérance, 1990); philosophy and aesthetics (Le monde et l'absence d'oeuvre, 2000); and phenomenology and theology (Présence et parousie, 2006; Phénoménalité de Dieu, 2008). As a phenomenologist Lacoste is concerned with investigating the human aptitude for experience; as theologian Lacoste is interested in humanity’s potential for a relationship with the divine, what he terms the ‘liturgical relationship’ (where ‘liturgical’ implies more than simply worship writ large but refers instead to a specific anthropology, that of an existence lived and conducted ‘before God’, coram Deo). Beginning from the proposition that prayer is a theme that occurs throughout Lacoste’s writing, the dissertation employs that as a heuristic through which to view, interpret and critique his thought by offering a thematic study of prayer as it appears in his published works. It will look at issues that impact upon the ‘spiritual life’ such as boredom and fatigue, and include the following topics: ambiguity, rumour and the absurd; utopia and fantasy; body, flesh and spirit; silence; time, anarchy and flux. The dissertation is, in part, also an answer to the question as to what kind of theology might be written in response to and in dialogue with Lacoste, by examining some previously overlooked themes in and influences upon his work.

The thesis is concerned with ways in which tourists’ experiences of learning to dive are mediated by technology, equipment and cultural constructions that are projected through visual media. The empirical chapters take a different theoretical body of literature to demonstrate the extent to which mediation alters human perception. The thesis is informed by research participants who took part in an experimental visual methodology that sought to open up new ways of studying the senses. The empirical chapters cover a consideration of the phasing in and out of attention of equipmental prosthetics for learner divers, a phenomenological study of the reorganisation of the senses underwater, a Bergsonian take on the intersubjective nature of recollection upon encountering material relics at a wreck site. The construction of docile diving bodies are considered, in relation to appropriate ways of moving and thinking about the ocean’s inhabitants, before the final empirical chapter outlines the mediative role of videographic souvenirs, as they polish memories of previous experience and alter relations to place. The thesis concludes by drawing attention to the way in which understandings of underwater space are constructed before, during and after real-time perception of the ocean and its various inhabitants. Consequently, it is noted that underwater experience is both highly subjective and intertextual, being furnished by the associations and atmospheres that each learner diver brings to the encounter and being re-presented to others by means of what each diver takes away.

Substance use disorders are chronic brain disorders and must therefore be treated on an ongoing basis. Accordingly, the concept of recovery capital has been developed to account for the internal and external resources that an individual can mobilize in order to recover from a substance use disorder. However, the concept has scarcely been applied to emerging adults. Although they are at twice the risk of developing a substance use disorder relative to their adult or adolescent counterparts, emerging adults in addiction and recovery are understudied. This phenomenological study aims to explore and describe the experience of emerging adults in recovery and to identify the barriers and facilitators to their recovery. The informants (n=8) were 18-25 year olds in recovery from substance use disorders. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and subsequently analyzed for emerging themes. The results from this study suggest that the developmental tasks facing emerging adults are exacerbated in addiction and recovery.