published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This dissertation works and is worked by the chiasmus in-between the language of space and the space of language. Fragmented narratives of live(d) experience from the everyday life of pedagogy are juxtaposed with theoretical traces from Lacanian psychoanalysis and Derridean deconstruction. The text(ure) of the work labours with and against the grain of hegemonic inscriptions in multiple sites of pedagogy - tarrying within uncertainty - on the tremulous grounds of a 'third' discourse. Located always already within the materiality of language, the work labours within spaces of provocative dissonance in-between theoretical positionings. Readings of spatiality from architecture and human geography intersect and disseminate with readings of language from post/colonial ethnography and cultural studies. Rereadings resonate within the vibrancy of a growing literature on writing otherwise within the spaces of interdisciplinarity. Reading outside the literature of pedagogy infuses the inside writing as boundaries are disturbed and subjectivities destabilized. Research is rewritten as messy text as/in a rigour of ruins in the gaps and intervals of the spaces in-between. As semiotic tropes of language shift toward performativity, the text ex-scribes in order to disrupt the circumscriptions of normative praxis. The text seeks invocations for risking radical responsibilities in the everyday experience of living pedagogy - in the tensionaliry of the always already and the not-yet there. The work of this dissertation labours beneath and beyond the text in semiotic dispositions - through an Aokian re-reading of Lacanian metonymy for pedagogy - a doubling movement of metonymy/metaphor in tropic moments - within a 'third' discourse generating openings for transformation. Excentric circumscriptions dis/appear into the space of no-thingness - a site of ambiguity that is both thing and nothing and yet neither thing nor nothing - an ongoing response to an invitation to write a paper/not paper. A writing that tarries within its inscription - ghosted by a reading relationship with itself. A writing that seeks a jouissance of vacancy in tracking the spectrality of paper ghosts. The possibilities for transformation happen in chiasmatic passages from trope to performativity through re-readings and mis-readings. From a working text emerge articulations of a radical rhetoricity evoking ongoing labour from the para-sitic spatial punctuations of AuthorTextReader.

This dissertation works and is worked by the chiasmus in-between the language of space and the space of language. Fragmented narratives of live(d) experience from the everyday life of pedagogy are juxtaposed with theoretical traces from Lacanian psychoanalysis and Derridean deconstruction. The text(ure) of the work labours with and against the grain of hegemonic inscriptions in multiple sites of pedagogy - tarrying within uncertainty - on the tremulous grounds of a 'third' discourse. Located always already within the materiality of language, the work labours within spaces of provocative dissonance in-between theoretical positionings. Readings of spatiality from architecture and human geography intersect and disseminate with readings of language from post/colonial ethnography and cultural studies. Rereadings resonate within the vibrancy of a growing literature on writing otherwise within the spaces of interdisciplinarity. Reading outside the literature of pedagogy infuses the inside writing as boundaries are disturbed and subjectivities destabilized. Research is rewritten as messy text as/in a rigour of ruins in the gaps and intervals of the spaces in-between. As semiotic tropes of language shift toward performativity, the text ex-scribes in order to disrupt the circumscriptions of normative praxis. The text seeks invocations for risking radical responsibilities in the everyday experience of living pedagogy - in the tensionaliry of the always already and the not-yet there. The work of this dissertation labours beneath and beyond the text in semiotic dispositions - through an Aokian re-reading of Lacanian metonymy for pedagogy - a doubling movement of metonymy/metaphor in tropic moments - within a 'third' discourse generating openings for transformation. Excentric circumscriptions dis/appear into the space of no-thingness - a site of ambiguity that is both thing and nothing and yet neither thing nor nothing - an ongoing response to an invitation to write a paper/not paper. A writing that tarries within its inscription - ghosted by a reading relationship with itself. A writing that seeks a jouissance of vacancy in tracking the spectrality of paper ghosts. The possibilities for transformation happen in chiasmatic passages from trope to performativity through re-readings and mis-readings. From a working text emerge articulations of a radical rhetoricity evoking ongoing labour from the para-sitic spatial punctuations of AuthorTextReader. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

This study focuses on meaning construction as it occurs in the reading act. It explores and challenges the view that the reader usually uses language to construct meaning in a referential way. This study envisages that the reader who engages in a literal reading of the text may encount~r serious epistemological and ontological problems which ensue from such a narrow reading of the text. In the context of the dynamics of meaning construction, this study subsequently problematizes the notion of language vis-avis the notion of subjectivity and representation. It challenges the taken for granted assumption that meaning is pre-ordained and which has to be extracted by a sovereign and authoritative reading subject. The question of precision and correctness of grasping textual content is addressed by exploring those views which seek to go beyond Cartesian representationalism. This study therefore critically explores an alternative reading theory by examining the pioneering dialogical views of earlier theorists to include, ultimately, those subversive attempts of radical theorists. The latter group clearly seeks to subvert and even displace the dialogical reading practices of their predecessors. This study ultimately proposes the notion of a differential reading discourse. Such an integrative theory postulates an alternative theory of reading which in fact provides a more expansive, yet inclusive, framework of reading. This would entail a form of reading which would combat the mere consumption of meanings and acquiescence into ideology-building. It would be a reading framework that is more in keeping with our socio-political reality in South Africa, in which people can enjoy a far more critical and comprehensive view of themselves and of the society in which they operate. / Information Science / D.Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)

This study focuses on meaning construction as it occurs in the reading act. It explores and challenges the view that the reader usually uses language to construct meaning in a referential way. This study envisages that the reader who engages in a literal reading of the text may encount~r serious epistemological and ontological problems which ensue from such a narrow reading of the text. In the context of the dynamics of meaning construction, this study subsequently problematizes the notion of language vis-avis the notion of subjectivity and representation. It challenges the taken for granted assumption that meaning is pre-ordained and which has to be extracted by a sovereign and authoritative reading subject. The question of precision and correctness of grasping textual content is addressed by exploring those views which seek to go beyond Cartesian representationalism. This study therefore critically explores an alternative reading theory by examining the pioneering dialogical views of earlier theorists to include, ultimately, those subversive attempts of radical theorists. The latter group clearly seeks to subvert and even displace the dialogical reading practices of their predecessors. This study ultimately proposes the notion of a differential reading discourse. Such an integrative theory postulates an alternative theory of reading which in fact provides a more expansive, yet inclusive, framework of reading. This would entail a form of reading which would combat the mere consumption of meanings and acquiescence into ideology-building. It would be a reading framework that is more in keeping with our socio-political reality in South Africa, in which people can enjoy a far more critical and comprehensive view of themselves and of the society in which they operate. / Information Science / D.Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)