博士(工学) / Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University

This is a project that takes inequality as its starting point to ask not why it persists in all its myriad forms, but rather how we might better understand its resiliency in order to re-orient our responses. It asks how we can re-imagine one another and work across asymmetrical divides in ways that move us towards substantial forms of social justice, actively disallowing the entrenchment of hierarchical valuing systems, and how we can engage with literature as part of reconfiguring ‘equality’ in the process. These questions are traced through Indigenous women’s literatures in Canada and black South African women’s literatures as sites of deeply textured resistance and re-imagined relationality. My analysis focuses on select texts from the 1980s to present in two primary archives: from Indigenous Canada, The Book of Jessica: A Theatrical Transformation (Maria Campbell in collaboration with Linda Griffiths) and Monkey Beach (Eden Robinson); and from South Africa, Mother to Mother (Sindiwe Magona) and Coconut (Kopano Matlwa). I use conversation as my methodological and thematic compass for seeking modes of enabling comprehension across perniciously unequal systems of making meaning and considering the possibilities for transformative knowledge production and textual interpretation at sites of unequal intersubjective exchange. I employ an uneasy comparative practice that I base on horizontal forms of juxtaposition within conversational structures, and I argue that conversation’s generative instability and risky uncertainty open onto hopeful possibilities for transformative change. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This project examines a small selection of the literatures by Indigenous women writers in Canada and black South African women writers to conceptualize anti-oppressive approaches to working across differences in both literary/scholarly and activist/lived contexts. It uses conversation as a critical methodology for engaging four primary texts and practicing an uneasy comparative method based on horizontal forms of juxtaposition rather than vertical relations of evaluative power: Mother to Mother (Sindiwe Magona) and The Book of Jessica (Maria Campbell and Linda Griffiths); and Coconut (Kopano Matlwa) and Monkey Beach (Eden Robinson). The overall aim is to re-imagine forms of engaging across difference along a range of registers – racialization, gender, nation, class, language, and geographical location – that create conditions for more expansive and substantive forms of social justice than are currently visible. The project draws on feminist, Indigenous, postcolonial, critical race, and related areas of scholarship with an orientation towards social justice.

The purpose of this thesis is to emphasize the significance of narrative in giving voice to survivors of gender-based violence, and in breaking the silence surrounding this issue – matters that statistical reports tend to overlook. The voices of survivors of gender-based violence are often disregarded or not heard in statistical reports, despite their significance for understanding and addressing it. Therefore, I seek to deepen our understanding of the consequences of gender-based violence by reading survivors’ narratives alongside a number of philosophical thinkers who are not typically read together, but whose work can contribute to a better understanding of the violence itself and the narration that arises in its wake, namely Adriana Cavarero, Susan J. Brison, Kelly Oliver, and María Lugones.  By applying several philosophical concepts to listen to what the narratives of the victims express, I also intend to contextualize them within a larger societal framework, to better understand the impact of gender-based violence. I will be drawing from Susan Brison’s concept aftermath, Adriana Cavarero’s discussion of relating narratives, horrorism, and narrative against destruction, as well as María Lugones’s concept “world”-travelling. The narratives I engage tend to convey that gaslighting is a significant aspect of the abuse, which is why I choose to analyze it with reference to Kelly Oliver’s work.  My hope is that my thesis will complement and enrich the quantitative and statistical approach represented by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions. I prioritize the voices of survivors, allowing their narratives to guide the discourse. This approach, influenced by Cavarero, emphasizes the importance of centering the experiences of those directly affected by violence, and by listening to their stories I want to increase awareness and understanding of the violence perpetrated against them. In the face of what Cavarero calls ontological violence, it becomes important to start listening to the voices of the survivors, as they need to be heard. I also aim to initiate societal debates and actions that can lead to change and support for those affected by gender-based violence.

No / In this article we explain how the development of new organization theory faces several mutually reinforcing problems, which collectively suppress generative debate and the creation of new and alternative theories. We argue that to overcome these problems, researchers should adopt relationally reflexive practices. This does not lead to an alternative method but instead informs how methods are applied. Specifically, we advocate a stance toward the application of qualitative methods that legitimizes insights from the situated life-with-others of the researcher. We argue that this stance can improve our abilities for generative theorizing in the field of management and organization studies.

Fostering collaboration among people of diverse ethnicities is vital to improving our relationships with Nature and with each other. All knowledges known to humans have their limits, including Western scientific knowledge. This study argues that Indigenous elders have a wealth of nature-based wisdom which is urgently needed. The Thirteen International Indigenous Grandmothers have been sharing their wisdom with the world and meeting them inspired this work. Two Grandmothers, one Mazatec and member of the Thirteen Grandmothers who follows in the healing tradition of curandera María Sabina, the other Taíno (Caribbean Arawak), and several members of their families in Mexico and in Cuba kindly agreed to be research participants so that I could bring attention to their gifts and share with the world. Embodying their ancient wisdom they do not see themselves as separate from Nature but as integral part of her. Their relationships to all beings, humans, animals, plants, minerals, and spiritual entities, are imbued with love and care. They can be role models for people who have forgotten the most basic premise of respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and empathy for all our relations. The methodologies underlying this investigation are Indigenous. I used strategies of inquiry such as storytelling, participant observation, and reflexive self study. Relationality and accountability are its pillars. Being of European descent, doing research with Indigenous elders required great vigilance on my part. I had to challenge my own conventional Western views and question the truths I am surrounded with to gain an understanding of my research participants’ worldview. Even with the best of intentions all I could hope for was an approximation. As I immersed myself into the worlds of my participants the great significance of plants as part of their physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing became evident. Maize, tobacco, and the plant teachers cohoba and psilocybe mushrooms were, and for the most part still are, essential and closely knit into their cultural fabric. Coming from a background where the written word is placed high above the spoken one, and Nature is seen as separate to us, it is important to acknowledge that much rich understanding of the world is beyond pen and paper, even beyond words. / Graduate / 0727 / gabriela@uvic.ca

Abstract Inspired by feminist standpoint theory, this doctoral thesis studies what the voices and silences about experiences of sexual violence tell us when voiced by adolescent girls who have been in residential care institutions. This group of girls evidently experience more sexual violence compared to their peers. This dissertation is based on four scientific Articles. In Article I, Erving Goffman’s theory is used to analyse the girls’ experiences of being in residential institutions and Articles II–IV focus on their sexual violence experiences. Data is generated in 2013 through semi-structured interviews with 11 girls aged 14–17 years old, and through interviews with one of these girls from 2013–2017. Data from Bulgaria, Catalonia and Italy regarding the violent experiences of 46 girls is also used in Article II. Qualitative content analysis (Articles I–III) and the Listening Guide method (Article IV) were used in data analysis. The Articles reveal that the girls have multiple vulnerabilities that affect on creating safe connections, as well as voicing their experiences. The majority of the girls did not voice their experiences of sexual violence as violence and based on the data it can be interpreted that the sense of being cared for by someone might impact on what was named and/or recognised as sexual violence. The phenomenon was named abusive illusion of care and proposed to be included in Jenny Pearce’s social model of abused consent. A new term was also suggested for the area of girls’ sexually risky behaviour, which is further developed in this compilation report as sexism-related internalised sexual violence. In this compilation report, the main results of the Articles are combined and re-read in the light of Carol Gilligan’s theorisations. Those findings confirm that girls’ voices and silences about their sexual violence experiences are a complex and multidimensional combination of self-silence and being silenced, connection and resistance. Sexual violence experiences should be considered as contextual, relational, contradictory and situational phenomena. It is suggested that violence prevention programmes be organised in a gender-responsible way for all from an early age. Furthermore, professionals should be educated to recognise the hidden aspects in sexual violence and conceptualisations of sexual violence needs to be developed further. / Tiivistelmä Feministisen standpoint-teorian inspiroimana tässä väitöskirjassa tutkitaan, mitä lastensuojelulaitoksissa asuneiden tyttöjen äänellisyydet ja vaikenemiset kertovat heidän kokemastaan seksuaalisesta väkivallasta. Aiempi tutkimustieto osoittaa tämän tyttöryhmän kokevan vertaisiaan enemmän seksuaalista väkivaltaa. Väitöskirjaan sisältyy neljä tieteellistä artikkelia. Artikkeli I:ssa analysoidaan tyttöjen laitoskokemuksia Erving Goffmanin teorian avulla. Artikkeleissa II–IV keskitytään tyttöjen seksuaalisen väkivallan kokemuksiin. Aineisto koostuu yhdentoista 14–17-vuotiaan tytön puolistrukturoidusta haastattelusta vuodelta 2013 sekä yhden tytön haastatteluista vuosilta 2013–2017. Artikkeli II:ssa on otteita Bulgariasta, Italiasta ja Kataloniasta kerätyistä aineistoista koskien neljänkymmenenkuuden tytön väkivaltakokemuksia. Analyysissa käytettiin sisällönanalyysiä (Artikkelit I–III) ja Listening Guide -metodia (Artikkeli IV). Osatutkimuksista selvisi, että tyttöjen moniulotteiset haavoittuvuudet vaikuttavat turvallisten yhteyksien luomiseen sekä omien kokemusten kertomiseen. Suurin osa tytöistä ei sanallistanut seksuaalisen väkivallan kokemuksiaan väkivallaksi, ja tyttöjen kokema välittäminen näytti vaikuttavan siihen, minkä he tunnistivat ja/tai nimesivät seksuaaliseksi väkivallaksi. Ilmiö nimettiin “vahingolliseksi välittämisen illuusioksi,” ja se esitetään lisättäväksi Jenny Pearcen seksuaalista suostumusta koskevaan malliin. Tyttöjen seksuaalisen riskikäyttäytymisen alueelle ehdotettiin uutta termiä, ja tässä yhteenveto-osuudessa se on edelleen kehiteltynä “seksismiin perustuva sisäistetty seksuaalinen väkivalta.” Yhteenveto-osuudessa artikkeleiden päätulokset on yhdistetty ja niitä on uudelleen luettu Carol Gilliganin teoriaa hyödyntäen. Näin saadut tulokset osoittavat, että tyttöjen äänellisyydet ja vaikenemiset seksuaalisesta väkivallasta sisältävät moniulotteisen yhdistelmän vaikenemista ja vaietuksi tulemista, kuulumisen tunnetta sekä vastarintaa. Seksuaalisen väkivallan kokemukset tulisikin nähdä relationaalisena ja moniäänisenä, sekä tilanne- ja kontekstisidonnaisena ilmiönä. Lapsille tulisi suunnata varhaisessa vaiheessa väkivaltaa ennaltaehkäiseviä sukupuolivastuullisia koulutuksia. Lisäksi ammattilaisille tulisi järjestää koulutusta seksuaalisen väkivallan piiloisten muotojen tunnistamiseksi ja seksuaalisen väkivallan sanallistuksia tulisi edelleen kehittää.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) called on Ministries of Education, Faculties of Education, school administrators, and K-12 teachers to integrate Indigenous knowledges and pedagogies across the school curriculum. The TRC explicitly emphasized that education would be the intergenerational key to reconciliation in Canada and most provinces and territories quickly implemented curricula and developed resources to respond to the Calls to Action. Despite this mandate and these commitments, many teachers and teacher candidates continue to report that they do not have the skills, knowledge, or confidence to teach about the history of the Indian Residential Schooling system, Indigenous knowledges, or reconciliation. Research suggests that teacher resistance to "difficult knowledge" is a crucial contributing factor toward teachers avoiding, ignoring, and dismissing reconciliation work and upholding colonial logics. Moreover, teacher candidates and teachers often rely on the inaccurate and incomplete narratives they have learned about Canadians and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples. This impacts what and how they teach about these relationships, complicating the transformational changes the TRC urgently called for. How, then, might teachers unlearn these colonial stories and move from learning about Indigenous peoples to learning from them? Drawing on Donald’s concept of "ethical relationality", this study employed a qualitative approach to conduct conversational interviews with teacher candidates, teachers, staff, and students at two research sites. This study asks, "What are the curricular and pedagogical significances of ethical relationality to processes of unlearning colonialism?" Using a hermeneutic approach to interpret the stories shared, this study weaved within and between the landscapes of home and place. Findings reveal that teachers who experience supportive, multi-layered, and extended opportunities to unlearn settler colonialism and learn Indigenous wisdom traditions and knowledges from Indigenous peoples have the opportunity to understand a new story about Canadian-Indigenous relations. This study suggests that unless teachers begin to unlearn colonial logics, deeply understanding that they are implicated in ethical kinship relations with the places in which they live and with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, there is a significant possibility that curricula, professional development, and resources will not manifest in the transformational change that the TRC called for.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Six weeks in to my position as assistant director of the writing center and suddenly I was confronted by a cluster bombing of issues and concerns – microaggressions, depression, confusion, suspicion – each one separate but related, and threatening to tear a new hole in the already fragile foundation of community in my writing center. How do we feel, what do we do, how does a community survive when the story we’re experiencing isn’t the story we want or expected - when it is, in a word, terrible? After McKinney’s Peripheral Visions, we know our labor and our centers do not look, act, and feel cozy, iconoclastic, or focused on one-on-one tutoring all of the time. And yet, if we are going to continue to move beyond the grand narrative, a deep and meaningful understanding of community is essential. When we put our story in relation to our communities, then our story becomes just one thread in a much more complex tapestry. We cannot separate one person’s story from the story of the writing center. Each person, each story, is a stitch in the rhetorical fabric of community. Using critically reflexive stories to change and shape practice, this thesis highlights the grand narrative of community and shows how that narrative serves to stymie community growth. These stories resist boundaries. They are wayward. They are counter to the narratives around which we construct our lives. When we share stories and write together, we begin to understand the threads we’re all weaving into the tapestry – our community, stitched together through shared practice; a process that will never end, as each person comes and goes. The community will never be resolved, and in the ambiguity of boundlessness, comes a new way of seeing the world - through constellations and the dwelling in inbetween.

The Eudaimonic turn: Well-being in Literary Studies (2013), a study by Pawelski et al, sheds light on a recent turn in literary studies. The eudaimonic approach entails that texts are examined with the help of a hermeneutic of affirmation rather than the sceptical, suspicious methods of the deconstruction and post-structuralism. Pawelski et al’s text is drawn upon in this study because it corresponds to the way in which Marlene van Niekerk utilises themes such as relationships, friendship and loss in Die sneeuslaper (2009). The eudaimonic turn focusses on the way in which complex interpersonal connections are able to add to an individual’s well-being through positive as well as negative processes. Die sneeuslaper is mainly a reflection on what it means to be an author. However, it also raises important questions about the nature of being. The four short stories provide different perspectives on friendship, on how friendship can sometimes be problematic and even a nuisance, but also how relations with others repeatedly prove to be beneficial to a person’s well-being. In my study, the relational theme of friendship in Die sneeuslaper is studied from a eudaimonic point of view. Kaja Silverman’s text, Flesh of my Flesh (2009), is referred to in order to shed light on the term relationality. The relational themes of finitude (or mortality) and interpersonal connection are clearly present in Van Niekerk’s text. Although the death of a beloved friend causes trauma in Die sneeuslaper, the trauma proves to have positive effects in the form of posttraumatic growth, comfort and acceptance as time goes by. Comfort is also construed through the creation and appreciation of a work of art like Die sneeuslaper. Cognitive narratology is referenced to show how Marlene van Niekerk overthrows and plays with fixed ideas regarding relationality and friendship, causing the reader to converse with the text. Views on friendship held by thinkers such as Aristotle, Montaigne, Lacan, Kierkegaard and Derrida are referenced to give Van Niekerk’s use of the theme in Die sneeuslaper a certain context. This context represents the fixed frames of thinking generally applicable with regard to friendship. When a reader is willing to critically interpret these as well as personal frames of reference, it provides him or her the opportunity to contemplate reality from new perspectives. In Die sneeuslaper the reader is continually challenged to question existing frames of reference by means of never ending methods (resembling a Möbius-strip) and strange notions. This study concludes with the notion that it is necessary for artists (like the writers in Die sneeuslaper) to reflect differently on reality, so that readers may be inspired to also view reality in a different light. This will result in a broader view of reality, which in turn will have a more defining influence on personal well-being. / MA (Afrikaans and Dutch), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The Eudaimonic turn: Well-being in Literary Studies (2013), a study by Pawelski et al, sheds light on a recent turn in literary studies. The eudaimonic approach entails that texts are examined with the help of a hermeneutic of affirmation rather than the sceptical, suspicious methods of the deconstruction and post-structuralism. Pawelski et al’s text is drawn upon in this study because it corresponds to the way in which Marlene van Niekerk utilises themes such as relationships, friendship and loss in Die sneeuslaper (2009). The eudaimonic turn focusses on the way in which complex interpersonal connections are able to add to an individual’s well-being through positive as well as negative processes. Die sneeuslaper is mainly a reflection on what it means to be an author. However, it also raises important questions about the nature of being. The four short stories provide different perspectives on friendship, on how friendship can sometimes be problematic and even a nuisance, but also how relations with others repeatedly prove to be beneficial to a person’s well-being. In my study, the relational theme of friendship in Die sneeuslaper is studied from a eudaimonic point of view. Kaja Silverman’s text, Flesh of my Flesh (2009), is referred to in order to shed light on the term relationality. The relational themes of finitude (or mortality) and interpersonal connection are clearly present in Van Niekerk’s text. Although the death of a beloved friend causes trauma in Die sneeuslaper, the trauma proves to have positive effects in the form of posttraumatic growth, comfort and acceptance as time goes by. Comfort is also construed through the creation and appreciation of a work of art like Die sneeuslaper. Cognitive narratology is referenced to show how Marlene van Niekerk overthrows and plays with fixed ideas regarding relationality and friendship, causing the reader to converse with the text. Views on friendship held by thinkers such as Aristotle, Montaigne, Lacan, Kierkegaard and Derrida are referenced to give Van Niekerk’s use of the theme in Die sneeuslaper a certain context. This context represents the fixed frames of thinking generally applicable with regard to friendship. When a reader is willing to critically interpret these as well as personal frames of reference, it provides him or her the opportunity to contemplate reality from new perspectives. In Die sneeuslaper the reader is continually challenged to question existing frames of reference by means of never ending methods (resembling a Möbius-strip) and strange notions. This study concludes with the notion that it is necessary for artists (like the writers in Die sneeuslaper) to reflect differently on reality, so that readers may be inspired to also view reality in a different light. This will result in a broader view of reality, which in turn will have a more defining influence on personal well-being. / MA (Afrikaans and Dutch), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014