My thesis explores a violent episode which took place in a Sinhala village in Sri Lanka. This episode involved a series of events which unfolded between November 1989-January 1990, when 22 schoolboys were abducted from their homes, tortured and killed by personnel based at a neighbouring army camp. This episode took place in the wake of a popular armed upnsmg. Yet an Intelligence investigation conducted by the regime-in-power in 1991 exonerated all the boys from any complicity in insurgent activity. Though Sri Lanka has seen collective violence ranging from inter-ethnic to class-based to gender-specific, in this event, both victims and perpetrators share the same Sinhala-Buddhist ethnic, linguistic and religious ethos and male gender. Thus local constructions of masculinities within Sinhala society become increasingly pivotal; it was not their politics, I argue, but their demeanour as young boys which was central to their fate. This involves the posture of deference (lajja-bhavu or the 'fear of being [publicly] shamed') that adolescent offspring in Sinhala society almost involuntarily assume vis-a-vis parents, older sibling and other figures of authority. Bodily demeanour, remarks Bourdieu, exemplifies social class and gender identity (1977; 1984). But I would argue that in the South Asian context demeanours of deference do not always imply hierarchichal relationships of power, though sometimes of course they may. They remain a courtesy which retains the fiction of precedence. Withdrawal of such deference creates anxiety and unvoiced rage. But with the incursions of the global into everyday life, local demeanours of self-hood are pervaded by the effects of the tabloid/electronic media, mass education, discourses on political rights etc. and fraught with new ambiguities. And even more than a withdrawal of deference, such ambiguity provokes unease. But since - much of the time - demeanour is involuntary, the young actor may not always perceive that his demeanour is now more charged, and he may not grasp the enormity of the emotions this occasions. It is in the public domain that such withdrawal/ambiguity is most clearly seen to undermine the role of it's receiver, whose outrage becomes to that extent culturally validated. This creates a space for the performative acting out of such emotions. The act or violence now becomes an attempt to restore meaning/significance to the life of the actor. seen to have been in some way untenably diminished by the withdrawal of deference.

This thesis investigates Søren Kierkegaard’s (1813-1855) reception of the writings of Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788). I focus on four specific topics. In chapter one I examine Kierkegaard’s early reception of Hamann which I argue provides the basis for Kierkegaard’s conception of his own authorial task. In particular, I examine concepts of humour and systematicity and the centrality of the figure of Socrates. Central to my argument is a contrast between Kierkegaard’s reception of Hamann and that of Hegel’s review. In chapter two I show that Kierkegaard develops an argument against speculative philosophy and its claims to have achieved the absolute beginning. I argue that Kierkegaard appeals to Hamann’s critique of Kant which centres around the possibility of a priori cognition and the dependency of reason on language. I contend that Kierkegaard takes up Hamann’s critique in order to show that the absolute beginning which speculative philosophy claims to have achieved in the form of pure thinking is unachievable because of the dependency of thought on language. Chapter three examines the conception of selfhood in Hamann and Kierkegaard. I address their views of the self as unified and their critique of alternative conceptions of selfhood which undermine this unity. I show that Kierkegaard’s arguments in relation to despair and forgetfulness share important similarities with Hamann. Chapter four explores Kierkegaard’s critique and repair of post-Kantian reflection theory. I demonstrate that Kierkegaard proceeds to provide a minimal view of the self achieved through reflection which finally encounters its own limits in its own self-knowledge. I propose that Kierkegaard presents this as Socratic ignorance and that his model for outlining the limits of self-knowledge stems from Hamann. I develop my argument by arguing that for Hamann and Kierkegaard self-knowledge is only available through divine revelation.

This work is a collectivist engagement between researcher and participants in a knowledge quest for self-hood through engaged bodily awareness and sense. The world of the teen girl is explored from a philosophical, social, and political perspective that emphasizes expression of self through embodied knowing and being. The process is performative where yoga is used as an arts-based method to explore the self through bodily awareness. The body is reclaimed as a way to know oneself. Yoga is the expression of the living, being, and knowing body. The asana practice, the still of meditation, and the flow of the breath are emancipatory discourse where each of us moves, changes, and grows; and ultimately becomes. This becoming is a consciousness raising experience that finds and grows voice. The transformative process engages a physical expression where participants’ and researcher’s individual sense of self is connected with their universal sense of self hereby replacing current patterns of harmful thinking with new consciousness that is reflective of self awareness and realization. Found poetry is used to explore the experience of the participants. The poetic representation brings the reader into the world of the teen girl. Voices that have been secret and silenced are celebrated. The body is the instrument through which power and ownership of the moment and the self are expressed through emotion and experience. The participants and researcher move collectively and intuitively from passive objects to self-knowing subjects; subjects who are thoroughly engaged in the world and aware of their highest potential as liberated selves. The findings of this collectivist and activist research approach indicate that embodied engagements elicit the space where flesh speaks and external and internal become unified as one. Yoga is an artful, embodied expression that is about experiencing the world without being enslaved by the world. This is not a passive engagement but an activist engagement that challenges hegemonic ideas of girls in the world and in the world of a girl. This further embraces the idea of the unity of whole-self and mind-body interconnectedness where we are not passive observers of the body with awareness of self located in the head watching over the body as object. Subject and object as separate dissolve and mindfulness is the present. The end result is one where we become; we become fully engaged in a creative and fluid self-hood enabling self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-love. / Graduate / 0727 / 0525 / 0273 / kyte_d@yahoo.ca

This work is a collectivist engagement between researcher and participants in a knowledge quest for self-hood through engaged bodily awareness and sense. The world of the teen girl is explored from a philosophical, social, and political perspective that emphasizes expression of self through embodied knowing and being. The process is performative where yoga is used as an arts-based method to explore the self through bodily awareness. The body is reclaimed as a way to know oneself. Yoga is the expression of the living, being, and knowing body. The asana practice, the still of meditation, and the flow of the breath are emancipatory discourse where each of us moves, changes, and grows; and ultimately becomes. This becoming is a consciousness raising experience that finds and grows voice. The transformative process engages a physical expression where participants’ and researcher’s individual sense of self is connected with their universal sense of self hereby replacing current patterns of harmful thinking with new consciousness that is reflective of self awareness and realization. Found poetry is used to explore the experience of the participants. The poetic representation brings the reader into the world of the teen girl. Voices that have been secret and silenced are celebrated. The body is the instrument through which power and ownership of the moment and the self are expressed through emotion and experience. The participants and researcher move collectively and intuitively from passive objects to self-knowing subjects; subjects who are thoroughly engaged in the world and aware of their highest potential as liberated selves. The findings of this collectivist and activist research approach indicate that embodied engagements elicit the space where flesh speaks and external and internal become unified as one. Yoga is an artful, embodied expression that is about experiencing the world without being enslaved by the world. This is not a passive engagement but an activist engagement that challenges hegemonic ideas of girls in the world and in the world of a girl. This further embraces the idea of the unity of whole-self and mind-body interconnectedness where we are not passive observers of the body with awareness of self located in the head watching over the body as object. Subject and object as separate dissolve and mindfulness is the present. The end result is one where we become; we become fully engaged in a creative and fluid self-hood enabling self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-love. / Graduate / 0727 / 0525 / 0273 / kyte_d@yahoo.ca