Through a close analysis of four plays by Shakespeare, this thesis argues that the question of subjectivity ultimately comes to be negotiated around a structural impasse or certain points of opacity in each of the text's signifying practices. Challenging assumptions about the utatively "theatrical" contexts of Richard III, Richard II, Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra, I argue that, to varying degrees, the specular economy of each play is in fact traversed by a radical alterity that constitutively gives rise to a notion of subjectivity commonly referred to as "Shakespearean". Elaborating upon the work of both Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, I argue that "subjectivity" in the plays is, rather, the articulated confrontation with a non-dialectizable remainder that haunts each text from within. Crucially in this respect I relate each of the texts to Lacan's account of the "gaze" as a species of what he calls the object a: an alien kernel of jouissance exceeding all subjective mediation yet, paradoxically, also that which confers internal consistency both to subjectivity and to the very process of symbolization as such. I am, moreover, also concerned to read the work of Jacques Derrida as providing an illuminating context for how this incursion of alterity that he terms differance (what Lacan calls the Real) may be read as the unacknowledged support of subjectivity. The thesis concludes with a consideration of how this analysis of the Shakespearean object, rather than succumbing to the heady pleasures of an unfettered textuality, opens, ineluctably, onto a rethinking of the very category of the "political" itself.

This thesis uses the photographic portrait as an example of contemporary art practice to examine developments in aesthetic sensibility and constructions of meaning with particular address to ineffable qualities in both the subject and in the photograph. It examines the contribution of practice to a wider cultural debate, predominantly described as poststructural. Thomas Ruff's contention that it is impossible to photographically depict an individual, establishes a methodology that interrogates assumptions and directs examination toward reconfiguring issues of theory and practice. In the photographic portrait, what is `essential' equates with the expectation of visual statements that are definitive and what is 'ineffable' is that which transcends words. The persistent premise of capturing the 'essence' is dependant on the notion of 'presence', the certainty of pure perception or essential meaning, now undermined by poststructuralism in terms of conceptions of meaning and authorship. If essential depiction is problematic, how might a correlative adjustment to conceiving and validating photographic meaning be framed? How are essential or ineffable qualities displaced, formed and manifested? What constitutes the contemporary 'meaningful' portrait? Realigned as 'depictions of people', the 'portrait' serves a complex function, adjusted in the light of psychoanalysis and poststructuralism and visibly manifested as metaphor for contemporary consciousness. With particular reference to texts by Julia Kristeva, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, this thesis demonstrates photographic practice as a form of discourse that visualises implicit truth-values, and participates in debate. It asserts figural interpretations to photographs over literary systems like narrative, and immanent property over aspirations to 'transcendence' or 'essence' and proposes reconfigurations of psychological, critical or poetic 'fiction' as alternatives. It repositions the ineffable as a conceptual domain of possibility that assimilates the dynamic of differance as its poststructural equivalent and proposes a conceptual aesthetic that celebrates aspects of poststructuralism and is rooted in what the photograph provokes rather than what it depicts.

This thesis aims to evaluate the Turkish Labour Law on the basis of a new approach to legal studies that follow the internal tendency of legal science to resolve its own problem, which is that of convincingly defining the point of contact between norm and fact (form and content), materially connecting the juridical organisation of power with the social structuring of power, while avoiding both formalist and positivist deviations. Against this background, the thesis aims to assess the correlation between the recent changes in the international division of labour and the structural forms, on the axis of which the Turkish legal system functions. This endeavour includes an attempt to view law in its location as a component to a general and persistent process of social regulation that secures general patterns of social domination. This study argues that the role of the collective labour law over the stabilisation of wage relations is increasingly deteriorated by the changing nature of the state and of work, including the new institutionality and the increasing influence of business over labour politics. After the &lsquo / discovery&rsquo / of the importance of the universal principle of the freedom of contract in labour law, the regulatory powers of individual labour law have extended to the realm of capital-labour relations having an impact over the social division of labour and have acquired a relative dominance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how secondary school media educators might best meet the needs of students who prefer practical production work to ‘theory’ work in media studies classrooms. This is a significant problem for a curriculum area that claims to develop students’ media literacies by providing them with critical frameworks and a metalanguage for thinking about the media. It is a problem that seems to have become more urgent with the availability of new media technologies and forms like video games. The study is located in the field of media education, which tends to draw on structuralist understandings of the relationships between young people and media and suggests that students can be empowered to resist media’s persuasive discourses. Recent theoretical developments suggest too little emphasis has been placed on the participatory aspects of young people playing with, creating and gaining pleasure from media. This study contributes to this ‘participatory’ approach by bringing post structuralist perspectives to the field, which have been absent from studies of secondary school media education. I suggest theories of media learning must take account of the ongoing formation of students’ subjectivities as they negotiate social, cultural and educational norms. Michel Foucault’s theory of ‘technologies of the self’ and Judith Butler’s theories of performativity and recognition are used to develop an argument that media learning occurs in the context of students negotiating various ‘ethical systems’ as they establish their social viability through achieving recognition within communities of practice. The concept of ‘ethical systems’ has been developed for this study by drawing on Foucault’s theories of discourse and ‘truth regimes’ and Butler’s updating of Althusser’s theory of interpellation. This post structuralist approach makes it possible to investigate the ways in which students productively repeat and vary norms to creatively ‘do’ and ‘undo’ the various media learning activities with which they are required to engage. The study focuses on a group of year ten students in an all boys’ Catholic urban school in Australia who undertook learning about video games in a three-week intensive ‘immersion’ program. The analysis examines the ethical systems operating in the classroom, including formal systems of schooling, informal systems of popular cultural practice and systems of masculinity. It also examines the students’ use of semiotic resources to repeat and/or vary norms while reflecting on, discussing, designing and producing video games. The key findings of the study are that students are motivated to learn technology skills and production processes rather than ‘theory’ work. This motivation stems from the students’ desire to become recognisable in communities of technological and masculine practice. However, student agency is not only possible through critical responses to media, but through performative variation of norms through creative ethical practices as students participate with new media technologies. Therefore, the opportunities exist for media educators to create the conditions for variation of norms through production activities. The study offers several implications for media education theory and practice including: the productive possibilities of post structuralism for informing ways of doing media education; the importance of media teachers having the autonomy to creatively plan curriculum; the advantages of media and technology teachers collaborating to draw on a broad range of resources to develop curriculum; the benefits of placing more emphasis on students’ creative uses of media; and the advantages of blending formal classroom approaches to media education with less formal out of school experiences.

Interpersonal violence and abuse in New Zealand is so widespread it is considered a normative experience. Mental health nurses witnessing the inscribed effects of abuse on service users are lead to consider whether we are dealing with a breakdown of the mind or a breakdown in social or cultural connection (Stuhlmiller, 2003). The purpose of this research is to examine the cultural context which makes violence and abuse against women and children possible. In 2003, the public debate on prostitution law reform promised to open a space in which discourses on sexuality and violence, practices usually private or hidden, would publicly emerge. Everyday discourses relating to prostitution law reform reported in the New Zealand Herald newspaper in the year 2003 were analysed using Foucauldian and feminist post-structural methodological approaches. Foucauldian discourse analysis emphasises the ways in which power is enmeshed in discourse, enabling power relations and hegemonic practices to be made visible. The research aims were to develop a complex, comprehensive analysis of the media discourses, to examine the construction of harm in the media debate, to examine the ways in which the cultural hegemony of dominant groups was secured and contested and to consider the role of mental health nurses as agents of emancipatory political change. Mental health promotion is mainly a socio-political practice and the findings suggest that mental health nurses could reconsider their professional role, to participate politically as social activists, challenging the social order thereby reducing the human suffering which interpersonal violence and abuse carries in its wake.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on November 1, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

Esse trabalho se ocupa do processo de construção dos Estados letão e estoniano após o fim da URSS, tendo como pano de fundo a exclusão da minoria russa residente nesses países. O objetivo da presente dissertação é compreender as razões para a existência de pessoas em um limbo social, político e jurídico, definidas como “não-cidadãs” no Báltico. Sugere-se que essa situação decorre da contradição inerente ao processo de independência de Letônia e Estônia no pós-Guerra Fria: por um lado, marcado por características próprias da constituição do Estado moderno excludente e, por outro, permeado pelas condicionalidades para associação às instituições europeias. A partir de uma perspectiva teórica pós-estruturalista, entende-se a construção dos Estados como uma prática performática resultante de relações de poder. No caso em tela, essas relações podem ser identificadas em nível “interno” e “externo”. Internamente, demonstra-se que a construção dos Estados letão e estoniano ocorreu por meio do estabelecimento de leis de cidadania excludentes contra a minoria russa, alimentada por um cenário político de legitimação das elites nacionais no poder. Em nível “externo”, a adequação dessa construção estatal excludente foi modificada pelos critérios para adesão às instituições europeias. Porém, paradoxalmente, essa pressão externa não foi suficiente para que as minorias russas adquirissem os direitos defendidos pelas instituições europeias, exatamente em razão de a própria identidade europeia ser construída a partir da oposição à Rússia. Por isso, o lugar dos “não-cidadãos” na construção estatal do Báltico é a fronteira moral entre o “interno” e o “externo”, o nacional e o pós-nacional. / This study deals with the construction process of the modern Latvian and Estonian states after the end of the USSR, using as a backdrop the exclusion of the Russian minority residing in these countries. This dissertation’s aim is to understand the reasons for the existence of people in a social, political and legal limbo, defined as "non-citizens" in the Baltic countries. It is suggested that this situation arises from the inherent contradiction in Latvia and Estonia’s independence process in the post-Cold War: on the one hand, marked by the characteristics constitution of the modern exclusionary State, and, on the other hand, permeated by membership conditionalities of European institutions. From a post-structuralist theoretical perspective, this study understands the construction of states as a performative practice resulting from power relations. In this case, these relationships can be identified internally and externally. Internally, it is demonstrated that Latvian and Estonian states’ construction occurred through the exclusionary citizenship laws establishment against the Russian minority, fueled by a political scenario of legitimizing the national elites in power. At the external level, the adequacy of this exclusionary state construction was modified by the criteria for membership of the European institutions. However, paradoxically, this external pressure was not enough for the Russian minorities to acquire the rights defended by the European institutions, precisely because the European identity itself was built from the opposition to Russia. Therefore, the place of the "non-citizens" in the construction of the Baltic States is the moral boundary between the internal and the external, the national and post-national.

Esta dissertação inscreve-se nos campos dos Estudos de Gênero e Culturais, em uma aproximação com a perspectiva pós-estruturalista de análise; investiga as posições de sujeito usuário/a de substâncias psicoativas e os atravessamentos de gênero (re)produzidos no âmbito da Política de Redução de Danos. A Política de RD está preocupada em reconhecer as escolhas dos/as usuários/as de substâncias psicoativas (SPA) que demandam algum tipo de cuidado e, desse modo, alcançar a esfera do direito à saúde, à cidadania e aos direitos humanos. O material empírico é composto pelos documentos normativos da política e seus desdobramentos. Para o exame do corpus de investigação, foi utilizada a análise cultural, em combinação com a pesquisa documental, operando com os conceitos de posição de sujeito, norma, poder e gênero. Os documentos da política e seus desdobramentos foram tomados como artefatos culturais e pedagógicos que (re)produzem e veiculam discursos biomédicos, psicológicos, morais e jurídicos implicados com a produção de sujeitos e de práticas de cuidado no campo da saúde mental voltada para o uso de SPA. A análise permitiu descrever, discutir e problematizar os sentidos de termos como usuário, dependente, droga, substância, autonomia, dentre outros utilizados de forma naturalizada na política; com esse movimento analítico, foi possível explorar sua multiplicidade, conflitualidade e historicidade. As análises empreendidas contribuem para que sejam desnaturalizadas determinadas noções tão presentes nas formulações de propostas para o cuidado desses usuários/as. A (in)definição de termos discutidos permitiu visualizar a aparente sobreposição de sentidos de alguns termos como usuário/dependente para explorar distinções entre eles; também algumas relações lineares, como uso/consumo = dependência, que podem levar o indivíduo a evitar a aproximação com serviços de saúde como o CAPS mesmo quando deles precisa, com receio de ser nomeado como um/uma dependente, uma vez que essa nomeação produz diferentes efeitos em sua vida. Do ponto de vista do gênero, parece haver algumas pistas na (in)definição desses termos, mostrando que, em alguma medida, não se contemplam distinções produzidas pelo gênero, talvez porque haja ainda uma dificuldade em associar a mulher ao uso/abuso de SPA, embora os estudos mostrem o uso crescente destas entre as mulheres. Assim, um olhar sensível às abordagens de gênero na política permitiu ir "encontrando" pistas em relação à naturalização da relação entre uso de SPA e masculinidade e de uma feminilidade que não se droga. Nesse sentido, a pesquisa intentou desnaturalizar e mostrar alguns silenciamentos nas representações de feminino/masculino ainda ativas na cultura que contribuem para dificultar o dimensionamento de uma demanda de cuidado. / This dissertation is inserted in the field of Gender and Cultural Studies, approaching the poststructuralist perspective of analysis. It investigates the places of the subject/user of psychoactive substances and gender crossings (re)produced under the National Policy of Harm Reduction, a public policy concerned in recognizing the choices of the users of psychoactive substances (PAS) who require some sort of care, so reaching the boundaries of health protection and social citizenship and social rights. The empirical material consists of normative documents of the policy and its consequences. Cultural analysis, in combination with documentary research, was used for data analysis, considering the concepts of subject position, rule, power and gender. The policy documents and its consequences were taken as cultural and educational artifacts that (re)produce and convey biomedical, psychological, moral and juridical discourses involved in the production of subjects and care practices in the field of mental health addressed to the use of PAS. The analysis allowed to describe, debate and discuss the meanings of terms such as user, addicted, drug, substance, autonomy, among others used in a naturalized way in the policy, whose multiplicity, conflictuality and historicity was explored from this analytical movement. The undertaken analyses contribute to denaturalize certain notions usually used in the texts of the care proposals for those users. The (in)definition of discussed terms allowed to perceive the apparent meaning overlaps of some terms such as user/addicted to explore distinctions between them; it was also possible observe some linear relations, such as use/consumption = addiction, which can lead the individual to avoid looking for healthcare services, such as the Centers of Psychosocial Care (CAPS), even when he/she needs those services, fearing being named as addicted, since this nomination causes different effects in his/her life. From the gender point of view, there seem to be some clues in the (in)definition of these terms, showing that, to some extent, distinctions produced by the genre are not considered, perhaps because there are still some difficulties in associating the woman to the use/abuse of PAS, although some studies show increasing use among women. Thus, a sensitive reading to gender approaches in the policy allowed to go "finding" clues regarding the naturalization of the relationship between the use of PAS and masculinity, and regarding a femininity that is not addicted. In this sense, this research intended denaturalize this relationship and show some silences regarding the female/male representations still active in the culture that contribute to hinder the design of a care demand.

En 1955, Luciano Berio obtient de la R.A.I. l’autorisation de créer, dans les locaux milanais de la radio, le Studio di Fonologia, premier studio européen mêlant musique concrète et musique électronique. Ce lieu, dont il définira tout autant les statuts que les différents appareillages, va devenir pour lui durant six ans un lieu de production effrénée de radiodrames pour la R.A.I., mais également un laboratoire de recherches personnelles. Entouré par un cercle d’avant-garde, très au fait des publications scientifiques de son temps - notamment dans le domaine de la linguistique, de la théorie musicale, et du structuralisme - il va plonger de façon empirique au cœur la matière vocale. La situation acousmatique du studio, l’absence d’interprètes, la dimension poétique et théâtrale du langage vont l’amener à se questionner sur l’écoute, et, dans une pensée brechtienne, sur l’écoute de l’écoute. Nous tentons de dégager, dans notre travail, en partant de la réalité du travail en studio, les éléments qui ultérieurement ont fusionné pour devenir le style bérien et qui sont déjà en germe ou même parfaitement identifiables durant cette période qui va de Chamber Music à Laborintus II. / In 1955 the R.A.I. granted Luciano Berio permission to create the Studio di Fonologia in their Milan radio studios, the first European studio to combine “musique concrète” and purely electronic music. He was able to choose the equipment and define the usage of the studio so that it became a place where he would produce radio dramas for the R.A.I. at a furious pace for six years as well as a laboratory for personal research. Surrounded by a circle of avant-garde personalities, very aware of scientific publications of his time - notably in the domains of linguistics, musical theory and structuralism - he will dive in an empirical way into the heart of vocal material. The acousmatic nature of the studio, the absence of live performers, and the poetic and theatrical dimension of language will lead him to ask himself about the notion of listening, and in a Brechtian way, about listening to listening. We will attempt in our work to reveal - from his actual studio work - the elements which later merged to become the Berian style and which were already germinating or even perfectly recognizable during the period from Chamber Music to Laborintus II.

An examination of scholarly work on nationalism reveals that the nation is typically defined on the basis of positivistic understandings of human nature or society. Consequently, it is understood, not in term of its own specificity, but in terms of an underlying referent that is thought to engender it. Since the unity of the nation is attributed to a “privileged” cause, the plurality of forms that co-constitute it are underemphasized. Positivist explanations have therefore obfuscated the extent to which “the nation” and “nationalism” come to be diversely imbricated in the social and political fabric, and how the nation comes to be totalized, in light of the plurality of its constitutive forms and subject positions. The present work deconstructs existing theories of nationalism, while seeking to generatively furnish a theory of nationalism that eliminates all reliance on positivism. Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony, which sees socio-political blocs as discursive terrains of multiple overdetermined forms and relations, is deployed in these efforts. Therefore, nationalism is understood, not in terms of privileged constituents, but as a variable set of overdetermined “family resemblances,” such as, “the nation,” “the state,” “the military,” “tradition,” etc., that come to represent the national communal totality. These “family resemblances” come to be dispersed variably and unevenly, as privileged nodes in the field of overdetermination, “binding” together differential identities. And since what governs any discursive formation is the uneven play of differences, it follows that a particular identity will have saturated, more than any other, the field of overdetermination and the content of nodal signifiers (e.g., “the nation”) with its narratives, thereby establishing its hegemony. “The nation” can thus be understood as a privileged signifier of historically variable content that, through its general and uneven dispersion, fuses but unevenly privileges, multiple identities into a socio-political bloc. / Graduate / 2019-06-14