MySpace is a social network site (SNS) that forms an essential part of modern online communication. The creation of a personal profile in MySpace allows a user to connect with a global network of friends and communicate in a number of different ways. This thesis sets out to explore the experience of MySpace in terms of the self, identity and community. MySpace will be studied from a constructionist form of social psychology that benefits from new dialects of movement, performance and process. MySpace is conceptualised as a mediated community where users shape and are shaped by their experience of using the site. This study uses empirical data taken from the natural use of MySpace. A total of 100 open-access profiles are explored for the myriad ways that users constitute the self and identity in MySpace. The analysis identifies a number of functions of mediating the self including: the brand me, the hoped-for self and the self in potential. The brand me describes the reflective ability to realise other normative capacities through the practice of blogging in MySpace. This focuses on the ability to create new forms of subjectivity in MySpace interactions. In a similar vein, the hoped-for self explains the modification of the self through the act of profile changing and focuses on the actual, everyday practices of the self. Each of these analytic themes demonstrates the importance of the relational connections in MySpace. Finally, the self is defined as in potential as the analysis demonstrates an ongoing need for a narrative construction to the profile that is performed in both the visual and the textual aspects of the page.

This thesis examines Indian author Raja Rao’s critically neglected work. I read Rao’s production as a strategic, yet problematic, negotiation of hegemonic narrativizations of Indian history, which attempts both to propose alternative histories and deconstruct the ontology of modern western historiography. Rao’s often criticised use of essentialism in his works is here examined as a strategic deconstructive tool in the hands of the postcolonial writer. More specifically, I wish to show how his early novels Kanthapura and Comrade Kirillov resist colonial depictions of India through both linguistic and cultural structures. Rao’s stylistic negotiation is effected through a use of the English language mediated by the Indian writer’s sensibility. Both novels enforce strategies working through opposition. They provide alternative accounts counterbalancing strategic absences in the records of colonial Indian historiography while attempting to recover the voice of protagonist subalterns. In my examination of his later novels The Serpent and the Rope, The Cat and Shakespeare and The Chessmaster and His Moves, I argue that a more effective strategy of intervention is at work. It attempts to disrupt from within the discursive features of post-Enlightenment European modernity, more specifically the premises of Cartesian oppositional dualities, homogeneous ideas of linear time, and the centrality of imperial spaces, while problematising the hybrid and heterogeneous character of Rao’s narrative.

Sentiment analysis aims to use automated tools to detect subjective information such as opinions, attitudes, and feelings expressed in text, and has received a rapid growth of interest in natural language processing in recent years. Probabilistic topic models, on the other hand, are capable of discovering hidden thematic structure in large archives of documents, and have been an active research area in the field of information retrieval. The work in this thesis focuses on developing topic models for automatic sentiment analysis of web data, by combining the ideas from both research domains. One noticeable issue of most previous work in sentiment analysis is that the trained classifier is domain dependent, and the labelled corpora required for training could be difficult to acquire in real world applications. Another issue is that the dependencies between sentiment/subjectivity and topics are not taken into consideration. The main contribution of this thesis is therefore the introduction of three probabilistic topic models, which address the above concerns by modelling sentiment/subjectivity and topic simultaneously. The first model is called the joint sentiment-topic (JST) model based on latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), which detects sentiment and topic simultaneously from text. Unlike supervised approaches to sentiment classification which often fail to produce satisfactory performance when applied to new domains, the weakly-supervised nature of JST makes it highly portable to other domains, where the only supervision information required is a domain-independent sentiment lexicon. Apart from document-level sentiment classification results, JST can also extract sentiment-bearing topics automatically, which is a distinct feature compared to the existing sentiment analysis approaches. The second model is a dynamic version of JST called the dynamic joint sentiment-topic (dJST) model. dJST respects the ordering of documents, and allows the analysis of topic and sentiment evolution of document archives that are collected over a long time span. By accounting for the historical dependencies of documents from the past epochs in the generative process, dJST gives a richer posterior topical structure than JST, and can better respond to the permutations of topic prominence. We also derive online inference procedures based on a stochastic EM algorithm for efficiently updating the model parameters. The third model is called the subjectivity detection LDA (subjLDA) model for sentence-level subjectivity detection. Two sets of latent variables were introduced in subjLDA. One is the subjectivity label for each sentence; another is the sentiment label for each word token. By viewing the subjectivity detection problem as weakly-supervised generative model learning, subjLDA significantly outperforms the baseline and is comparable to the supervised approach which relies on much larger amounts of data for training. These models have been evaluated on real world datasets, demonstrating that joint sentiment topic modelling is indeed an important and useful research area with much to offer in the way of good results.

This thesis explores why gender hierarchy remains resilient and entrenched in contemporary political life, despite efforts to challenge and transform it. I approach this question by focussing on the reproduction of gendered subjects, which I argue is integral to the reproduction of what I term ‘gender orders’. This reproduction is interrogated through an analysis of the reproduction of homosexuality in the contemporary British armed forces. A review of the literature in feminist International Relations (IR) shows feminists have engaged with poststructural thought to develop sophisticated analyses of the subject as an effect of power. I argue that there might be further resources in post structural thought which could be mobilised to expose the incompleteness and failure of all attempts to reproduce subjectivity which might open up new ways to intervene and subvert gender. Drawing on the thought of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler I develop a critical methodology for analysing the reproduction of gendered subjects in the contemporary British armed forces. I argue that the military gender order is traditionally sustained through the segregation of women and the exclusion of homosexuals. As such it is pervasively heteronormative. For this reason I argue that the potential ‘integration’ of homosexuals did pose a significant threat to the gender order. However I will argue the threat posed by the integration of LGBT personnel has been neutralised by a series of responses which ‘re-inscribe’ them into the gender order, although these responses are always unstable. I demonstrate that gender often fails to guarantee the intelligibility it promises, and attempts to order gender necessarily break down. However I will argue that this cannot be exploited instrumentally in order to subvert gender because the gender order is better characterised as being in perpetual crisis, and any attempt to reproduce gender differently will also be unstable and prone to crisis. Consequently critique then becomes a relentless call to question, undermine and deconstruct all attempts to secure political orders, with no guarantees. Ultimately the thesis demonstrates that gender orders are complex, mobile and resilient and argues that modes of feminist critique need to be similarly mobile and responsive to a constantly shifting discursive terrain.

Critically examining the Lacanian and Althusserian theories of the subject, this thesis explored the theoretical problems and methodological premises of a converged version of both theories. The central argument the present thesis seeks to demonstrate is that the Lacanian-Althusserian dialectic provides a more comprehensive and effective account of the process of the subject formation than a purely psychoanalytical or structuralist Marxist analysis of the term. After a critical study of the way the subject is positioned between language and ideology in contemporary critical theory the thesis proceeds to investigate the subject-object relation in the Cartesian and Hegelian subjects. Conceived of as the convergence of lack and material, the Lacanian-Althusserian dialectic focuses on the close affinity between the Lacanian notion of linguistic alienation and the Althusserian concept of ideological interpellation. The subject’s alienation with what is called in the thesis ‘ideological signifier’ is considered as the result of direct and dramatic modes of interpellation in both language acquisition process and the mature phase. The major theoretical premises of this model include the following: first, identity functions through, and because of, the ‘inter-subjective dialectic’ and an ‘intra-subjective lack.’ Identity is never fully constituted because of this antagonism, and thus remains ‘incomplete.’ Secondly, the subject is ideologically constituted through language. The mechanism through which both language and ideology construct a subject never permits the subject enjoying a state of full identity with ideological signifiers. Thirdly, the subject’s identity is represented in the language exposed to and, later, reproduced by him/her. In order to demonstrate a practical reading of subjectivity formation in terms of this critical approach the present research applies it to James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). The process of the subject formation has been analysed through the subject’s alienation/interpellation by the ISAs. Also, the inter-subjective dialectic between different subjectivities of the subject’s identity has been investigated. The thesis demonstrates that identity reconstruction represented in the novel is a complicated and ongoing process, which begins with disillusionment, goes through materialization of epiphany, and ends with inventiveness in language. This process has been represented as a move from ideological to non-ideological subjectivity through artistic creativity. The exploration of the aesthetics of language is crucial to the analysis of the reconstruction of Stephen Dedalus’ identity in that it happens in and through language.

This post-qualitative inquiry project investigated subjectivity (sense of self) among graduates of creative writing Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs. The project asked how subjectivity is involved in the creative writing process and how that process fuels further writing after a creative piece (such as the MFA thesis) is completed. A post-qualitative, thinking-with-theory approach was used to explore the role of subjectivity among four anonymous graduates of creative writing MFA programs who provided writing samples describing their creative writing processes. Following the thinking-with-theory approach, the data were analyzed using Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of productive desire. Study findings are presented in two formats. First, a traditional, qualitative presentation of findings describes how unconscious desires develop a beneficial weakening of subjectivity that may encourage creative writers to continue writing after completion of the MFA degree. Next, further findings are presented via a nonlinear, rhizomatic data assemblage. The project concludes with recommendations for the use of Deleuzian productive desire as a pedagogical framework in graduate-level creative writing courses, as well as a call for the consideration of post-qualitative research methods in the field of education.

The aim of this dissertation is to explore and understand three important social contexts for the becoming of an artistic subjectivity: education, work and family life. The empirical data consist of interview material with alumni from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, staff of the institute, and a survey material from the Swedish National Artists Organization (KRO/KIF). Generally, the thesis employs a theory of conflicting understandings of labour as well as the importance of discourses and narratives for the formation of subjects. The contribution of the thesis is the analysis of a continuing conflict between being and working as an artist actualized in the social contexts explored. The arts education encouraged a romanticized understanding of art as unrelated to market value, which clashed against societal norms of career progression, survival and supporting a family. This conflict informed the subjective way in which the respondents related to their activities as artists, workers and relatives. The concept of freedom can be understood as mediating this conflict in the sense of forming the basis of attraction to the arts but also a burden as it relates to insecurity. The analysis found several subjective representations of the artist that indicate strong norms of individuality and self-direction, understood as the outcome of a working life fraught with personal responsibility for coping with insecurity. As such, the thesis is part of ongoing research on changes in working life towards non-standard and sometimes precarious working conditions. / Syftet med avhandlingen är att undersöka och förstå tre betydelsefulla sociala kontexter för konstruktionen av en konstnärlig identitet: utbildning, arbete och familj. Avhandlingens material består av intervjuer med alumner från Kungl. Konsthögskolan i Stockholm, undervisande personal på skolan, samt ett enkätmaterial från Konstnärernas riksorganisation KRO/KIF. Teoretiskt utgår avhandlingen från olika forskningsperspektiv på arbete samt diskursiv och narrativ konstruktion av subjektivitet. Avhandlingen påvisar en kontinuerlig konflikt mellan att vara eller att arbeta som konstnär. Den konstnärliga utbildningen positionerar konsten enligt romantisk tradition i motsättning till marknadslogik vilket efter utbildningen skapar en konflikt för konstnären som måste förhålla sig till normer av karriär, överlevnad av arbete och försörjning av familj. Denna konflikt påverkar hur konstnärerna subjektivt förhåller sig till sin konstnärliga aktivitet, totaliteten av sitt arbete och sin roll som anhöriga. Frihetsbegreppet kan förstås relatera till denna konflikt dels genom att utgöra en attraktion till konsten, dels genom att relatera till osäkerhet. I analysen framträdde flera konstnärliga subjektspositioner vilka alla indikerar starka normer av individualism och självtillräcklighet. Dessa kan relateras till ett arbetsliv karaktäriserat av eget ansvar för att hantera osäkerhet. Avhandlingen är därför del i en pågående forskning kring ett arbetsliv i förändring mot atypiska och även mer prekära arbetsförhållanden.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

There are many ways in which gender diversity and sexualness are experienced, spoken of and transacted in India. Recent activism against marginalisation related to sexual and gender nonconformity has led to transformation of some of these idioms into objects that circulate in particular registers of governmentality. In the process, something quite else is created, and this something else portends to speak the truth of 'sexuality in India'. Based on fieldwork carried out between 2005 and 2007 in cities, towns and villages around India, this thesis tells a story of this emergence of 'sexuality' as an aspect of personhood, a political object, a basis for social mobility, a mode of connectedness between people and as a legitimate cause for a movement. The term 'Queer', used variously in India, is a shorthand in some contexts for people who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and with South Asian identities such as Hijra, Kothi and Aravani. In others, it refers to a political project challenging norms of heterosexual monogamy, marking a conscious move away from identity-based politics premised on a bio-medical presumption that desire defines personhood. Evoking both these meanings, I examine queer activism as the negotiation of terms of entry of Queer bodies into epidemiological and juridical registers. In relation to the first, I examine interventions of the transnational HIV/AIDS industry that target 'men who have sex with men' – or 'MSM' – the category through which the industry apprehends sexualness between male subjects. I focus on the political-economic conditions of epidemiological knowledge, and on the transformation of idioms of gender and sexualness that its production draws upon. The industry, I argue, is involved in establishing availability of socio-economically marginalised bodies for intervention and research. These relationships of availability are possible because of their promise of social mobility and respectability for queer folk, hitherto despised in masculinist political economies. This mobility is contingent upon the creation and adoption of epidemiologically overdetermined identities which ironically find political significance in being seen as timeless and 'traditional'. The dichotomous being of the 'MSM' - simultaneously the producer and the object of this epidemiological knowledge, implies that the production of this knowledge is predicated upon the ability of queer folk to perform their place in the 'community'. The relationships in the 'field' are already written into the data, and thus the knowledge. Epidemiological knowledge, and the subjects it speaks of, I thus argue, are best understood as articulations of the conditions of their production. The second theme, of Law and the juridical register, opens with an examination of the tensions involved in the production of 'homophobia' as a political object. The disavowal of erotic dimensions in the naming of experiences as 'homophobic violence' is situated in the context of a popular imagination of a worthy juridical subject, and in broader imaginings of power. I then turn to the conditions under which the law, and in particular, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a Victorian anti-sodomy law under which homosexuality is seen to be criminalised, comes to be central to the Queer movement in India. Activism has given Section 377 a 'social life', an awareness of the law in public spheres, amongst law enforcers and branches of the State. Simultaneously, the Law has been inaugurated as a space for the articulation of more diffuse tensions. It has given a tangibility and intelligibility to experiences of exclusion, marginalisation and violence. I then examine a litigation at the High Court of Delhi challenging this law on grounds that it violates Fundamental Rights, focussing on the constitution of a coherent Queer body, cast simultaneously as enumerable, drawing on epidemiological knowledge; and, as capable of instantiation through individual narratives of violation. This project, where a sexuality is ascribed to the citizen-subject, is then juxtaposed with instances where activists actively strip sexualness off of the Queer body in order to make claims to citizenship. This is a cleavage in the Queer movement, an effect of the diversity of bodies it claims to speak of, as, and for, and the conditions under which these diverse bodies seek articulation. Between these projects lies ambiguity, which, I argue, is a precious resource for Queer folk, and for the movement. I suggest a conceptual shift from 'sexuality', (as personhood), to 'sexualness' (where desire flows through subjects without constituting them), argue that the Subject found in registers of governmentality may best be understood in terms of its political economy and distinct from psychic formations, and finally, offer up thoughts for a politics of ambiguity.