My thesis examines moral and political responses to the character of work through critical evaluation of the work we do to sustain a stable social order suitable for human acting and being. My original contribution rests upon my application of Wolf s (2010) distinct bipartite value of meaningfulness (BVM) to the structure of action in work, which integrates the objective and subjective dimensions of meaningfulness when subjective feelings of attachment are united. to an assessment of the objective worthiness of the object. Work which is structured by the BVM is a fundamental human need, because it addresses our inescapable interests in autonomy, freedom, and social recognition, which are met when work is non-alienated, non-dominated and dignified. To realise the BVM, each person must possess the capabilities for objective valuing and affective attachment, in addition to their equal status as eo-authorities in the realm of value. Being able to participate in creating and sustaining positive values through meaning-making alleviates concerns that meaningful work is a perfectionist ideal which undermines autonomy. But meaning-making gives rise to interpretive differences over values and meanings which often remain as pre-political potentials unless brought into public deliberation through deliberative practices. I argue that realising the BVM in work requires a politics of meaningfulness generated by a system of workplace democracy, where democratic authority at the level of the organisation is combined with agonistic democratic practices at the level of the task. Furthermore, capability justice requires the satisfaction of two principles ~ the principle of egalitarian meaning, such that all persons must be able to experience their work as meaningful, and the threshold of sufficient meaning, such that work is sufficiently meaningful when constituted by the values of autonomy, freedom and social recognition. I conclude that the relevant capabilities for meaningfulness are realised, indirectly, through institutional guarantees for the Capability for Voice. Ruth Yeoman Abstract

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Despite an eventful twentieth century highlighted by the rise and fall of socialism and various rebellions against late capitalism, revolution remains aloof from the discourse of literary criticism, in part due to the fashionable concepts of postmodernism. The thesis attempts to bring the very catchword of revolution back to the critical considerations of literary studies through reading three writers, Edmond Jabès, Marguerite Duras and Wong Bik-wan (黃碧雲), attempting to bring them under the same rubric despite their cultural and geographical differences. They are chosen precisely because they explicitly compare their literary endeavors to revolutionary action and, to a certain extent, remain politically active in their personal life. Locating revolution in the context of modernity and modernism as we also do for their works, the thesis argue that, contrary to the dominant academic receptions, it is still possible to conceptualize literary works as a revolutionary and democratic practice which transcends the limits of representative discourses, despite the stagnant political situation of postmodernity and late advanced capitalism, bringing individuality, autonomy and dissidence back to the constitutive part of our community life. The introductory chapter provides overviews of some of the concepts which lay out the relationship between revolution and modernity, and background information on the writers and their academic receptions. Chapter 2 focuses on the narrative aspects of their works, analyzing how the usually private and self-contained practice of reading –often using family union as its conclusion –is forced opened by a certain textual arrangement of events which acknowledges readers as capable of being the receiving end of a contradictory aesthetic experience that cannot be synthesized into a coherent individual response, as summaries of the texts discussed are offered. Chapter 3 explains the various ways by which the writers attempt to liberate the individual from representativity of a given community such as the nation or an ethnicity, so that the same individual can participate in social life in a more individualistic and democratic manner, in which process the readers are also implicated. Chapter 4 compares the social mechanisms of totalitarianism –a modern political phenomenon–to religion and shows how the texts attempt to break through the system under which subjectivity is accrued to a transcendental Other. Chapter 5 tries to pinpoint the social positions, notably children and youth culture, through which hopes of social transformation with a view of a future different from now can be raised, a principle which then fall back upon the writer or the intellectual him-or herself. The current thesis aims to rethink the modern political tradition of revolution and democracy through conceiving literary writing and reading as possible sites of dissidence as well as affirmation of human freedom. / published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

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