Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie were the most successful British women writers of their time. Christie and Blyton were contemporaries, living and writing in the United Kingdom during the first half of the twentieth century. This study takes into consideration these similarities in its examination of the depiction of dominant discourses in relation to emergent, alternative and oppositional discourses in their writing. This thesis suggests that while Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie offer alternatives to the dominant patriarchal discourses of the British Empire in the first half of the twentieth century, they show allegiance, too, to the dominant discourses of their time. Specific consideration is given to the portrayal of discourses concerned with gender, feminism, classism, British colonialism, racism, and xenophobia in their writing. The work of Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie was extremely popular in their time and still is today. Their important contribution to popular literature in England in the early twentieth century justifies a study of a selection of their work in relation to detective fiction and children’s literature as well as to studies of social history that include the investigation of how dominant discourse is both endorsed and challenged. / Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / English / unrestricted

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Le présent travail, en analysant la trajectoire biographique du réalisateur japonais Sômai Shinji de son passage dans les mouvements de contestation de la Nouvelle gauche à ses premiers films tournés dans les années quatre-vingt, se veut une étude critique sur le sens généralement accordé à l’utilisation de la technique dite du « plan-séquence » dans le contexte du cinéma japonais. Le plan-séquence est une méthode de mise en scène que différents auteurs occidentaux, de Noël Burch à Donald Richie, ont régulièrement qualifié d’ « essentiellement » japonaise tant elle semble selon eux présenter une utilisation de l’espace qui la rapproche des arts de représentation traditionnels comme le théâtre kabuki ou la peinture de Heian. En mettant en évidence les fonctions de contestation et de résistance que cette technique joue dans l’esthétique des films de Sômai Shinji, activiste de la Quatrième internationale japonaise de 1967 à 1971, nous démontrons que le jugement selon lequel le plan-séquence découlerait d’une sensibilité propre au peuple japonais－en effet, d’une « japonité »－est pour le moins à revoir. Sômai, de par son passé politique, est un réalisateur qui est constamment en lutte avec les valeurs de ce que nous appelons l’ « idéologie dominante », si bien que sa trajectoire ne peut se comprendre qu’en tenant compte des notions de conflits et de contradictions, bien loin de l’image lisse et homogène du peuple japonais dont nous abreuve un certain discours. Au-delà de la relecture du sens accordé à l’usage de la technique du plan-séquence－à laquelle nous associons rapidement des cinéastes comme Mizoguchi Kenji ou Sone Chûsei－, cette thèse soulève donc certaines interrogations sur la perception que nous avons, à travers les médias audiovisuels, de la nation comme entité homogène et fixée dans le temps. / The present work, while examining the biographical trajectory of Japanese filmmaker Sômai Shinji from his past in the Japanese New Left to his first movies made in the 80s, is aimed at being a critical study of the significance regarding the use of the technique called “one scene-one shot” generally admitted in the context of Japanese cinema. The one scene-one shot is a method of mise-en-scène considered by several non-Japanese authors, like Noël Burch or Donald Richie, to be “essentially” Japanese because of what they think to be similarities with methods of representation usually found in kabuki theatre and Heian paintings. While we enhance the functions of protest and resistance this technique plays in the aesthetic of Sômai Shinji－who was an activist of the Japanese Fourth International from 1967 to 1971－films, we assess that the argument regarding the one scene-one shot as a method of filming particular to the Japanese sensibility－indeed, an expression of “Japaneseness”－is at best to be reconsidered. Sômai, because of his political past, was a filmmaker constantly struggling with the values of what we call the “dominant ideology”. His work cannot properly be understood unless we put the notions of conflicts and contradictions at the core of our analysis, departing from the traditionally peaceful and homogenous image that certain discourses usually express regarding the Japanese people. Beyond a reexamination of the significance traditionally given to the use of the one scene-one shot in the context of Japanese cinema－to which we associate filmmakers such as Mizoguchi Kenji and Sone Chûsei－, this dissertation questions the images of the nation, expressed through audiovisual means, as a homogenous and fixed community.

Ce mémoire analyse la situation de l’Église catholique canadienne au tournant du XIXe siècle en adoptant un cadre théorique gramscien. À travers la trajectoire de trois évêques, nous démontrons que l’épiscopat réussit à pérenniser sa place comme maillon essentiel entre la population canadienne et l’État colonial. Un triple mouvement s’observe au sein de l’institution catholique. Les évêques cherchent à raffermir la structure de l’épiscopat grâce à une politique de contrôle social et de développement de la base numérique du clergé. Les Révolutions atlantiques faisant avancer les idées républicaines dans la province, un lien étroit va se former entre le gouvernement colonial et l’épiscopat afin de défendre la conception du monde monarchiste ; l’État et l’Église forment ce que le philosophe Antonio Gramsci nomme un « bloc idéologique ». La relation entre les deux institutions n’est pourtant pas sans conflictualité. Un bras de fer s’engage au sujet de la situation juridique de l’Église catholique. Certaines élites britanniques désirent renforcer le contrôle étatique sur un épiscopat considéré comme trop indépendant. L’enjeu des débats qui naissent en ce début de XIXe est de savoir qui contrôlera un appareil idéologique performant dans une colonie où l’écrasante majorité de la population est catholique. / This thesis analyses the situation of the catholic church of Canada at the turn of the 19th century using a Gramscian theoretical framework. Through the historical paths of three bishops, we demonstrate that the episcopacy maintained its position as an essential link between the Canadian population and the colonial state. We observe a threefold movement from within the catholic institution. The bishops intended to strengthen the structure of the episcopacy through social control and by increasing the numerical basis of the clergy. Republican ideas being promoted through the Atlantic revolutions, the colonial government and the episcopacy tightened their relationship in order to defend a monarchist conception of the world; the state and the church came to form what Antonio Gramsci calls an “ideological bloc”. The relationship between the two institutions was, however, not without conflict. A tug of war began over the judicial situation of the Catholic church. Some members of the British elite hoped to reinforce state control over the episcopacy which they considered as too independent. The issue at stake in the debates that arose at the start of the 19th century was to ascertain who would control the ideological apparatus in a colony where the majority of the population was Catholic

This thesis starts from the proposition that the ethical meat discourse that is, the discourse recognizing that factory farming is unacceptable while maintaining that it is possible to produce meat in an acceptable way — has not been thoroughly analyzed. Indeed, both the partisans of this idea and the animal rights literature provide oversimplified analyses of this relatively new phenomenon. Considering its explosion in popularity since Michael Pollan published the essay “An Animal's Place” in The New York Times Magazine in 2002, this lack of research is particularly problematic for the animal rights movement as this new discourse directly counters its objectives. As such, this thesis uses Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution to develop a richer analysis of the apparent marginalizing effect that this discourse has on the animal rights movement. More precisely, the thesis addresses the question: “If the emergence of the ethical meat discourse is understood as part of a passive revolution, what can the specific process of passive revolution tell us about the impacts of the ethical meat discourse on the animal rights movement?” It argues that the passive revolution operates on two levels: (1) it depoliticizes the issue of meat consumption by presenting it as irrelevant and reducing it to technical details and (2) it absorbs the moderate elements of the animal rights movement by proposing an attractive alternative. Both of these processes lead to the marginalization of the few animal advocacy organizations still criticizing ethical meat. The analysis is divided in three parts. The first and second analyze respectively the content of the discourse and internal dynamics of the coalition formed around it using Maarten Hajer’s concept of discourse-coalition. Building on this comprehensive understanding of the ethical meat discourse, the actual process of passive revolution is analyzed by looking at the way the meat industry, environmental organizations and animal advocacy organizations engage with it.

Narratives of Nordic pre-history are common in textbooks of the Swedish 'folk school'. This thesis discusses them from an ideological critical perspective and analyses them as textbook myths. This analytic concept of myth is constructed and used as a tool for studying ideological expressions in pedagogical texts. It is compatible with a historical materialist, social constructivist and Gramsci inspired perspective towards folk schooling and can handle questions of selection and re-organisation of ancient narrative material. The study shows how a paternalistic ethnic ideology which showed the pupils how their ancestors immigrated and set up society and order is replaced by nationalistic myths where the Swedes are projected on the totality of the past. Idealisation of farmers and expressions that neutralise poverty and legitimates subordination are used continuously throughout the study period. After 1868 a national folk concept is established. Textbook myths with a euhemeristic portrayal of civilisation are replaced by other scientific ways of handling pre-historic religions including elements from nature mythology and evolutionary theory. The myths handle religions both through Christian polemics and theological projections. The results of the analyses are interpreted in the light of the contemporary socio-economic changes where a feudal agrarian society's principles for classifications and hierarchies are challenged and broken by the principles of a class society with a nationalistic ideology. In the concluding chapters the myths are discussed and interpreted in relation to curriculum codes and in a Gramsci inspired perspective as expressions of a passive bourgeois revolution, where intellectuals of the middle class conquered the school and the textbook myths by making alliances with the farming class and trying to neutralise the poor and the working class. The thesis contributes to research in the use of history, representation in pedagogical texts and to research in nationalism.

The professionalization of political parties has significantly altered the means by which parties interact with voters and supporters. The current study is an attempt to examine what these changes in political communication mean for the ability of parties to organize supporters and mobilize them both in a campaign setting and in the longer-term struggle. Habermasian and Gramscian perspectives on the relational aspects of political communication highlight the challenges presented by the growing unidirectionality of communication and the concomitant atrophying of intermediary institutions. Beyond this, the work of Bottici and McLuhan is used to expose the effects of the 'arational' aspects of these changes in both form and content. To test the plausibility of the theoretical insights obtained, the case of the New Democratic Party of Canada is considered. The study concludes by considering the potential of new technological developments for resolving or mitigating concerns identified throughout the thesis. / Graduate

This study explores the relationship between literature and society against the background of the emergence in the 1930s and 1940s in South Africa of a form of Afrikaner nationalism that was spearheaded by members of the Afrikaner petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia and a subsequent expansion in Afrikaans literary production. It addresses problems of explanation in Afrikaner nationalism by focusing attention on the question of culture, the field of imagination and the domain of everyday life. In particular, the study examines the Keurboslaan series - a series of schoolboy stories aimed at juvenile readers - by Stella Blakemore, and traces the production, circulation and critical reception of the twenty titles in the series. The first title in this series was published in 1941 and the series has been reprinted several times over a number of decades and as recently as 1997. Drawing on the work of Benedict Anderson, this study illuminates the link between the emergence of print capitalism and the production of popular fiction on the one hand and nationalism on the other. Whilst this is a link that is not often explored, an analysis of the Keurboslaan series illustrates that the study of popular fiction can illuminate the practices through which nationalism gains popular support. It is argued that the Keurboslaan series produced a narrative of the Afrikaner ‘nation’ in popular fiction, but that this narrative was not authenticated by the intelligentsia and petty bourgeoisie who were the driving forces behind Afrikaner nationalism and its contents. It is further argued that this ‘narrative of nation’ circulated alongside more official narratives of the ‘nation’ espoused in discourses of religion, science and literature published in Afrikaans. The narrative of ‘nation’ in Keurboslaan – whilst sharing many similarities with official narratives in other discourses – but also differs from those discourses in important respects. It is argued that the popular series was influential precisely because it imagined the Afrikaner ‘nation’ in very different ways and on different terms from those discourses. Moreover, the form in which this narrative was produced, that is popular youth literature, appealed to readers of Afrikaans who were in search of escapist fiction. For these readers, the Keurboslaan series helped to give shape to and created new possibilities for interpreting the world that they inhabited. Reading the school as a corollary of the ‘nation’, it is argued that the narrative of the nation in Keurboslaan series explores the boundaries between the self and the other and posits the self as a danger to the self, resulting in an emphasis on the need to discipline the self. This kind of analysis also creates the space for examining in what ways ideas and identities about ‘race’, gender, sexuality, class and ‘nation’ are constructed in the texts. Yet, the study maintains that whilst the Keurboslaan series contributed to creating a space in which a particular understanding of the self and the world becomes possible, and whereas the reader is not conceived of as a completely free agent that can derive simply any meaning from the text, the study and its theoretical underpinnings do not fully account for individual readers’ engagement with popular texts and the ways in which reading strategies and habits can generate different, ambiguous or inconclusive meanings for readers. It is suggested that a study of popular texts and Afrikaner nationalism employing theories of reading and the reader will complement this analysis. / Thesis (DLitt (Literary Theory))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Afrikaans / unrestricted

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This thesis looks at the relevance of ideology to the emergence of capitalist social formation in Ruperts Land and the North West between 1852 and 1885 in two contexts: 1) as a mechanism of transforming the mercantilist social formation - the economy, state, and society - that arose to oversee the fur trade in Ruperts Land and the Indian Territory between 1670 and 1870; and 2) its role in establishing capitalist social formation in the North West up to 1885. I focus on the social processes by which ideology is transmitted and its significance to the emerging formation. I attempt to explain how a diverse group of politicians, bankers, investors, merchants, and industrialists took control of vast, resource-rich, and occupied territories like Ruperts Land and the North West and completely transformed the existing social arrangements according to their worldview. This thesis engages Marxist theory to examine the ideas of John A. Macdonald, Alexander Mackenzie, and Edward Blake as heads of the eastern polity, state, central government, and official opposition, and the representatives of commercial, financial, and industrial factions of the bourgeoisie. Over six hundred primary samples of their discourses in the form of political speeches, historical debates, and personal correspondence were reviewed in this research. The major themes emerging from the analysis pertain to the ideological underpinnings of a capitalist worldview in terms of the relevance of law and Christianity to the colonization and civilization of emigrant and indigenous peoples in the North West. It was also found that while politicians disseminate the worldview of their class and faction, they rely significantly on the support of capital and the producing classes to implement their ideas and establish, legitimize, and reproduce the conditions and relations of capitalism. When Macdonald and Mackenzie failed to rally consent for capitalism among local peoples in the North West, ideological coercion became the means of transforming the necessary social, economic, and political structures. I suggest that the use of force (rather than cooperation) to organize agricultural society in Saskatchewan has had long-term consequences for emigrant and indigenous peoples alike.