L’angoisse est un état qui se distingue des autres sentiments en ce qu’elle ne survient devant rien de précis, mais plutôt devant notre vie en général. Mais que signifie-t-elle? Pourquoi fait-elle jour? Le présent mémoire vise à mieux comprendre le phénomène de l’angoisse à travers les conceptions de deux philosophes s’y étant attardé de façon importante : Søren Kierkegaard et Martin Heidegger. Il cherche à cerner ce que ces deux conceptions, malgré des divergences importantes, peuvent amener comme éclairage philosophique à ce phénomène proprement humain. En fait, leurs conceptions philosophiques respectives de l’angoisse transforment – permettent un autre regard -, sur la question. Ils ne font pas vraiment état des effets psychologiques de l’angoisse, mais plutôt de ce que cette dernière peut permettre d’ouvrir comme perspective de saisie de l’être humain. Effectivement, l’angoisse, comme situation affective, permet d’atteindre l’être humain d’une façon plus profonde et plus originaire que ne le ferait n’importe quelle science. Elle permet de se positionner au cœur de ce qui constitue l’être humain, qui est une synthèse entre deux éléments contraires (l’âme et le corps, l’ontique et l’ontologique, etc.), dévoilant ainsi l’existence de l’être humain d’une manière toute particulière. De plus, l’angoisse assure aussi le lien entre le possible et le réel, mettant ainsi l’être humain devant un enjeu fondamental de sa condition, à savoir son possible, son destin. / Anxiety differs from other feelings and states in that it is not directed at anything specific, but rather towards life in general. But what does anxiety mean? Why does it come about? The present dissertation seeks to understand anxiety through the works of two philosophers who dealt with these questions at length: Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. By taking into account various similarities and differences between these two conceptions, we will come to a better understanding of how philosophy has clarified this peculiarly human phenomenon. In fact, one might say that these conceptions have served to transform — or to open a new perspective on — the question of anxiety. No longer is anxiety treated in terms of its psychological effects, but rather in terms of how it allows us to grasp something essentially human. Anxiety, qua affective situation, provides a privileged mode of access to the human being, deeper and more original than any purely scientific approach. Anxiety thrusts us into the heart of what is constitutive of the human being: a synthesis of two contrary factors (be it the soul and the body or the ontic and the ontological). Moreover, anxiety articulates the connection between possibility and reality, placing the individual before a fundamental feature of human existence: one’s own most possibilities, or destiny.

Online reflective practices that are high-stakes – summatively assessed, or used as evidence for progression or membership in a professional body – are increasingly prevalent in higher education, especially in professional and vocational programmes. A combination of factors is influencing their emergence: an e-learning agenda that promises efficiency and ubiquity; a proliferation of employability, transferable skills and personal development planning policies; a culture of surveillance which prizes visibility and transparency; and teacher preference for what are seen as empowering pedagogies. This thesis analyses qualitative interview data to explore how students and teachers negotiate issues of audience, performance and authenticity in their high-stakes online reflective practices. Using mask metaphors, and taking a post-structuralist and specifically Foucauldian perspective, the work examines themes of performance, trace, disguise, protection, discipline and transformation. The central argument is that the effects of both compulsory reflection, and writing online, destabilise and ultimately challenge the humanist ideals on which reflective practices are based: those of a ‘true self’ which can be revealed, understood, recorded, improved or liberated through the process of writing about thoughts and experiences. Rather than revealing and developing the ‘true self’, reflecting online and for assessment produces fragmented, performing, cautious, strategic selves. As a result, it offers an opportunity to work critically with an awareness of audience, genres of writing and shifting subjectivity. This is rarely, if ever, explicitly the goal of such practices. Instead, online reflective practices are imported wholesale from their offline counterparts without acknowledgement of the difference that being online makes, and issues of power in high-stakes reflection are disguised or ignored. Discourses of authentic self-knowledge, personal and professional development, and transformative learning are not appropriate to the nature of high-stakes online reflection. The combination creates passivity, anxiety and calculation, it normalises surveillance, and it produces rituals of confession and compliance. More critical approaches to high-stakes online reflection, which take into account addressivity, experimentation and digitality, are proposed.

This study focuses on the transformation process and reshaping of Indigenous tourism in Québec, Canada, using an ethnographic approach and methods. The central aim is to understand how Indigenous communities are affected by the development of Indigenous tourism and how they deal with this development. Three concepts are elaborated upon: resilience, performance of authenticity and representation of territory. The present study aims to show that these concepts are interconnected and crucial to the discussion of sustainable development. In this study it is important to not merely view Indigenous peoples as people affected by tourism but primarily as individuals who are involved in shaping Indigenous tourism in their communities. This work discusses a process in which society, communities and the Indigenous tourism industry are changing and transforming. I have shown how the dimensions of sustainable development can interact with place-specific conditions and are of importance for the Indigenous communities in Québec.

Philosophers who show interest in authenticity tend to narrowly focus on its capacity to help people evade conformity and affirm individuality, a simplistic reduction that neglects authenticity’s moral potential and gives credence to the many critics who dismiss it as a euphemism for excessive individualism. Yet when conceived ethically, authenticity can also allow for worthy human flourishing without falling prey to conformity’s opposite extreme—egoism. This thesis proposes a relational conception of authenticity that can help prevent the often destructive excess of egoism while also offsetting the undesirable deficiency of heteronomy, concertedly moving agents towards socially responsible living. It demonstrates how authenticity necessarily has ethical dimensions when rooted in existentialist and dialogical frameworks. It also defines egoism as a form of self-deception rooted in flawed logic that cannot be considered “authentic” by relational standards. Relational authenticity recognizes the interpersonal relationships and social engagements that imbue meaning into agents’ lives, fostering a balance between personal ambitions and social obligations, and enabling more consistently moral lifestyles.

Cette thèse vise à démystifier comment de jeunes Inuit font l’expérience de la vie à Ottawa. Les résultats révèlent que les participants à cette étude se positionnent et négocient leurs interactions d’après les relations qu’ils entretiennent avec les différents acteurs de leur environnement. En vue de leur maintien et équilibre, ces relations sont en constante négociation. Afin de se sentir mieux en ville, ils y aménagent des zones de confort mobiles, se créent de « miniunivers » inuit et s’ouvrent aux mondes urbains. Les jeunes Inuit profitent aussi de leur présence à Ottawa pour mieux se positionner par rapport au monde inuit, en (re)trouvant un bien-être personnel et en acquérant les outils et connaissances nécessaires pour contribuer à leur collectivité. Ils y développent notamment leur leadership par l’entremise de rencontres avec d’autres jeunes Inuit et autochtones et s’activent au sein même de la ville d’Ottawa à la transformation des réalités inuit. / This research seeks to demystify how Inuit youth experience living in Ottawa. Results reveal that, throughout their urban experiences, youth position themselves and negotiate their interactions according to their coexistence with the different elements of their environment. This relationship is constantly adjusting; it pushes them to alter their life in order to feel more comfortable in the city, develop their inner strengths and contribute to the collective effort in Ottawa. By creating comfort zones, finding Inuit spaces and exploring urban resources, the burden of balancing such different lifestyles is greatly mitigated. Inuit youth use their presence in the city to reorient their position within the Inuit world. By building self-confidence and developing skills which permit them to contribute to their community, they also develop leadership. These skills allow them to actively participate in the transformation of Inuit realities while living in Ottawa.

Debates between feminists and trans people are often narrowly framed in terms of inclusion and authenticity, or by questions about the extent to which trans identities challenge or reinforce normative conceptions of sex and gender. The terms of these engagements promote essentialist understandings of identity, difference, and community, and neglect to register the heterogeneity and differential locations of both women and trans people. This thesis examines several contemporary sites of contestation between and among feminist and trans scholars with specific attention to the unspoken assumptions and practices of erasure that shape and constrain these critical ‘border wars’, making certain kinds of subjects and conversations central, while rendering others peripheral, out of the question, or even impossible. Applying an intersectional trans/feminist analysis to the conceptual structure and discursive contours they assume, I investigate how such struggles, and our positions within them, might be deconstructed and reconceptualized in ways that disrupt dominant Self/Other relations and, in turn, make new political understandings and alliances possible.

The tourism industry is particularly reliant on the use of imagery to create a brand for a destination or attraction in order to effectively market its product. In the case of Indigenous tourism, a paradox often exists between maintaining a level of recognition and familiarity that mirror the expectations of the public imagination, and conveying a representation that is locally meaningful and emblematic. Investigation into the visual representation and communication of identity through tourism is a means to illustrate three overlapping issues that are prevalent throughout the literature on Indigenous tourism. These are: control, authenticity, and hybridity. This research project addresses these issues through an extensive review of anthropological and tourism-related literature and its application to the specific case study of one Indigenous tourism business, the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre (NDCC), owned and operated by the Osoyoos Indian Band (OIB) in Osoyoos, British Columbia (BC), Canada. Semiotic and visual analyses are used to elucidate the messages about OIB identity communicated through the Centre’s visuals, in order to bring the example of the OIB and NDCC into conversation with the larger issues found within Indigenous tourism. / Graduate

This thesis is a guidebook to the complex networks of representations in the Cob Mayan Jungle Adventure and Cob Mayan Village tours in Mexicos Mayan Riviera. Sold to tourists as opportunities to encounter an authentic Mayan culture and explore the ancient ruins at Cob, these excursions exemplify the crossroads at which touristic and Western scientific discourses construct a Mayan Other, and can therefore be scrutinized as staged post-colonial encounters mediated by scriptural and performative economies: the Museum of Maya Culture (Castaneda) and the scenario of discovery (Taylor). Tourist and Maya are not discrete identities but rather inter-related performances: the Maya become mysterious and jungle-connected while the tourist plays the modernized adventurer/discoverer. However, the tours foundations ultimately crumble due to uncanny and partial representations. As the roles and narratives that present the Maya as indigenous Other fracture, so too do those that construct the tourist as authoritative consumer of cultural differentiation.

What are the social conditions that enable depression to play a significant societal role in contemporary Western societies? This is the leading question of the dissertation. As an alternative to those who claim that contemporary depression is constructed by the exorbitant consumption of antidepressants, it is stated that both depression and the consumption of antidepressants is possible due to contemporary social conditions. Inspired by the analysis of modernity by Wagner, and on the basis of the theoretical concept of third modernity as proposed by Carleheden, it is claimed that an ethical conduct of life that demands authentic self-realization has been institutionalised in our historical epoch. By analysing how authentic self-realization is being realized in the new spirit of capitalism (Boltanski & Chiapello), it is being concluded that the socializing parameters of third modernity are those of being able to be active, flexible, polyvalent, adaptable, versatile etc. selves. Hence, authentic self-realization in imbued with these normative demands. In relation to the phenomenon of depression this is interesting, because contemporary depression can be understood, not as a subjective condition, but as a phenomenon of lack. What is being applauded in the society of today is just what depressive individuals lack, namely the ability to act in accordance with the normative claims of self-realization. Depressed individuals are in that sense failed selves (Ehrenberg) who represent and informs us about the “other side” of contemporary normative self-realization requirements. In other words: Within present-day society the institutionalized demands for authentic self-realization and depression have become each others antithesis. This socially demanded form of self-realization – which is put under the scrutiny of normative critique (Taylor) – is thus exactly what allows for depression to play such a significant role in present-day Western societies.

This thesis is an examination of processes of the dealership regarding Aboriginal art and artists. I take the approach that the art dealership is situated at a nexus of relationships that contest and negotiate culturally informed values and categories of fine art, Aboriginality and commodities. I argue that dealers in Aboriginal art mediate categories of value through their particular practices of representation of the art and through the social relationships they foster with artists and buyers. Therefore, through the relationships formed in the exchange process, dealers both make and mark culture. In this study I acknowledge the agency of Aboriginal artists but approach the process of negotiation of cultural categories from the perspective of the non-Indigenous audience for which the art is intended. The research is specifically concentrated on a particular dealership, Fire-Works gallery in Brisbane. I begin with the premise that buyers are drawn to Aboriginal art for more than aesthetic reasons and that objects and artists’ cultural identities carry high value especially if judged authentically Aboriginal in the current art market. Both the art and the artists are made and marked as commodities in the art market; and while notions of authenticity are central to value, value is itself shifting and authenticity unstable. To establish the tensions and shifts in culture formation, I outline the historical biography of the acceptance of Aboriginal objects as fine art and the genesis of Fire-Works gallery within this socio-cultural and political milieu. In the latter chapters of the thesis I examine social relationships and situated practices chosen by the dealership to facilitate sales through the negotiation of valued cultural categories. The study provides an original examination of how shifting cultural categories are dynamically formed and reformed in the commoditisation of Aboriginal art by social agents.