The thesis aims to produce a reconsideration of the queer spaces articulated in 1980s and 1990s literary criticism through the corporealising theory of gender and sexuality in the recent development of Australian material feminism and Rita Felski‟s idea of transient time. It particularly focuses on interpretations of transgender characters in critical readings of Renaissance drama and contemporary fiction. The academic fields investigated are thus late twentieth-century Renaissance criticism of gender and sexuality, late twentieth-century queer interpretations of transgenderism and transgender characters in contemporary literature, contemporary transgender studies and material feminist theory. Chapter 1 introduces a queer space articulated by discourses of gender and sexuality in 1980s and 1990s criticism of Renaissance drama. It concludes that the historical methodology of the critics is flawed and that the idea of Renaissance queerness is built as a contrast to late twentieth-century queerness. Chapter 2 is a reconsideration of the Renaissance anatomical sources used by the canonical critics introduced in the previous chapter. It establishes that the queer idea of sex and gender developed through these should rather be read in light of the more corporeal Renaissance discourse of monstrosity. Chapter 3 reconsiders the transgender characters in Shakespeare‟s Twelfth Night and As You Like It and introduces a reading of Middleton and Dekker‟s The Roaring Girl from a point of view that introduces Renaissance sexual monstrosity as a formation of corporealised though flexible gender subjectivity. Chapter 4 introduces a late twentieth-century queer space partly articulated in relation to the Renaissance queer space. It critiques the theoretical foundations of late twentieth-century queer theory, introducing transgender responses to „queering‟ readings of transgender bodies, as well as queer theorists‟ own attempts to narrativise themselves as points of incoherence in Butler‟s model and introduces a corporealising material feminist perspective of gender subjectivity as a more accommodating alternative. Chapter 5 reconsiders queer readings of transgender characters in Angela Carter‟s The Passion of New Eve. It concludes that the novel has been evaluated from a queer perspective and that it offers a more interesting comment on sex and gender if read from a material feminist point of view. Chapter 6 discusses John Cameron Mitchell‟s Hedwig and the Angry Inch as one transgender narrative that has been critiqued by transgender academia and Gore Vidal‟s Myra Breckinridge as a transgender narrative that has been approved. It analyses and critiques the reasons for the texts‟ reception and formulates a new poetics of corporeal gender based on the idea of nomadic gender subjectivity developed in the works of the Australian school of material feminists. The thesis finally exchanges a queer reading of transgender characters for a nomadic corporeal reading that better accommodates the historical discourses surrounding the Renaissance material, the literary content of the contemporary fiction, and the idea of transgender identity as it is considered in transgender studies.

This thesis deals with professionalism in early childhood education in relation to «race» and whiteness in primarily a Norwegian landscape. The overall aim of the study is to investigate how sociomaterial «race»-events can be understood as constitutive of preschool teachers’ subjectivity. The thesis is a theoretical experimentation with strong ties to a real social landscape. One of the main problems that the study evolves around is how «race» is silenced in the dominant discourse contributing to how preschool teachers can create socially just and indiscriminating pedagogical practices in a current «multicultural society». Hence, there seem to be a lack of tools for preschool teachers to think through how «race» might be part of their pedagogical practice in preschools, and how «race» is an important issue to address when working with how to perform pedagogy ethically and politically. More specifically and in a philosophical-theoretical manner, the study explores «white» preschool teachers’ relation to «race». The philosophical-theoretical-methodological conceptual toolbox for the study is mainly constructed from the philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1977, 1987). E.g. machinic assemblage, stratification, Body without Organs, nomadic subject, affect, individuation, micropolitics, becoming, actual/virtual and event. The methodological approach is highly inspired by decolonizing-, feminist poststructural- and critical methodologies. However, immersed with Deleuze and Guattaris philosophy of desire, what started out as a poststructural autoethnography transformed into a cartography of «my own» racial becomings in/with an early childhood landscape. The study shows how subjectivity, when understood as produced through sociomaterial «race»-events, offers another understanding of doing professionalism. Further, it offers an alternative understanding of how to create more socially just pedagogical practices in early childhood education.

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L'idée de transcendantal, selon son inventeur E. Kant, doit être conçue comme la condition pure et préalable de toute expérience possible. Mais, pour G. Deleuze, une telle idée de transcendantal implique deux défauts fondamentaux : d'une part, elle n'est pas susceptible de rendre compte de la singularité de l'expérience réelle et sensible ; d'autre part, elle présuppose illégitimement qu'il existe un rapport de ressemblance entre le transcendantal qui est la condition et l'empirique qui est le conditionné. Ayant l'ambition de renouveler l'idée de transcendantal en dépassant ces deux limites foncières du transcendantalisme kantien, Deleuze élabore son propre empirisme transcendantal qui détermine le principe générateur du sensible singulier comme la différence d'intensité et définit la condition transcendantale non-semblable comme la différence de virtualité. La différence d'intensité et la différence de virtualité sont respectivement les objets des deux parties de l'empirisme transcendantal qui sont l'esthétique impliquante et la dialectique problématique. De plus, la différence d'intensité et la différence de virtualité, toutes les deux sont les multiplicités qui s'opposent à la simplicité de l'essence de la métaphysique traditionnelle. Et la théorie deleuzienne de la multiplicité complètement différenciée et absolument infinie trouve son origine de la philosophie de Spinoza qui se déploie à travers trois moments qui sont la substance en tant que Multiplicité suprême, l'attribut en tant que multiplicité intensive, et le mode existant en tant que multiplicité extensive.

In what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze labelled Control Societies, mechanisms reminiscent of censorship – that is, restriction of information that administrators of power wish to regulate the spreading of – are present in the concept of copyright. This kind of censorship has the advantage of not being scrutinized by public eyes in the way that the work of institutionalized censorship agencies such as the Swedish Statens Biografbyrå was. It is not unlikely that expanded possibilities for punishing anyone who spreads copyrighted material will result in larger and larger areas that may not be accessed, as the avoiding of conflict and repressive actions will emphasize the behaviour to take detours around information that is deemed taboo and therefore suspicious and dangerous. The ACTA trade agreement is one proposed tool for such extended possibilities for punishment. This essay does not however claim that copyright and censorship are the same – but rather that the institutional execution of power that was previously a matter of state censorship has a lot of similarities with current and prognosticated application of copyright laws by corporations. While claiming to protect the individual, the disciplinary power executed actually aims to protect the one executing it; the purpose of the power structure is to replicate itself.

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This dissertation uses Masny’s Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) to problematize assumptions about literacy underpinning the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program. In addition to teaching English, LINC aims to orient adult immigrants to “the Canadian way of life” which I argue constitutes a form of peace education: teaching peaceful, multicultural values as part of being/becoming Canadian. How do language, literacies, and lessons about peace intersect? MLT foregrounds the Deleuzean-Guattarian concept of becoming: reading intensively and immanently disrupts and transforms individuals in unpredictable ways. I deploy Deleuze and Guattari’s war machine to think about peace as a text that is read and violence as a revolutionary, disruptive force essential for the invention of peace. Accordingly, this research focuses on how experiences of peace AND violence contribute to becoming (i.e. transformation) through reading, reading the world, and self in LINC. Over a 4 month period, 2 teachers and 4 students participated in qualitative inquiry strategies including: video-recorded classroom observations, individual interviews (based on the viewing of video footage of classroom events), and student audio journals. I also collected classroom artifacts used during the observations. Through Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism I frame my research approach as rhizoanalysis. Rhizoanalysis is a (non)method that views data as transgressive (exceeding representation), analysis as a process producing rhizomatic connections (immanence), and reporting as cartography (mapping different assemblages). This research affirms that there is more going on in LINC than its mandate implies and raises questions pointing to the complexities of teaching and learning English in LINC. How might lessons about multicultural values be taken up in ways fraught with tensions between peace AND violence? Becoming-Canadian is an event that unfolds through reading, reading the world, and self. As sense emerges, how might the collision of worldviews around experiences of peace AND violence create encounters that potentially disrupt? How are students, teachers, and even the concepts of “Canadian” and “peace” transformed? I posit rhizocurriculum as a way to account for the affective and transformative powers of multiple literacies in language learning and to view adult immigrant language classrooms as sites of experimentation.

This study seeks to understand the forces initiating and sustaining colonialism, specifically the German colonial expansion in Africa. The history of this colonialism, and the relations between Germany and Africa, is difficult to understand holistically, given its complex and contentious nature. In order to best comprehend the composite interactions within the expansion of German control over Africa, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theory of deterritorialization will provide the interpretative framework. This analysis begins by grappling with the notion of deterritorialization and then relates the theory to the social, cultural, economic and political manifestations of German colonial expansion. By taking a broad perspective upon the diverse articulations of power in Africa, the multiple elements of colonial control and resistance are manifest. In conclusion, this study finds difference, syncretism and negotiation between German and African to determine the history of German colonialism in Africa.

There is great potential for the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in the realm of queer theory, and specifically discussions of gender variance. Their critique of psychiatry, capitalism and the unitary subject in Anti-Oedipus (1983) fits well within the current discussions surrounding transgender and genderqueer experiences including Gender Identity Disorder classifications, the commodification of queer culture, and the challenges put forth to our the "modern subject" by the fluidity of genderqueer. Yet strangely, there has not yet been an explicit, in-depth Deleuzoguattarian ontological reading of genderqueer. This thesis helps to foster such discussions by focusing on Deleuzoguattarian understandings of subjectivity, bodies and politics and how they relate to both gender and genderqueer. Through a method of involution, gender is transformed into molecular gender, into a productive, immanently relational, multiplicitous gender that has substantial implications for gender(queer) politics and activism. / Graduate

The concept of the self was central to the development of North American child and youth care (CYC). The self has been understood in CYC as the mediator of knowledge and skills, the foundation of authentic and therapeutic relationships, and the essence of ethical, moral, and professional practice. In this research project, I engage with the concept of the self in CYC by analyzing the literature on the topic, conducting research conversations with scholars in the field, and articulating my own thinking on the subject. I pay particular attention to the work of faculty and students at the University of Victoria’s School of Child and Youth Care (SCYC) to better understand our current problems and possibilities for theorizing the self in relation to praxis, professionalization, and curriculum. I approach my research engagements through a geophilosophical (Deleuze & Guattari, 2003) methodology and emphasize the roles of relationship, wonder, mentorship, and connections in my research engagements. In this thesis I analyze various conceptualizations of the self in CYC, as well as concepts of identity and subjectivity that I found to be important for understanding the topic. I focus on concepts that (1) have traditionally played a central role in CYC curriculum and professionalization; (2) emerged from my research conversations; and (3) specifically relate to issues of diversity, power, and decolonization. As a work concerned primarily with conceptualizations of the self and how they relate to CYC praxis, professionalization, and curriculum, I articulate my own understanding and process of conceptualizing. I elaborate and experiment with my own thinking through a geophilosophical (Deleuze & Guattari, 2003) approach that emphasizes the relationship between thinking and the land and bodies through which it occurs, as well as thinking’s pragmatic, constructive, and creative aspects. I suggest that some of the important and interesting questions and possibilities for conceptualizing the self in contemporary North American CYC are related to politicized praxis as a framework for CYC; decolonization and identity-based solidarity and allyship; intersectionality as means to conceptualize diversity; mentorship and relationship in the learning encounter; immanence, dualism, and Indigenous cosmology; and the notion of a CYC community identity. / Graduate / 0745 / skouri@uvic.ca