Thesis advisor: David M. Rasmussen / Following the idea that human rights are anchored in many cultures and find their support in many traditions, the contemporary human rights corpus is a fruit of a long history whose roots can be traced back to different societies in addressing the universal questions of injustice. If one adopts such a historical evolution of human rights, their universality might be affirmed on the assumption that they are coexistent to every human society. This view is, however, challenged by scholars who claim that the current human rights regime does not owe anything to other cultures, since they are essentially Western. The consequence of such an understanding touches the heart of the human rights’ perennial question concerning their universality, and it is the source of the Third World’s critiques. Indeed, if conceptually, culturally and historically, human rights are Western, how do they become universal? This question was first raised by the American Anthropological Association in its now well-known 1947 statement, even before the existing human rights instruments were framed. Today, it has been taken up by some Third World critics. For them, human right movement is an imperialistic swirl of Western liberalism upon other societies under the banner of United States of America that has replaced the former European imperialistic powers such as France and United Kingdom. According to these critics, there is no other area where human rights are imperialistically used by the West than in the so-called humanitarian intervention. Usually evoked as an urgent need to protect human rights, humanitarian intervention is seen as another name for the neo-colonialism in the Third World, as it is carried out by Western Powers against states in the Third World. Two challenges arise from these views. On the one hand, because of their Western origin, human rights are decried as Western and, therefore, they should not be imposed on other cultures. On the other hand, their imperialistic use by the West is an acute difficulty stemming from the global political context after the fall of Communism as a competing ideology with liberalism in 1990s. These challenges affect the theoretical justification as well as the implementation of human rights. For, according to the critics, human rights are purposely framed in liberal terms because they have to pursue and advance the Western project of conquering the whole world. Therefore, they claim, the actual spread of Western liberalism under human rights label is neither incidental nor accidental; it is a continuation of the Western imperialism which started long ago with economic exploitation, slavery and colonization of the rest of the world. Human rights is only a neutral term to translate the same reality. To those who reply that the contemporary human rights regime, starting with Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a fruit of an international group with a diverse background, the critics respond that all of them were trained in the Western culture. And if one presents the role of the local human rights activists in the non-Western world, the critics consider them as Western mercenaries in local colors. That is why, while it springs from the cultural critique, the imperialistic challenge to human rights is a serious one because it attacks the human rights regime in its purpose and in its practice. It does not reject human rights only because they are extrinsic to the non-Western culture –cultural relativism—; rather, human rights are rejected because they are channels of oppression and exploitation as was and has always been the Western imperialism. The question now is: what do human rights become in this case? Is it possible to rescue them from both the cultural critics and imperialistic crusaders? Such a project would aim at maintaining and affirming their historicity as Western, yet showing that they are open to the possibility of being practiced in other cultures and other contexts. That it is the goal of this dissertation whose thesis is that, by domesticating human rights we retrieve the purpose of human rights of protecting and enhancing human dignity and, at the same time, it becomes possible to satisfactorily address the cultural and imperialistic challenges. Indeed, instead of thinking that people adopt and use human rights discourse because they like their individualistic side, the domestication of human rights pays attention to the process through which human rights as moral norms are incorporated in local cultures. Relying on the anthropological works that focus on the way human rights norms are integrated in different cultural contexts, this project endeavors to build a normative account of human rights based on these local practices. Philosophically speaking, domestication of human rights takes up Beitz’s insight of human rights as an emerging practice, and brings it to the beneficiaries of human rights purpose, instead of remaining at the legal level where only states are accepted as credible interlocutors, while they are the most suspected violators of human rights. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

This dissertation is a philological study of transnational revolutionary print culture in French and Arabic during Algeria’s War for Independence (1954-1962) and its first post-independence regime (1962-1965). Investigating the ways in which women have been written into historical narratives, it is also a feminist historiography. During this era of global decolonization, the Front de libération nationale (FLN)—Algeria’s vanguard revolutionary party—integrated itself into a global coalition of revolutionary movements that provided mutual material and ideological support and self-identified as part of the Third World. While female freedom fighters (mujāhidāt) attained widespread fame as global symbols of anticolonialism, their intellectual work as intermediaries in constructing national and transnational anticolonial culture remains understudied. This dissertation analyzes the mujāhidāt’s discursive interventions in the project of liberating women, the nation, and the wider colonized world. In doing so, it challenges the masculinist and institutionalist biases prevalent in international relations, a field that has predominantly considered men as global political leaders and privileged government documents and official diplomatic correspondence as source material. Among the varied writings that I examine, two mouthpieces of the FLN take center stage: El Moudjahid (est. 1956) and Révolution africaine (est. 1963). My study of the mujāhidāt’s participation in the construction of national and transnational anticolonial culture consists not only of close readings of their writings in nationalist publications, but also a more holistic analysis of the worlds that these periodicals sought to project an image of via references to and excerpts of literature, film, theoretical texts, interviews, and testimonies. While each mujāhida’s contribution to national and transnational community-building varied, the central argument of my dissertation is that despite working in a patriarchal political and publishing environment, the mujāhidāt were able to express themselves by maneuvering at the margins. That is, they deployed a diversity of rhetorical tactics that subtly contested the premises of the system in which they operated, thus exercising power from a seeming position of weakness. While articles authored by the mujāhidāt are a major part of my corpus, I also read more holistically for gendered discourses of liberation in the print and visual culture of the 1950s and 60s. To contextualize the gendered expectations under which they had to write, Chapter One opens with an analysis of “Algeria’s personality” as it was articulated in nationalist texts, with the concept of “family honor” being an essential part of this personality. Chapter Two examines in literature and films that were commonly referenced by nationalist periodicals another key component of this personality: “authenticity,” and more specifically its expression as feminine revolution authenticity. Investigating how mujāhidāt writers navigated such expectations of authenticity, Chapter Three demonstrates how they promoted their own repertoire of female revolutionary icons in nationalist periodicals, especially the figure of the uneducated but radicalized mother as a bastion of cultural authenticity. Finally, Chapter Four reflects on disjunctures in nation-building narratives during Algeria’s post-independence regime. Examining the FLN’s world-building project of cultural diplomacy and national edification primarily via its periodical Révolution africaine, it examines the mujāhidāt’s modalities of intervention in the cultural debates at the intersection between women’s emancipation and the global anticolonial struggle.

Narrative Bonds: Female Friendship, Affect, and Politics in Novels by 20th-century Francophone Women Writers examines the link between friendship and politics in novels by the Algerian writers Assia Djebar and Taos Amrouche, the Haitian writer Marie Chauvet, and the French writer Claire Etcherelli. In fiction, Francophone women writers develop their own definitions of female friendship, departing from the idealized notions in classical philosophy. I argue that the desire for dyadic friendship between women is an organizing force in women’s writing of the 1940s-1960s, although it may initially appear to be a minor concern. Historically not included in philosophical treatises on friendship, women are excluded from the category of “friends,” and must imagine a form of friendship that they can participate in before making and becoming friends. My dissertation analyzes the literary affect of negation, in which women must feel an absence or impossibility of friendship before they can then define female friendships on their own terms. I argue that female friendship is a form of relations that is new, troubling, and exciting for these women. In the works of my corpus, friendship is inextricable from political awakening and anti-colonial and anti-patriarchal resistance. As women’s political status changed in France, Haiti, and Algeria, women became more fully able to imagine themselves as both subjects and friends.

Text in Afrikaans with abstracts in Afrikaans, English and isiZulu / Hierdie studie van Afrikaanse tekste oor die Kongo (DRK) strek vanaf 1912 - toe DF Malan die eerste wit Afrikaner geword het wat ‘n reisbeskrywing oor sy besoek aan die Kongo gepubliseer het (Naar Congoland, 1913) - tot 2012 . Die navorsingsverslag ondersoek beeldvorming rondom die Kongo/(Midde-)Afrika in die korpus tekste wat opgespoor is, binne die breë teoretiese raamwerk van koloniale/postkoloniale studies, met toespitsing op “Africanism” en “Whiteness studies”. Daar is bevind dat beeldvorming in verband met die Kongo rondom twee hooftrope geskied: die Kongo as Conradiaanse “heart of darkness”, waar barbaarsheid in al sy geledinge hoogty vier; en die Kongo as “Eldorado” – die land wat as 15de-eeuse Afrika-koninkryk beskik het oor ‘n ontwikkelde beskawing en ongekende rykdom - lank voordat dit “ontdek” is deur Portugese seevaarders. Hierdie hooftrope en hul uitlopers funksioneer as ‘n kontinuum eerder as volstrekte teenoorgesteldes in die meeste Afrikaanse tekste oor die Kongo. Tekste van die koloniale era (tot die 1960’s in die Kongo) sluit aan by Eurosentriese diskoerse waarin die imperiale/koloniale tydgees weerspieël word, en tipies manifesteer in binêre opposisies (byvoorbeeld primitiwiteit versus beskawing) en trope soos “imperial eyes” (wit toeëiening van die koloniale ruimte). Malan se ideaal van ‘n Dietse invloedsfeer gebaseer op die taalverwantskap tussen Hollands/Afrikaans in Suid-Afrika, en Vlaams in die destydse Belgiese Kongo, herinner aan die ekspansionistiese ywer waarmee die Kaap-tot-Kaïro-droom van Britse imperialiste nagejaag is, maar blyk nouer verwant te wees aan die Afrikanernasionalistiese klem op die “taal as volk”. In postkoloniale tekste word die siening van die wit Afrikaner as ‘n nasaat van die geïdealiseerde Voortrekkers/Dorslandtrekkers toenemend gerelativeer deur tekste waarin die wit Afrikaner herverbeel word as “wit sangoma” of “Witboy in Afrika”; en wit vrese en vergrype word op skerp satiriese wyse aan die kaak gestel as die wrange erflating van die aartskolonialis, “Pappa in Afrika”. Die koloniale projek word in Equatoria as mislukking uitgebeeld, terwyl Horrelpoot ʼn distopiese verbastering van Afrikanerskap en Afrikaans in (Suid-)Afrika poneer. Witheid mag uiteindelik in Afrika uitgewis en vervang word met egte skakerings van aardsheid, of herdefinieer word in ʼn niehegemoniese verband (The Poisonwood Bible). Slegs die tyd sal leer. / This study of Afrikaans literary texts on the Congo (DRC) covers 100 years: 1912 – 2012. In 1912 DF Malan became the first white Afrikaner to travel to the Congo and publish a travelogue based on his travels (Naar Congoland, 1913). This thesis investigates the representation of the Congo/Central) Africa in the corpus of texts discovered, within the broad theoretical framework of colonial/postcolonial studies, and the paradigms of “Africanism” and “Whiteness Studies”. The Congo has been represented in terms of two main tropes: the Congo as the Conradian “heart of darkness”, the seat of utter savagery; and the Congo as “Eldorado” – the African kingdom that presided over a well-developed civilisation and untold wealth long before it was “discovered” by Portuguese explorers in the fifteenth century. These main tropes and their sub-tropes function in most Afrikaans texts on the Congo as a continuum and not in absolute contrast. Literary texts of the colonial era (up to the 1960’s) are characterised by Eurocentric discourses in which the imperial/colonial Zeitgeist typically manifests in binary oppositions (primitivism versus civilisation), and tropes like “imperial eyes” (white appropriation of colonial space). Malan’s dream of a Dutch sphere of influence - based on the affinity of Dutch/Flemish in the Congo with Dutch/Afrikaans in South Africa – and extending from Cape Town to the erstwhile Belgian Congo, is reminiscent of the expansionist fervour characterising the imperialist Cape-to-Cairo idea, but is based on the close link between language and nationhood in Afrikaner nationalism. In postcolonial texts the view of the white Afrikaner as ‘n descendant of the idealised Voortrekkers/Angolan trekkers is increasingly deconstructed by re-imagining the Afrikaner as a “white sangoma” or “whiteboy in Africa”, while white fright and guilt are revealed - in a sharply satirical fashion – as the bitter legacy of the white arch-colonialist “Pappa in Afrika”. The colonial project is portrayed as a disaster in Equatoria, while Horrelpoot poses a dystopic vision of the degeneration of Afrikanerdom and Afrikaans in (South) Africa. Whiteness may eventually be erased and replaced by authentic, earthy African colours, or be redefined within a non-hegemonic context (The Poisonwood Bible). Time alone will tell. / Lolu cwaningo olumayelana nemibhalo yesiBhunu ezincwadini zaseCongo (eDRC) lubheka isikhathi esingangeminyaka eyi-100: 1912 – 2012. Ngo-1912, uDF Malan waba yiBhunu lokuqala elimhlophe elaya eCongo laqopha umbiko omayelana nohambo lwakhe (Naar Congoland, 1913). Lo mbiko wocwaningo ucubungula indlela okwethulwa ngayo iCongo kanye nezinye izindawo eziMaphakathi Ne-Afrika eqoqweni lwemibhalo etholakale ohlakeni lwemibhalo eyimihlahlandlela emayelana nezifundo zangezikhathi zombuso wamakoloni/ nezikhathi zangemva kombuso wamakoloni, kanye nokuhleleka kwezifundo ngaBomdabu nangaBamhlophe. Izwe laseCongo lethulwa ngokufanekiswa ngezindlela ezimbili: ICongo njengesizinda sobumnyama (“heart of darkness”), nanjengesihlalo sobulwane bokungaphucuzeki (seat of utter savagery) njengoba kufanekisa umbhali uJoseph Conrad, kanti futhi ibuye ifanekiswe njengeCongo eyi-“Eldorado” – ubukhosi base-Afrika obabubusa endaweni ephucuzeke ngokuphelele nenothe ngendlela emangalisayo, ngaphambi kokuba itholwe ngabasingimazwe baMaputukezi ngekhuluminyaka leshumi-nanhlanu. Lokhu kufanekisa kanye nemifanekiso ehambisana nako evela emibhalweni eminingi engesiBhunu maqondana neCongo isetshenziswa ukuveza okubili okubonakala sengathi kuyefana yize kungafani kunoba ikuveze obala njengezinto ezingafani nhlobo. Imibhalo esezincwadini yangesikhathi sombuso wamakoloni (kuze kufinyelele esikhathini sangeminyaka ye-1960) iphawula kakhulu ngezindaba ezincike emasikweni nasemilandweni yamazwe aseYurophu nokuyilapho umoya wobukhosi obubusa ngaphezu kwamanye amakhosi/ nombuso wamakoloni uziveza njengokulindelekile ngezindlela ezimbili eziphikisanayo (ukubambelela endleleni yokwenza yasendulo kuqhathaniswa nempucuko), kanye nemifanekiso enjenge-“imperial eyes” (ukuzithathela kwabamhlophe umhlaba ezweni ababusa kulona okungelabanye abantu). Iphupho likaMalan lokuba kube nendawo eyenza ngokwemfundiso yamaDashi – okwakuncike ekuhlanganyeleni kwamaDashi/namaFlemishi eCongo kanye namaDashi/namaBhunu eNgingizimu Afrika – nokwakuzohamba kusuke eKapa kuze kufinyelele eCongo eyayaziwa ngokuthi yiBelgian Congo, kudala, ikhumbuzana uthando olukhulu lokwandisa indawo noma umnotho olwaluvela kumqondombono walabo abasekela umbuso wobukhosi bamazwe amaningi weCape-to-Cairo, kodwa-ke lokhu kwakuncike ekusondelaneni kolimi kanye nothando lobuzwe ebuzweni bamaBhunu. Emibhalweni yangemva kwesikhathi sombuso wamakoloni, ukuthathwa komuntu oyiBhunu elimhlophe njengoyisizukulwane saBafuduki (amaVoortrekker)/ saBafuduki base-Angola kuyaqhubeka nokuhlakazwa ngokudweba kabusha isithombe seBhunu emqondweni, liyi“sangoma esimhlophe” noma lingu“mfana omhlophe e-Afrika”, kodwa kube kugqama ukwesaba nokushawa ngunembeza – ngendlela ebhuqa kakhulu – njengegalelolifa elinganambitheki lomeseki wombuso wamakoloni oqavile u-“Papa in Afrika”. Umsebenzinhloso wezindaba eziphathelene nombuso wamakoloni uvezwa ngengowonakala wangaphumelela nhlobo ku-Equatoria, kanti uHorrelpoot yena uveza umbono wokuphela kobuBhunu kanye neSibhunu eNingizimu Afrika. Ubumhlophe bungagcina buphelile bese esikhundleni sako kungene imibala yoqobo ezothile esamvelo yomhlaba edabuka e-Afrika, kumbe buchazwe kabusha ngaphansi kwengqikithi engahambisani nokuphatha (The Poisonwood Bible). Sekobonakala phambili. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D. Litt. et Phil. (Afrikaans)

Software prediction is a complex area as there are no accurate models to represent reliability throughout the use of software, unlike hardware reliability. In the context of the software reliability of on-board train systems, ensuring good software reliability over time is all the more critical given the current density of rail traffic and the risk of accidents resulting from a software malfunction. This thesis proposes to use soft computing methods and historical failure data to predict the software reliability of on-board train systems. For this purpose, four machine learning models (Multi-Layer Perceptron, Imperialist Competitive Algorithm Multi-Layer Perceptron, Long Short-Term Memory Network and Convolutional Neural Network) are compared to determine which has the best prediction performance. We also study the impact of having one or more features represented in the dataset used to train the models. The performance of the different models is evaluated using the Mean Absolute Error, Mean Squared Error, Root Mean Squared Error and the R Squared. The report shows that the Long Short-Term Memory Network is the best performing model on the data used for this project. It also shows that datasets with a single feature achieve better prediction. However, the small amount of data available to conduct the experiments in this project may have impacted the results obtained, which makes further investigations necessary. / Att förutsäga programvara är ett komplext område eftersom det inte finns några exakta modeller för att representera tillförlitligheten under hela programvaruanvändningen, till skillnad från hårdvarutillförlitlighet. När det gäller programvarans tillförlitlighet i fordonsbaserade tågsystem är det ännu viktigare att säkerställa en god tillförlitlighet över tiden med tanke på den nuvarande tätheten i järnvägstrafiken och risken för olyckor till följd av ett programvarufel. I den här avhandlingen föreslås att man använder mjuka beräkningsmetoder och historiska data om fel för att förutsäga programvarans tillförlitlighet i fordonsbaserade tågsystem. För detta ändamål jämförs fyra modeller för maskininlärning (Multi-Layer Perceptron, Imperialist Competitive Algorithm Mult-iLayer Perceptron, Long Short-Term Memory Network och Convolutional Neural Network) för att fastställa vilken som har den bästa förutsägelseprestandan. Vi undersöker också effekten av att ha en eller flera funktioner representerade i den datamängd som används för att träna modellerna. De olika modellernas prestanda utvärderas med hjälp av medelabsolut fel, medelkvadratfel, rotmedelkvadratfel och R-kvadrat. Rapporten visar att Long Short-Term Memory Network är den modell som ger bäst resultat på de data som använts för detta projekt. Den visar också att dataset med en enda funktion ger bättre förutsägelser. Den lilla mängd data som fanns tillgänglig för att genomföra experimenten i detta projekt kan dock ha påverkat de erhållna resultaten, vilket gör att ytterligare undersökningar är nödvändiga.