In this thesis, I bring into conversation two political theoretical frameworks -- decolonial thought and new materialism – with the South Korean novella The Vegetarian. I suggest that the novella, especially through its protagonist, performs a form of agency which calls for a reading that hinges not on the pursuit of definitive analysis but on the recognition of a personal, affective interaction with violent status quo sensibilities. I demonstrate that there exist understandings of agency within decolonial thought and new materialism which could be attuned to this call. I suggest a method that relies upon two thinkers in these frameworks for reading the novella, and after reading the novella through this method and transparently reflecting on my own role in these texts' encounter, I demonstrate that this way of simultaneously reading the novella and the theoretical texts has the capacity to affirm the open and uncertain mutual changes that happen at their encounter. / Master of Arts / In this thesis, I bring into conversation two political theoretical schools of thought -- decolonial thought and new materialism – with the South Korean novella The Vegetarian. I suggest that the novella demonstrates a unique agency which calls for a reading that is centered not on the pursuit of definitive analysis but on the recognition of a personal, affective interaction with status quo violence. I demonstrate that there exist understandings of agency within decolonial thought and new materialism which could be attuned to this call. I suggest a method that relies upon two thinkers in these frameworks for reading the novella, and after reading the novella through this method and transparently reflecting on my own role in these texts’ encounter, I demonstrate that this way of simultaneously reading the novella and the theoretical texts has the capacity to affirm the open and uncertain mutual changes that happen at their encounter.

This contribution shares Ulrich Brand's reliance on critical theories of the state and hegemony. Based on three points of criti-cism, the author argues for a better elaboration of the context of policy making. First, he proposes to consider a broader range of theoretical currents than the interpretive accounts introduced by Brand: (1) A strategic-relational interpretation of historical institutionalism will be introduced, (2) featuring the concept of "periodisation" for a systematic understanding of historically evolving structures. In addition to the introduction of a broader range of theoretical currents, (3) Brand's proposed concept of "selectivities" will be further refined and specified to be better able to grasp the workings of the "institutional condensation of the correlation of forces" in the policy cycle. The proposed conceptualisation of historical-materialist policy analysis will be exemplified by a short stylised example of research on equalityoriented policies in South Africa. (author's abstract)

This essay examines U.S. blackface performance in the twentieth century through the lens of Adorno's mass culture critiques, specifically of jazz music. Despite being rooted in the divisive logic of antiquated live performance traditions, blackface as a racist glyph flourishes in the technologically mediated social environment of the twentieth century. By replacing Adorno's critique of jazz with a direct investigation of blackface, the essay argues for a more materialist approach to minstrelsy studies that acknowledges both circulation and accumulation as oppressive hegemonic forces.

Orientador: Ricardo Monteagudo / Banca: Jacira de Freitas / Banca: Paulo Jonas de Lima Piva / Resumo: Este trabalho tem o objetivo de analisar e demonstrar os princípios morais do Barão de Holbach (1723- 1789), em especial, como ele fundamenta a noção de felicidade em seu materialismo ateu, fatalista e eudemonista. No Sistema da Natureza (ou das leis do mundo físico e do mundo moral), de 1770, Holbach entende que a infelicidade que atormenta grande parte dos seres humanos é causada pela ignorância acerca da natureza da qual fazemos parte, bem como pela ignorância que temos de nossa própria natureza. Por meio da experiência que guia a razão e proporciona o desvelamento da natureza e conhecimento da sua dinâmica, Holbach acredita que o comportamento humano pode ser conduzido na vida em sociedade sem depender dos dogmas teológicos. Segundo o barão, o próprio desejo de ser feliz e de se conservar é uma tendência natural nos seres humanos. E a "verdadeira felicidade" só será possível com uma moral em conformidade com as leis da natureza e as necessidades naturais do homem, as quais exigem dele a prática de uma virtude que considere também a felicidade dos demais seres humanos. / Abstract: This work aims to analyze and demonstrate the moral principles of Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789), mainly, how he bases the notion of happiness in his atheistic, fatalistic and eudemonistic materialism. At The System of Nature (or the laws of the physical world and the moral world), 1770, Holbach perceives that the unhappiness that plagues most human beings is caused by ignorance about the nature of which we are part of, as well as by the ignorance we have upon our own nature. By means of the experience that guides reason and provides the unveiling of nature and knowledge of its dynamics, Holbach believes that human behavior can be guided in the society life without dependence on theological dogmas. According to Baron, the very desire to be happy and to preserve oneself is a natural tendency in the human beings. And "the true happiness" will only be possible with a moral in accordance with the laws of nature and the natural needs of man, which require him the practice of a virtue that also considers the happiness of other human beings. / Mestre

The status of ‘Shakespeare’ is an incredibly intricate cultural construct, which is influenced by circumstantially contingent hierarchies of value, academic discourses, institutional processes, educational curricula, and media techniques. Having explored the context in which Shakespeare currently stands as an icon through the review of existing scholarship, this thesis employs a combined methodology to facilitate an investigation of some of the ways in which the playwright and his works are significant in contemporary culture, by specifically examining three late-1990s Shakespearean films and some particular types of audience responses. The case studies – Romeo + Juliet, Shakespeare in Love and 10 Things I Hate About You – are each analysed, according to their individual content and context, as cinematic products, which are understood in relation to Shakespeare and also many other cultural frameworks. It is acknowledged that Shakespeare has a particularly potent and established iconicity within academia and the education system, and it is argued that this position informs, but is also modified and challenged by, the filmic conceptualisations. These observations are enriched and developed by the findings of empirical audience research. Questionnaires were used to elicit a mixture of quantitative and qualitative information from secondary school teachers of Shakespeare, and from first year English and/or media undergraduates, about their experiences and opinions of Shakespeare in contemporary culture, especially Shakespearean films. Patterns identifiable in the data generated confirm that cinematic interpretations can transform the cultural currency of Shakespeare, reducing the distance between young people and the text by using familiar modes of address, but also point to tensions stemming from a disjunction of conventional evaluative criteria and the diverse ways in which Shakespeare now functions in mass culture. This work therefore contributes to debates about Shakespeare’s cultural status by examining the complex processes of negotiation of meaning that are discernable in these instances.

My dissertation is based on the premise that possessions are an extension of the self. Beyond simple functional benefits that possessions provide us, I question whether possessions affect our self-perception and behavior. Specifically, I focus on two aspects of possessions: Ownership (Essay 1) and Sharing (Essay 2). In Essay 1, I find that feeling a sense of product ownership has downstream consequences in one’s representation of who s/he is. Here I reveal that salient feelings of product ownership activate a product-related self in one’s mind, but more importantly deactivate product-unrelated self. By identifying simultaneous identity activation and deactivation, I show that an individual can only hold a limited number of salient selves, and activating one’s self aspect requires a trade-off. This finding updates the prior assumption in the literature that an individual can hold an unlimited number of selves, and further suggests that there is still a finite limit to what can be salient at a given time. My interest in ownership extends to Essay 2, where I examine another behavioral aspect of consumers: sharing. Sharing behavior has received much attention lately due to the rise of sharing economy platforms, which provide new opportunities for consumers to share personal belongings with others. In Essay 2, I mine people’s latent motivation behind sharing by using a transaction dataset from one of the largest sharing economy platforms, Airbnb. Here I find that people are driven by not only monetary, but also non-monetary reasons, such as desires to meet others and share the beauty of their homes. Then I explore how each motivation affects people’s engagement on the sharing economy platform and their continued effort to share. This second essay highlights individuals’ new role as micro-entrepreneurs in this new era of the 21st century.

A prevailing scholarly view holds that John Milton’s monism (his belief that matter and spirit are inseparable) is a reaction to seventeenth-century determinism. My thesis, however, posits that Milton’s monism in fact emerges from his exploration of literary form. Chapter one traces the classical roots of the philosophy and its compatibility with Genesis. It posits the comprehensiveness of monist philosophy and highlights the vitalist (or animate) implications of ancient monist theories for literary form. Spoken or written words, Democritus suggests, correspond to the material building blocks or “elements” of the universe: the construction of literary form is analogous to the creation of the cosmos. Indeed, Lucretius’ letter-atom analogy suggests that the process of creating literary form is essentially identical to the atomic method underlying the composition of other material forms in the universe. Greek atomist thought, the chapter proposes, finds a striking parallel in Jewish mystical beliefs about creation. It is with the letters of the divine name that the Lord was said to have created the universe. I argue that, for Milton, Aristotle is most influential in expressing a vitalist conception of literary form, for in his philosophy, soul generates voice, which manifests itself in writing. Milton acknowledges the association between words and atoms, between letters and primordial substance, and between voice, or breath, and spirit in his monist materialism; after all, in Genesis, God creates by utterance. Examining the relation of vitalism to Aristotelian poetics, I suggest the relevance of the concept to Milton’s hybrid literary forms. Then, analysing the material nature of voice in Milton’s works, I posit in chapter two that Milton’s polemical pamphlets underscore the sense of spirit in writing that we find in the poetry. That literary forms can be perceived to embody soul because they evoke voice is evident also from Milton’s Art of Logic (1672). I suggest in chapter three that Logic is saturated with materialism because the Aristotelian sources on which Milton’s Ramist logic is based express material monism. Milton’s Logic and Areopagitica (1644) provide further evidence of his thinking about the vital potential of literary form through the logical construction of texts, a continued interest, I argue, which ultimately engenders his mature monism. Milton use of dream narratives in Paradise Lost, I propose, suggests that reality varies materially by degrees. The parts that reality comprises become more distinct after the Fall, when Milton’s dream narratives, and his cosmology, changes. Before the Fall, the poet imagines that Earth orbits the sun, and that the sun orbits heaven at the centre of the cosmos, a formation, I explain, that has striking resemblance to modern knowledge of the solar system. With careful attention to the dreams of Paradise Lost, I have determined that monism, for Milton, encompasses the workings of intellect, and in the final chapter, I argue that this principle is central to understanding Paradise Regained. The Son’s method of survival in the wilderness becomes the means by which paradise (the spiritual reality) is regained. Understanding his own nature permits the Son of God physiologically to sustain himself through dreaming; the intellectual achievement alters the material nature of his body so that he is sustained by spiritual food. Monism is at the very heart of Paradise Regained. It is a monist methodology of literary form which enables the poet across his oeuvre truly to represent the nature of reality.

Esta dissertação trata da mulher no pensamento materialista de Denis Diderot (1713-1784), tendo em vista dois aspectos principais: a constituição psicofisiológica feminina e a maneira como o enciclopedista vê a mulher no seu contexto moral e social no Século das Luzes. Tomaremos como base para esta análise as seguintes obras do filósofo: Diálogo entre DAlembert e Diderot, O Sonho de DAlembert, Continuação do Diálogo, Sobre as Mulheres, A Religiosa e, por fim, o Suplemento à Viagem de Bougainville. / This dissertation deals with the woman in materialistic thought of Denis Diderot (1713-1784), in view two main aspects: the constitution psychophysiological women and the way women see encyclopedic in its moral and social context in the Enlightenment. We will take as a basis for this analysis the following works of the philosopher: Dialogue between D\'Alembert and Diderot, D\'Alembert\'s Dream, Continued Dialogue on Women, The Religious and finally, The Supplement to the Journey Bougainville.

This thesis is an exploration into the mechanism of Marxist materialism. It is an attempt, in the face of materialism, to regain a grasp on our intellectual lives. The promise, I will argue, is a nexus between the material and ideal realms; it largely determines the configurations of our thoughts along three poles: privacy/recognition, sovereignty/subjection, and individual/society. In this thesis, I will explore the history of the promise during the sixteenth-century development of the negotiable instrument- a form of the promise that could be bought and sold. This development, I will argue, led to a general transformation of language during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries such that the concept of the referent largely replaced the concept of the signifier. In the realm of mathematics, this transformation led to the creation of the symbolic variable; elsewhere, it led to the creation of what Mary Poovey has called the modern fact.

The aim of this dissertation is to analyze how modernization theory of values change and capitalist ideology affect individuals' attitudes toward generosity. Because generosity is a concept rooted in our human value system, it would be worthwhile attempting to explain the interplay between individuals' values and larger socio-economic environment. From modernization theory explanations of values change, it is expected that noble, higher-order values such as generosity will receive more approval and support as economic pressures decline as result of economic development. However, individuals' values are also being influenced by principles of the specific type of economic ideology embraced in each country around the world. This study will explain how the different types of capitalist ideology impact individuals' values. In relation to these, it is suggested that the notion of `economic ideology' should be taken into consideration as a factor interacting with the modernization thesis of values change in influencing individuals' predisposition toward generosity. An economic ideology motivates behavior and determines norms for many human interactions. In this study, `economic ideology' is constructed as the interaction between capitalism characteristics and materialistic values. One hypothesis suggests that capitalism is negatively correlated with the emergence or advancement of generosity. A second hypothesis, examines whether the effect of capitalism is moderated through the presence of materialistic values or specific type of economic ideology. Within this enquiry the study uses a cross-national and a multilevel approach that mainly concentrates on the analysis of the World Values Survey which presents a broad examination of cross-national differences. The results indicate the validity of the economic ideology effect. Initially, at the individual level capitalism is associated significantly, albeit weakly, to generosity. When this relationship is allowed to vary across countries, then capitalism coefficient is not significant. Nevertheless, when the original argument about the influence of the economic ideology on individuals' values is considered, the new model modifies the previously reported results. The capitalism coefficient not only turns out to be significant, but also changes the direction of its coefficient demonstrating the moderating effect of the economic ideology hypothesis.