<p>My essay is an investigation of American Psychos Patrick Bateman. Why is Patrick Batemans identity one so easily described as shallow and superficial? I discuss theese questions from a marxists point of view putting Bateman in the context of Georg Lukács theories of reification. I compare the structure of Patrick Batemans identity with the idea of an reified identity to se how the mechanisms of reification creates the entity that is Patrick Bateman.</p><p>My conclusion is that one answer to Batemans shallowness is the phenomenon of reification. To get a grasp of how shallowness might be understood I combine the theories of Lukács with Bakhtins idea of the aouthorative discourse.</p><p>If one look upon reification as an aouthorative discourse and one also presume that human existence is social and verbal the conclusion is that Patrick Bateman cannot exist because of what he is an example of. Patrick Bateman has only access to one voice, the voice of consumer capitalism and it is the singularity of Bateman that constitutes his ”not thereness”.</p>

My essay is an investigation of American Psychos Patrick Bateman. Why is Patrick Batemans identity one so easily described as shallow and superficial? I discuss theese questions from a marxists point of view putting Bateman in the context of Georg Lukács theories of reification. I compare the structure of Patrick Batemans identity with the idea of an reified identity to se how the mechanisms of reification creates the entity that is Patrick Bateman. My conclusion is that one answer to Batemans shallowness is the phenomenon of reification. To get a grasp of how shallowness might be understood I combine the theories of Lukács with Bakhtins idea of the aouthorative discourse. If one look upon reification as an aouthorative discourse and one also presume that human existence is social and verbal the conclusion is that Patrick Bateman cannot exist because of what he is an example of. Patrick Bateman has only access to one voice, the voice of consumer capitalism and it is the singularity of Bateman that constitutes his ”not thereness”.

This thesis will use three case studies to test the existing research on civil society and authoritarian regimes. By using concrete data from Putin’s previous decade in Russia, the post-Mubarak government’s control over transitional Egypt, and the Hun Sen regime in Cambodia, this thesis is an attempt to analyze under what conditions will authoritarian governments not only create, but enforce controls and restrictions against their NGO communities. This thesis expands O’donnell & Schmiiter’s existing theory: Government policy makers will increase restrictions when NGOs and civil society represent too strong of a threat, to include both real and perceived threats. Unfortunately, this thesis cannot conclude on the true power of NGOs, however one does not need to answer this question to examine why governments restrict them.

This thesis, drawing from the Gothic paradigm, attempts to complicate and supplement the revisionist reading of Patrick McCabe¡¦s The Butcher Boy (1992). The novel tells the murder story of Francie Brady, a troubled Irish boy who slaughters his Anglicized neighbor like a pig. Critics have aligned the novel with the revisionist attempt to debunk nationalist meta-narrative. They have also associated the sensational plotline and grotesque imageries in the novel with the Gothic tradition. Revisionism and Gothicism, therefore, are two established reading strategies to The Butcher Boy. Both ideas, however, are used by critics with certain unease, for both terms are under much critical debate. Moreover, in the end of the novel, McCabe astutely eschews moral judgment on Francie¡¦s horrific deed. Francie¡¦s first-person narrative also allows the reader to sympathize with the young murderer. In this regard, McCabe keeps a sympathetic undertone in the murder story, which a simplistic revisionist reading cannot fully account for. This thesis, bringing the two critical paradigms together, argues that McCabe¡¦s use of Gothicism is crucial to understanding his complicated re-visioning of Ireland in the 1960s. Through historicizing the Gothic fiction, the thesis underlines the idea of ¡§antiquarianism¡¨ to explicate the historical background of the novel¡XIreland at the turn of the 1960s when the Republic underwent a transformation of national ethos, from conservative nationalism to modernization. I contend that while the novel is critical of the waning nationalism, it is also suspicious of Ireland¡¦s relentless modernizing project. From a cultural dimension of the Gothic, the thesis foregrounds the relation between Gothic imagination and racial discourse. In this light, I intend to demonstrate that the recurrent image of ¡§pig¡¨ in the novel is a Gothicized racial stereotype of the Irish people. Through Francie¡¦s struggle with the pig image, the thesis examines Irish people¡¦s negotiation with their often derogatory racial stereotype. Finally, resorting to the Gothic device of ¡§double bind,¡¨ I attempt to expound McCabe¡¦s underlying sympathy for the homicidal and suicidal boy, who is depicted as both victim and murderer, both pig and butcher.

Diss.--Heidelberg, 2001. / Bibliogr. p. 256-265. Index.

édition commerciale de : Dissertation : ? : Humboldt-Universität Berlin : 2005. / Bibliogr. p. 209-225.

Reproduction de : Thèse doctorat : Urbanisme : Paris8 : 2006. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. f. 428-462.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the configuration of gender in Giscardian France (1974-1981), as it is represented through the life and work of Patrick Dewaere. To this end, this thesis has the following three correspondent aims: first, to document and analyse the socio-political and historical contexts that influenced the configuration of gender during this period. Second, to position Dewaere in relation to the broader context of 1970s French cinema primarily in the form of contemporary stars with whom he worked – and the filmic representation of gender during this period. Third, to map and explore Dewaere’s on and off-screen life against these sets of contexts. By looking at Dewaere’s life in this way this thesis will not only present a critical response to the research question as it concerns gender identity but it will also fill a small gap in the current dearth of work that exists on 1970s French film.

This essay focuses on the character Patrick Bateman in American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and his unreliability as a narrator and compares it to the unreliable narration of the character Dexter Morgan in Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. These characters' respective unreliability is analyzed from the perspective of six types of unreliability suggested by James Phelan and Mary Patricia Martin: misreporting, misreading, misregarding, underreporting, underreading and underregarding. The result of the analysis is that while Patrick shows proof of being an unreliable narrator with respect to each one of the six types except underreporting and underregarding, Dexter can be connected to three of them (misreading, underreading and underregarding). Even if this might seem like an insignificant difference, the amount and the clarity in the examples of unreliability adhering to Patrick suggests that he is a much more unreliable narrator than Dexter is. This result indicates that characters can be at opposing ends of a spectrum of unreliability, on which Patrick according to this analysis is placed at the highly unreliable end of the spectrum and Dexter somewhere at the low end. / Denna uppsats fokuserar på karaktären Patrick Bateman i American Psycho skriven av Bret Easton Ellis, med tanke på denna karaktärs opålitlighet som berättare. Detta jämförs med karaktären Dexter Morgan från Darkly Dreaming Dexter skriven av Jeff Lindsay och denna karaktärs opålitlighet som berättare. Detta opålitliga berättande analyseras utifrån en modell som består av sex kategorier vilka James Phelan och Mary Patricia Martin har formulerat. Dessa kategorier kallas: ”misreporting”, ”misreading”, ”misregarding”, ”underreporting”, ”underreading” och ”underregarding”. Resultatet av analysen visar på att Patricks berättande kan placeras in i fyra av dessa kategorier (”misreporting”, ”misreading”, ”misregarding” och ”underreading”). Detta i jämförelse med Dexters berättande som kan placeras in i tre av dem (”misreading”, ”underreading” och ”underregarding”). Även fast denna skillnad kan verka obetydlig är det ändå så att de exampel på opålitlighet som Patrick visar upp står att finna i fler och tydligare exempel än hos Dexter vilket innebär att Patrick kan ses som en mer opålitlig berättare än Dexter. Resultatet av analysen indikerar att olika karaktärers berättande kan återfinnas i olika ändar av ett opålitlighetsspektrum. På detta spektrum kan Patrick då placeras in som en mer opålitlig berättare än Dexter som hamnar i den mer pålitliga delen av spektrumet.

Humboldt-Univ., Diss.--Berlin, 2005.