Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Document formatted into pages; contains 386 p. Includes bibliographical references. Abstract available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2006 May 26.

This thesis is presented as a written text and an exhibition. 1 Both parts result from interdisciplinary research in writing and visual art. Its problematic is the origin of meaning as addressed by recent textual theory, and how that represents an artist's experience of this. Here, 'recent theory' designates 'postmodernism', which includes 'poststructuralism' and refers, too, to 'modernism'. This is reviewed and compared to an artist's experience, using my empirical encounter with art, as an artist, as a possible example. As the comparison occurs in writing and visual art, the latter is, at once, the research data, and a site of its investigation. And writing is a site for exploring art practice (via a case study), and the source for further art. Finding that an artist experiences the origin of meaning as far more multifarious than it appears in recent theory, the comparison additionally proposes a role for the expressive self in art's meaning, in contradistinction to much of postmodernist theory. The typicality of an artist is discussed via a deconstructive notion of exemplarity. And Derrida's deconstruction, which explores diverse features of the textual process, infonns the theoretical method throughout. However, it is not just an artist's experience that proposes a critique of postmodernism's version of the origin of meaning. This is proposed, too, via Richard Rorty's pragmatism, when that opposes 'realism' (which includes empiricism) and idealism (which includes deconstruction). This thesis concludes that it is useful (in Rorty's sense) for the artist to believe in a multifarious agency including the expressive self - experience notwithstanding. In moving from postmodernism's notion of the origin of meaning to the artist's, and beyond, to pragmatism's, this thesis attempts to recognise its reflexive dimension. So its voice (as the ambiguous index of its origins) diversifies postmodernism's voice, tending towards a cacophony, without abandoning a conclusion.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, 1999. / Thesis submitted for the degree of doctor of philosophy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 297-318).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 357 p. : ill. (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 371-396).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Virginia Commonwealth University, 2010. / Prepared for: Dept. of Art History. Title from resource description page. Inlcudes bibliographical references.

In this thesis, I apply Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s ontology of becoming to my own learning, thinking and writing. The adopted method - nomadic inquiry, is derived from the philosophising of Deleuze, whose concepts function as pedagogic values that I mobilise throughout my writing and perform – not merely explain, to problematise common perceptions of the thesis, supervision and doctoral experience. Deleuze resists models that inhibit context-specific creativity, yet I can readily identify the defining features of my own supervision: resolutely student-centred, facilitative of free experimentation, supportive of my becoming as an academic subject and the writing through which this was achieved. Non-teleological nomadic writing does not preclude strategic intent. Hence, the thesis records the process of my learning but equally functions as a crucial resource for additional and post-doctoral writing. It was conceived as a ‘body without organs’ – a surface of inscription for affective learning processes arising in a supervisory assemblage where rigid distinctions between self and other proved unsustainable. Contra characterisation of doctoral research as solitary scholarly activity, the heterogeneity and relationality of learning emerges through my writing and in the areas to which I am drawn in my theoretical engagement. I consider former academic experiences and characterise my current supervisory assemblage as rhizomatic - a complex relational space where connections are continually made, but not fixed, in the knowledge-seeking process. Such connections are not wholly undetermined but reveal processes of stratification and destratification. I seek to show that the creative potential of the rhizomatic supervisory assemblage lies in the tensions thereby generated. I also lay bare sedimented resistances that arise as I mobilise the concept of theoretical assemblage and connect with writers like Butler and Cixous. This thesis defies the ascetic ideal pervading normative accounts of doctoral experience, academic textual production and theoretical engagement. It embodies my desire to embrace an ontology of becoming and its pedagogic corollaries.

Since the early 1990s Croatia has defined membership of the European Union as one of its primary goals. However, the immediate post-war period and the difficult transition to democracy left Croatia in relative isolation from Western European states and its aim of joining the European Union seemed unattainable and distant. Croatia’s involvement in the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and President Tuđman’s politics proved to be great obstacles to its further democratisation and development. The parliamentary and presidential elections in the year 2000 and the defeat of Tuđman’s party offered a unique opportunity to change the direction of Croatian politics and to move closer to achieving the goal of EU membership. This thesis addresses changes in Croatia’s identity and it does so through the analysis of discourses surrounding Croatia’s cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and its changing attitudes towards the protection of minority rights during the year 2000. Both cases fall under the Copenhagen Criteria of Accession whose implementation was crucial for Croatia’s moving closer towards EU membership. They are also closely linked to Croatia’s identity and are rooted in the civilisational discourse that juxtaposes ‘the West’/ EU and ‘the East’/ the Balkans as both geographical and civilisational spaces. The two case studies are both concerned with questions of sovereignty, justice, victims of the Homeland War and the role of Serbia in Croatia’s recent past and in its future. Serbia features as Croatia’s radical other and is discursively constructed as an embodiment of the Balkans civilisation. The study of cooperation with the ICTY and of discourses surrounding minority protection analyses the links between different civilisational spaces that Croatia navigates and their implications to the reconstruction of discourses central to Croatian identity. Despite different subject material both case studies reveal the centrality of the Serbian other for the Croatian identity and the need to redefine that relationship without undermining Croatia’s identity as a Western country and attempts to differentiate itself from the Balkans.

This thesis argues that the practice and discourse of Montessori education should be explicitly concerned with the creation of a culture of response rather than with the implementation of a method. It is argued that in order for a culture of response to occur there must be within Montessori discourse and practice an explicit recognition of the need for teachers to engage critically and continuously with the assumptions that underpin Montessori thought and practice. This is difficult, however, because there is a tension between Montessori as a method and Montessori as response. An attempt is made to examine Montessori discourse in order to understand the nature of this tension. This involves looking at Montessori discourse from a perspective that borrows from Poststructuralist thinking. It is suggested that in Montessori discourse there exists a relationship between certain elements of the discourse and its practices that may bind tightly together the subjectivity, or identity, of the teacher; the claims to legitimacy and truth of the discourse itself; and particular, positivist, notions of the individual, of truth, nature, change, society, and knowledge. From a Postructuralist perspective this constellation of relationships begins to unravel when Montessori discourse is seen to arise from specific beliefs and assumptions that underpin apparently common sense understandings regarding children, learning, society and change. These understandings may result in the maintenance of the dichotomy between the observer and the observed, the teacher and the child, the knower and the known and the inevitable power relations that accompany such dichotomies. This Poststructuralist concern with the issue of power is thus a significant issue for educators who are attempting to provide a learning environment that is responsive to children's diverse attempts to make sense of the world and to find a voice. A critical engagement with Montessori discourse, and practice, thus requires an engagement with the ways in which it may construct a relationship between teacher and child that may be inimical to the development of a culture of response in Montessori schools.

The 32- hour documentary series <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i> was aired in 2000-2001 and has been widely disseminated: it is now available as video and DVD sets and has been aired in at least nine languages. In this thesis I examine the packaging of the series, that is, the images and promotional blurbs on the boxed DVD set and the introductory and concluding segments of the series, and I intensively examine Episode 10 Taking the West (1873-1896). Through Critical Discourse Analysis, I closely examine the language and other semiotic material used in <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i> to analyse power relationships in the series. As well as paying attention to the overall structure of the verbal and visual text, I am attentive to the way in which grammar and words are used, and the representation that is portrayed through these elements. In this thesis, I find that while the series does include women and Aboriginal people, <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i>s use of language and images portrays a Canadian identity that privileges Whiteness and masculinity and that presents current power imbalances in society as natural and inevitable. By devaluing women and Aboriginal people in its representation, <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i> lends legitimacy to the systemic discrimination against women and Aboriginal people in Canadian society. I find that the series presents past events as inevitable, over which people had no control or influence, and I argue that this presentation encourages people to accept the current situation, rather than challenging it and seeking alternatives.

The 32- hour documentary series <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i> was aired in 2000-2001 and has been widely disseminated: it is now available as video and DVD sets and has been aired in at least nine languages. In this thesis I examine the packaging of the series, that is, the images and promotional blurbs on the boxed DVD set and the introductory and concluding segments of the series, and I intensively examine Episode 10 Taking the West (1873-1896). Through Critical Discourse Analysis, I closely examine the language and other semiotic material used in <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i> to analyse power relationships in the series. As well as paying attention to the overall structure of the verbal and visual text, I am attentive to the way in which grammar and words are used, and the representation that is portrayed through these elements. In this thesis, I find that while the series does include women and Aboriginal people, <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i>s use of language and images portrays a Canadian identity that privileges Whiteness and masculinity and that presents current power imbalances in society as natural and inevitable. By devaluing women and Aboriginal people in its representation, <i>Canada: A Peoples History</i> lends legitimacy to the systemic discrimination against women and Aboriginal people in Canadian society. I find that the series presents past events as inevitable, over which people had no control or influence, and I argue that this presentation encourages people to accept the current situation, rather than challenging it and seeking alternatives.