Cette thèse propose une conception du tragique à partir des pensées d’Albert Camus (1913-1960), de Simone Weil (1909-1943) et d’Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). L’objectif n’est pas uniquement de comparer leurs pensées, mais de révéler chez chacun une vision du tragique qui permet, à terme, de peindre les contours d’une pensée tragique. La pensée tragique est pensée de l’existence, de l’humain, du politique, de la médiation par le récit et du travail. Il y a tragique lorsque la personne se dépossède d’une part de souveraineté. Cette destitution est ouverture radicale à soi et au monde, parce qu’elle arrache pour un moment ce que la force a déposé en soi-même. Sur le plan politique, le tragique apparaît lorsqu’il y a pluralité et implique une capacité à argumenter avec les autres, à les regarder et à les écouter. Ce faisant, le tragique intègre une conception non souveraine du « soi » et de la vie à plusieurs, il fait état d’un souci constant pour arrimer la démesure de certaines actions à la mesure d’un monde partagé en commun. Au registre plus individuel, la posture tragique peut se décrire comme capacité à percevoir plus loin que soi. La personne qui a un rapport tragique au monde s’enfonce, pour ainsi dire, dans l’extériorité, au sens où elle remarque la non-souveraineté des autres et d’elle-même sur l’action, où elle se confronte à la nécessité parfois souffrante de la vie. Cette confrontation lui permet de distinguer dans l’extériorité ce qui doit être changé et ce qui relève de la nature des choses. Pour que le tragique du politique s’arrime avec le tragique individuellement vécu, certaines médiations doivent être présentes, notamment la circulation de récits (mettant en scène la non-souveraineté des acteurs politiques et la fragilité du commun), d’une part, et des conditions de travail favorisant la réceptivité de ces récits, d’autre part. / This dissertation argues for a conception of the tragic based on the thought of Albert Camus (1913-1960), Simone Weil (1909-1943) and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). The goal is to compare not only their thought in general, but to reveal in each a vision of the tragic that develops a sketch of the contours of a tragic thought. Tragic thought is the thought of existence, of the human, of the political, and of mediation through storytelling and labour. The tragic emerges when one is dispossessed from a part of one’s sovereignty. This destitution is a radical opening to self and to the world because, for a moment, it snatches away whatever strength had been gathered in the self. On the political level, the tragic appears in a context of plurality and it implies a capacity to debate with others, to look at them and to listen to them. In so doing, the tragic integrates a non-sovereign conception of “self” and of collective life. It constantly tries to fix the excessiveness of certain actions to the extent of the shared and common world. On the individual level, the tragic attitude can be described as a capacity to perceive beyond the self. The individual who has a tragic relationship to the world is submerged in exteriority, in the sense that she notices the non-sovereignty of others and of herself with respect to action; she directly faces the necessity and often the suffering of life. This confrontation allows her to distinguish outside of herself that which must be changed from that of the natural order of things. For the tragic of the political to align itself with the tragic as lived individually certain mediations must be present, notably the circulation of storytelling (presenting the non-sovereignty of political actors and the fragility of the common), on the one hand, and the conditions of labour that favour the reception of this storytelling, on the other.

Research on knowing in childbirth has largely been a quantitative process. The purpose of this study was to better understand the ways nine, first-time mothers learn about birth. A phenomenological approach using a feminist view was used to analyze two in-depth interviews and journals to understand first time expectant mothers' experiences of knowing in childbirth. The findings demonstrated a range of knowledge that contributed to issues of control, confidence, hope, and conflict. The participants also described an increased dependency on their mothers and a lack of intuition contiguous to the birth process. These findings contribute understanding as to how expectant mothers know birth, suggesting that their knowing does not diminish conflict surrounding and may even exacerbate it. Childbirth educators may want to include instruction on negotiating power differential in relationships encountered during childbirth, and to assess the expectant mother's view of birth and her expectations for birth. Schools of nursing should consider the inclusion of women-centered care curricula in schools of nursing at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Clearly, the politics surrounding birthing remain in place and must be removed to provide a supportive environment for normal birth.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate ontological relationality in literary theory and criticism by critically reflecting on modern theories of literature and by practically examining the literary texts of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde. Traditional studies of literary texts have been oriented toward interpretative or hermeneutic methodologies, focusing on an independent and individual subject in literature. Instead, I explore how relational ontology uncovers the interactive structures interposed between the author, the text, and the audience by examining the system of how the author's creative positioning provokes the reader's reaction through the text. In Chapter I, I critically inquire into modern literary theories of "irony" in Romanticism, New Criticism, and Deconstructionism to show how they tend to disregard the dynamic dimension of interactive relationships between different literary subjects. Chapter II scrutinizes Wilde's humor in An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) in order to reveal the ontological relationships triggered by a creative positioning. In chapter III, I examine Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (c. 1400) and the laughter in "The Miller's Tale" in particular, to examine the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of its interactive relationships. In Chapter IV, I explore Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Othello (1603-4), and The Winter's Tale (1609-11) so as to show how artistic positioning creatively constructs a relational system of dynamic interactions to circulate social ideals and values. In so doing, this dissertation is aimed at revealing the aesthetic values of literature and the objective scope of literary discourse rather than providing yet another analytical paradigm dependent primarily on a single literary subject. Thus, the ontological study is proposed as an alternative, yet primary, dimension of literary criticism and theoretical practice.

The thesis that follows is a work of historical fiction, depicting a time and place four hundred years ago. It was written with a point of breaking down social barriers, classifications, and stereotypes. Although binary classifications may be useful for their simplicity, the exclusionary paradigm is unfit to handle the complexity of history, of life. The very nature of the paradigm chafes against relational principles – which are fundamentally grounded upon the notion that everything and everyone is intimately related – and held as truth by many Indigenous nations. In this project, it was a goal to eliminate these categorical distinctions by telling a story with dynamic characters that challenge standard conceptions of ‘good or bad’ and ‘right or wrong’, and that interact closely with the historical record.

Burn injury is considered a distressing and traumatic injury often leading to psychological disturbances such as depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and body image dissatisfaction. At the same time, the literature also suggests that people demonstrate surprising resiliency when dealing with their burn injury. How women who have experienced burns understand their injury and what it means to them to be a resilient, is largely ignored in the burn literature. This study addressed these shortcomings by exploring narratives from thirteen women, recruited from a regional burn center, who experienced a burn injury of up to 30% of their total body surface area (TBSA). Two interviews were conducted with each participant. The first interview employed a photo elicitation technique whereby photographs taken by the participant of her life with a burn injury were used to elicit stories in the context of the interview. The second interview was conducted using a semi-structured interview schedule developed to investigate experiences and understandings of distress and resiliency. The interview transcripts were analyzed using narrative analysis in order to explore how women constructed stories about distress and resiliency following burn injury. The findings show three main struggles the women faced in negotiating resiliency which all pertained to relational tension, that is, relationships with others. The three struggles of resiliency identified in the study are 1) feeling as though the body was public, 2) deciding how to share their burn experience with others, and 3) accepting support from others while maintaining independence. The findings of this study are discussed in the context of a relational theory named self-silencing which delineates how women behave socially to maintain relationships by inhibiting self-expression. Findings are also discussed relative to current research in the areas of burn injury and resiliency. / February 2017

Individuals and societies have long struggled to understand and confront, by constructive means, the nemesis of addiction. No other human ill has provoked more concern, accounted for more suffering, or elicited greater consequence than addiction in all its diverse forms. Although alcoholism and drug abuse symbolize the traditional essence of addiction; compulsive sexuality, pathological gambling, eating disorders, tobacco use, etc., are also believed to have addictive properties according to contemporary concepts. Numerous commendable theories and therapies have been offered down through history to explain and mediate addictions conceptually enigmatic and therapeutically resistant nature. As this paper will clarify, many of these time-honored conceptions and resultant treatments of addiction have been inclined to proceed from a particular philosophical perspective known as abstractionism. The first purpose of this dissertation, therefore, is to explore and analyze the influence of abstractionist ideologies in addiction theory and therapy. Further on, this paper will suggest an alternate theory of addiction that derives its meaning and significance from a philosophical basis known as relationality. A relational perspective of addiction theory and treatment will be proposed along with a number of therapeutic suggestions.

Este trabalho de tese trata das dinâmicas da mineração a céu aberto e seus efeitos na água da região andina de Cajamarca, ao norte do Peru. O objetivo consiste em analisar “desenhos locais” que entram em conflito com os desenhos propostos – e alguns já instalados – pela mineração moderna, que começam a proliferar no Peru a partir de 1990 como um caminho inquestionável de desenvolvimento. Por meio de pesquisa de abordagem etnográfica, realizada entre 2013 e 2014, analisam-se dois casos. No primeiro, examinam-se as diferenças ontológicas mobilizadas pelas pessoas como resultado de ações causadas pelo projeto de mineração Conga, que “sacrificará” importantes lagoas na região de Cajamarca, Peru. Nesse contexto, campesinos e ronderos do centro poblado El Tambo têm se organizado para vigiar a lagoa Mamacocha. Observa-se que a relacionalidade dos campesinos com Mamacocha é ativada pela realidade da experiência vivida com a água, que começou a desaparecer a partir dos projetos de mineração, mas que é coproduzida em “encontros” com outras concepções ontológicas. Tais encontros dinamizam histórias orais da memória local. Para além de uma representação essencialista do conhecimento indígena versus o científico, são os diferentes regimes de relação com a água que intensificam colaborações entre os coletivos. O efeito é a emergência de “Mamacocha estendida”, sinalizada nas manifestações como “obra de Deus”, “água que alimenta” e “aquíferos”, a depender das relações e dos grupos, e dos campesinos como “guardiões das lagoas”. A noção de “alimentar” aparece em diálogos com campesinos que enfatizam relações entre as colheitas, os canais de irrigação e os puquios (nascentes de água) salientando que as lagoas não podem ser substituídas por reservatórios artificiais que a empresa propõe construir. Em um segundo caso, analisa-se como o desenho de uma mina a céu aberto na cidade de Hualgayoc, região próxima à anterior, influencia as pessoas que inicialmente desenhavam na terra, os velhos mineiros de socavão. Embora os mineiros articulem a história de um passado mineiro, o seu esforço por negociar suas relações com a empresa mineira oscilam entre antagonismo e expectativas por uma ocupação neste mercado de trabalho. Muitos deles são ignorados pelas grandes empresas por não serem os “mineiros modernos” que hoje manipulam maquinarias sofisticadas, apesar de terem trabalhado por muito tempo no socavão. Quando o centro urbano de Hualgayoc se tornou uma AID (Área de Influência Direta) da mineração a céu aberto, os seus habitantes foram categorizados em classificações específicas que os reprimem. Além disso, o que mostra o caso de Hualgayoc é que o projeto mineiro somente oferece trabalho pelas falhas que ele mesmo causa ao ser implementado. Esta perda é vista como uma oportunidade de trabalho para contratar pessoas que possam trazer água de outros lugares. Os efeitos na natureza e nas pessoas são reais, e, principalmente, os efeitos nas águas andam em paralelo com os projetos de vida de muitas pessoas que resistem ao projeto mineiro. Estes dois casos na região emblemática de Cajamarca ilustram os conflitos em torno de desenhos, relações e desenvolvimento. / This PhD dissertation is about the dynamics of open-pit mining activity and related controversies around water in the Andean region of Cajamarca, Peru. The goal is to analise “local designs” that are threatened by designs - some of them are already encroached on the land used by campesinos - coming from modern mining whose proliferation started in 1990 as a non-questionable way to development. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2013 and 2014 in the region of Cajamarca, this work analises two cases. The first one, I examine ontological differences mobilized by people when the Yanacocha Mining Company officially announced its proposal to construct an open-pit copper-gold mine and would require draining important lagoons. In this context, campesinos (peasant farmers) and ronderos (rural patrol) from the hamlet of El Tambo organized themselves in order to guard the Mamacocha lagoon. Based on fieldwork in the area of the proposed Conga Mining Project, the author argue that the relationality between the campesinos and Mamacocha results from campesinos’ lived experiences with water that started to scarce, but it is also produced through encounters with other ontological conceptions. Those encounters activate older narratives about Mamacocha. These different ways of knowing designing should not be understood as an essentialist representation of ‘Indigenous’ knowledge that stands in opposition to ‘Western’ or scientific knowledge. Different regimes of relations with water intensify collaborations bewteen collectivities. The effect is the enactment of an “extended Mamacocha” as “God’s creation”, “water that nourishes” and “aquifers” and the campesinos as “Guardians of the Lagoons”. The concept of ‘nourishment’ appeared in dialogues with campesinos, emphasizing the relationship between food crops, irrigation channels, and natural water springs, could not be replaced with artificial reservoirs that the company proposed to build. In the second case, I analise how the design of an open-pit mine in the city of Hualgayoc, close to the previous area, influences people who used to be underground miners. Even though, miners articulate a narrative that Hualgayoc is a “mining region”, their efforts to negotiate with the mining company oscilate between antagonism and expectations for jobs. Some of them are ignored for not being modern miners that manipulate sophiscated machines, even though they have worked as underground miners for decades. When the urban center of Hualagyoc became an ADI (area of direct influence), their residents were also categorized in specific classification that repress them. Besides, the case shows that the Project offers jobs because of their own failures during its implementation. This loss is seen as an oportuniuty for hiring people that could bring water from other places. The effects on the environment and people are real, they travel through parallel worlds. These two cases in the emblematic region of Cajamartca illustrate conflicts around designs, relations and development.

This thesis examines the contemporary forest landscape of northern Värmland in Sweden in terms of practices, meanings and time-space relations. The increasing urbanization worldwide also affects the countryside landscape to produce what is generally referred to as  “new ruralities”, which are the result of changed conditions for livelihood and leisure. What does the concept new ruralities mean in relation to the sparsely populated forest landscape of northern Värmland, Sweden? The thesis adopts a relational approach to landscape, which means that landscape entails and forms relations between the material, the immaterial, and the human. Landscapes stretches out in time and space, which means that they rests on and progresses from layers of earlier and contemporary activities. Landscape practices and meanings are therefore important for understanding changes as well as continuities in the context of new ruralities. Inspired by the Heideggerian basic assumption about dwelling the thesis methodologically draws on phenomenology, but also on ethnography to clarify the relation between the individual and the society. Interviews, field studies and participant observations with special focus on the settlement, community engagement, and forest and hunting were conducted in four parishes in northern Värmland. Proximity and distance turn out to be the common denominators in the meanings of the forest landscape that emerge from the study, but attention is also clearly drawn to the problems of depopulation, changing social relations, and the tension between the private and the common good. The new ruralities of the northern Värmland forest landscape seem to rest on the tension between flow and fixity, between change and continuity, as traditional practices are performed with new meanings and extended time-space relations. / I den här avhandlingen studeras det samtida nordvärmländska skogslandskapet och nya ruraliteter utifrån praktiker, betydelser och tidsrumsliga sammanhang. I takt med en tilltagande urbanisering i Sverige och världen uppstår nya relationer till och inom landsbygder som har sin grund i förändrade betingelser för försörjning och fritid, något som brukar beskrivas som nya ruraliteter. Vad innebär då nya ruraliteter i det glesbebyggda nordvärmländska skogslandskapet? Vilka praktiker, upplevelser och betydelser framträder i fast- och fritidsboendes relationer till det individuella, skogen och det kollektiva, och hur kan dessa förstås i förhållande till tidsrumsliga sammanhang? I avhandlingen behandlas särskilt praktiker knutna till det egna boendet och fastigheten samt jakten och jaktmarkerna. Närhet och avstånd visar sig vara gemensamma nämnare för vad som ger skogslandskapet betydelser, men rymmer såväl möjligheter som svårigheter. Frihet, gleshet och oberoende framträder som positiva upplevelser bland intervjuade i studien, men uppenbarar samtidigt en avfolkningsproblematik, förändrade sociala relationer och spänningsfält mellan det privata och det gemensamma. Nya ruraliteter i det nordvärmländska skogslandskapet syns vila i skärningsfältet mellan bevarande och förändring.

xiii, 253 p. / This project presents a critical engagement with the concept of ideology. It advances the view that political ideologies can be regarded as distinctive narrative styles and as such can be analyzed in their peculiar discursive formations. It specifically concentrates on liberalism, which I regard as the dominant ideology in much of "the West" today. My study contributes to the scholarship at the intersection between contemporary political theory, theories of language, and comparative politics. By employing simple instruments of semiotics I show how the discourse of liberalism organizes the production and deployment of political meaning. In particular, I argue that a critical engagement with the texts of thinkers ranging from John Locke to John Stuart Mill and John Rawls can contribute to unveiling the deep structures of liberal discourse. I maintain that these structures constitute liberalism as a "grammar" which operates by organizing political content around key concepts like individual agency, rationality, and anthropocentrism. Crucially, liberalism also acts as a "meta-ideology" capable of expressing alternative positions through its versatile grammatical infrastructure. I analyze contemporary theorists like Will Kymlicka, Robert Putnam, and Philip Pettit, and argue that they engage in similar intellectual projects, incorporating elements of communitarianism and republicanism in a liberal framework. In the second part of my dissertation I inquire into the possibility of alternative meta-ideological constellations. In particular, I focus on the contribution of Jean-Luc Nancy: I argue that his characterization of "being-in-common" as the fundamental position of existence can replace the liberal tenet of individualism as the basic assumption on human nature. Finally, I ground these abstract reflections in the concrete reality of the community of Badolato, in southern Italy, where locals and immigrants alike seem to understand and organize their relationality outside of a paradigm of liberal toleration. I present the results of the ethnographic research that I conducted in Badolato and I characterize that experience of encounter with the other as an example of the practices of hospitality envisioned by the late Jacques Derrida. / Committee in charge: Deborah Baumgold, Co-Chair; Leonard Feldman, Co-Chair; Dennis Galvan, Member; Craig Parsons, Member; Massimo Lollini, Outside Member

Este trabalho de tese trata das dinâmicas da mineração a céu aberto e seus efeitos na água da região andina de Cajamarca, ao norte do Peru. O objetivo consiste em analisar “desenhos locais” que entram em conflito com os desenhos propostos – e alguns já instalados – pela mineração moderna, que começam a proliferar no Peru a partir de 1990 como um caminho inquestionável de desenvolvimento. Por meio de pesquisa de abordagem etnográfica, realizada entre 2013 e 2014, analisam-se dois casos. No primeiro, examinam-se as diferenças ontológicas mobilizadas pelas pessoas como resultado de ações causadas pelo projeto de mineração Conga, que “sacrificará” importantes lagoas na região de Cajamarca, Peru. Nesse contexto, campesinos e ronderos do centro poblado El Tambo têm se organizado para vigiar a lagoa Mamacocha. Observa-se que a relacionalidade dos campesinos com Mamacocha é ativada pela realidade da experiência vivida com a água, que começou a desaparecer a partir dos projetos de mineração, mas que é coproduzida em “encontros” com outras concepções ontológicas. Tais encontros dinamizam histórias orais da memória local. Para além de uma representação essencialista do conhecimento indígena versus o científico, são os diferentes regimes de relação com a água que intensificam colaborações entre os coletivos. O efeito é a emergência de “Mamacocha estendida”, sinalizada nas manifestações como “obra de Deus”, “água que alimenta” e “aquíferos”, a depender das relações e dos grupos, e dos campesinos como “guardiões das lagoas”. A noção de “alimentar” aparece em diálogos com campesinos que enfatizam relações entre as colheitas, os canais de irrigação e os puquios (nascentes de água) salientando que as lagoas não podem ser substituídas por reservatórios artificiais que a empresa propõe construir. Em um segundo caso, analisa-se como o desenho de uma mina a céu aberto na cidade de Hualgayoc, região próxima à anterior, influencia as pessoas que inicialmente desenhavam na terra, os velhos mineiros de socavão. Embora os mineiros articulem a história de um passado mineiro, o seu esforço por negociar suas relações com a empresa mineira oscilam entre antagonismo e expectativas por uma ocupação neste mercado de trabalho. Muitos deles são ignorados pelas grandes empresas por não serem os “mineiros modernos” que hoje manipulam maquinarias sofisticadas, apesar de terem trabalhado por muito tempo no socavão. Quando o centro urbano de Hualgayoc se tornou uma AID (Área de Influência Direta) da mineração a céu aberto, os seus habitantes foram categorizados em classificações específicas que os reprimem. Além disso, o que mostra o caso de Hualgayoc é que o projeto mineiro somente oferece trabalho pelas falhas que ele mesmo causa ao ser implementado. Esta perda é vista como uma oportunidade de trabalho para contratar pessoas que possam trazer água de outros lugares. Os efeitos na natureza e nas pessoas são reais, e, principalmente, os efeitos nas águas andam em paralelo com os projetos de vida de muitas pessoas que resistem ao projeto mineiro. Estes dois casos na região emblemática de Cajamarca ilustram os conflitos em torno de desenhos, relações e desenvolvimento. / This PhD dissertation is about the dynamics of open-pit mining activity and related controversies around water in the Andean region of Cajamarca, Peru. The goal is to analise “local designs” that are threatened by designs - some of them are already encroached on the land used by campesinos - coming from modern mining whose proliferation started in 1990 as a non-questionable way to development. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2013 and 2014 in the region of Cajamarca, this work analises two cases. The first one, I examine ontological differences mobilized by people when the Yanacocha Mining Company officially announced its proposal to construct an open-pit copper-gold mine and would require draining important lagoons. In this context, campesinos (peasant farmers) and ronderos (rural patrol) from the hamlet of El Tambo organized themselves in order to guard the Mamacocha lagoon. Based on fieldwork in the area of the proposed Conga Mining Project, the author argue that the relationality between the campesinos and Mamacocha results from campesinos’ lived experiences with water that started to scarce, but it is also produced through encounters with other ontological conceptions. Those encounters activate older narratives about Mamacocha. These different ways of knowing designing should not be understood as an essentialist representation of ‘Indigenous’ knowledge that stands in opposition to ‘Western’ or scientific knowledge. Different regimes of relations with water intensify collaborations bewteen collectivities. The effect is the enactment of an “extended Mamacocha” as “God’s creation”, “water that nourishes” and “aquifers” and the campesinos as “Guardians of the Lagoons”. The concept of ‘nourishment’ appeared in dialogues with campesinos, emphasizing the relationship between food crops, irrigation channels, and natural water springs, could not be replaced with artificial reservoirs that the company proposed to build. In the second case, I analise how the design of an open-pit mine in the city of Hualgayoc, close to the previous area, influences people who used to be underground miners. Even though, miners articulate a narrative that Hualgayoc is a “mining region”, their efforts to negotiate with the mining company oscilate between antagonism and expectations for jobs. Some of them are ignored for not being modern miners that manipulate sophiscated machines, even though they have worked as underground miners for decades. When the urban center of Hualagyoc became an ADI (area of direct influence), their residents were also categorized in specific classification that repress them. Besides, the case shows that the Project offers jobs because of their own failures during its implementation. This loss is seen as an oportuniuty for hiring people that could bring water from other places. The effects on the environment and people are real, they travel through parallel worlds. These two cases in the emblematic region of Cajamartca illustrate conflicts around designs, relations and development.