In this thesis I contribute to arguments showing how the human body is much more than a vessel that enables us to experience the world through our senses. Our sense of embodiment and our embodied performances give meaning to and shape the world in which we live. I argue that our bodies are crucial to socio-political change and subverting discriminatory cultural assumptions and ideologies. Deviant performances can cause us to be less than intelligible individuals. That is, according to Judith Butler, we become less than intelligible when we do not perform in such a way that meets certain cultural expectations. Dominant expectations are typically implicitly understood to be common-sense values. Unfortunately, many of our implicit values have embedded unjust prejudices that directly affect our thinking and behaviour. These discriminatory implicit values are couched in “the background.” Alexis Shotwell’s expansion of what John R. Searle terms “the background” is particularly useful to understand the political nature of implicitly held beliefs. These discriminatory assumptions couched in the background systematically oppress us. However, the prejudices of the background can be exposed through repeatedly performing our bodies in certain ways. Additionally, our performances can enable us to pool our intellectual resources together and live out the socio-political change we desire. In doing so, performances and identities that were once considered unintelligible can become intelligible and can alter cultural climates. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2012-10-09 13:54:49.323

In less than ten years, Aljazeera television has become the most popular satellite news service in the Arab world. Regimes around the region have regarded Aljazeera as a threat, while Aljazeera has consistently claimed that it is simply reporting the truth. Notwithstanding this, Aljazeera has successfully established its presence in the media world despite the controversies surrounding its professional approach and the hammering criticism that has been directed to it in both the Middle East and the West. This research explores the thesis that Aljazeera is a catalyst of democratisation and social and political change in the Arab world. As a recent media phenomenon, Aljazeera has been playing a critical role in changing the social and political values of societies in the Arab world and viewers’ perceptions of a range of social and cultural topics relating to human rights, equality, diversity, gender, employment and exploitation. It is said that through its persistent campaigns to raise the awareness of its increasingly broadening viewer base to these issues, Aljazeera has created a new public sphere in the Arab countries that are traditionally and historically non-democratic in the least and despotic and dictatorial in the extreme. It became “[the] arena within which debate occurs...” (Hartley, 2002, p.191) between viewers who share in the process of discourse to communicate and debate. In this context Aljazeera provided a public forum for Arab viewers to express their views and address a range of sensitive and controversial issues. Consequently, it is the perception of democracy that Aljazeera seems to be fostering in the Arab world, which is leading to a sense of empowerment at the individual level. The research sought to examine this phenomenon through a field study that garnered vital data from a representative sample of 600 viewers of Aljazeera, including 100 media professionals, in four Arab countries: Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, and amongst the Arab diaspora (with the Australian Arabs as a focus group). The data was analysed against a media model that was developed specifically for that purpose. The findings support the research hypothesis that Aljazeera is a catalyst of democratisation and socio-political change.

Ph.D. Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / This study analyses the manner in which animals are represented in selected poetry from Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa. It discusses the various modes of animal representation the poets draw on, and the ideological influences on their manner of animal representation. It explores the kinds of poetic forms the poets employ in their representation of animals and examines the manner in which ecological or environmental issues are reflected in the poetry. Further, the study determines the extent to which the values expressed in the poems are consistent with, or different from, current ecological orthodoxies and the ways in which the metaphors generated in relation to animals influence the way we treat them. The study shows that in the selected poetry animals occupy a significant position in the poets’ exploration of social, psychological, political, and cultural issues. As symbols in, and subjects of, the poetry animals, in particular, and nature in general, function as tools for the poets’ conceptualisation and construction of a wide range of cultural, political, and philosophical ideas, including among others, issues of justice, identity, compassion, relational selfhood, heritage, and belonging to the cosmos. Hence, the animal figure in the poetry acts as a site for the convergence of a variety of concepts the poets mobilise to grapple with and understand relevant political, social, psychological and ecological ideas. The study advances the argument that studying animal representation in the selected poetry reveals a range of ecological sensibilities, as well as the limits of these, and opens a window through which to view and appreciate the poets’ conception, construction and handling of a variety of significant ideas about human to human relationships and human-animal/nature relationships. Further, the study argues that the poets’ social vision influences their animal representation and that their failures at times to fully see or address the connection between forms of abuse (nature and human) undercuts their liberationist quests in the poetry.

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the bilateral relations between the US and Saudi Arabia in the period between 1990 and 2003. In this context, the aim is to find out an answer to the question of how the relations between the US-Saudi Arabia have strained after September 11. Accordingly, the thesis contains four main parts. In the first part of the study, the historical background of US-Saudi relations up to the 1990-1991 Gulf Crisis, which was based on oil for security exchange, is studied. In the second part of the study, the security dilemma of Saudi Arabia, the challenges Saudi Arabia faced during the 1990s, and how these challenges affected its relations with the US are discussed. In the third part, September 11 and how global issues like war on terrorism, war in Iraq and democratization in the Middle East came into the agenda of the relationship is scrutinized. Accordingly, this thesis has reached to the following conclusions: First, after September 11, the relations between the two countries became more problematic and have affected by both global issues as well as domestic debates in both countries. Second, despite increasingly problematic nature of the relationship, the two countries managed to continue their strategic relationship, particularly as regards to &ldquo / war on terrorism&rdquo / .