The crisis of the Chinese nation in the early twentieth century compelled May Fourth intellectuals to search for a modern self in order to modernize and strengthen the nation. They did so by self-consciously experimenting with literary forms and genres, from which the first-person narratives arose. This thesis explores how particular formal or generic characteristics produce, problematize, or even impede the formation of a modern self modeled on the Western Enlightenment notions of the self as autonomous, coherent, and bounded. I argue that despite the two authors’ attempt to create an aspirational modern self, the selves constructed in the two texts are always fragile, split and fragmented. It not only reveals the limits of the Western Enlightenment epistemology of the self but also a more complicated processes of how the concepts of the self and subjectivity, as discursive constructs, are contested and negotiated in particular historical circumstance and social reality.

abstract: Linguistic subjectivity and subjectification are fields of research that are relatively new to those working in English linguistics. After a discussion of linguistic subjectivity and subjectification as they relate to English, I investigate the subjectification of a specific English adjective, and how its usage has changed over time. Subjectivity is held by many linguists of today to be the major governing factor behind the ordering of English prenominal adjectives. Through the use of a questionnaire, I investigate the effect of subjectivity on English prenominal adjective order from the perspective of the native English speaker. I then discuss the results of the questionnaire, what they mean in relation to how subjectivity affects that order, and a few of the patterns that emerged as I analyzed the data. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2013

The goal of this project is to attempt a logical unfolding of one basic idea -that value emerges out of the chaos of energy through natural selection. The goal of the first chapter is to attempt to determine the origin of value. The goal of the second chapter is to attempt to determine the origin of the conception of value. A s a first approximation, it can be said that the first chapter seeks for an objective and the second for a subjective account of the origin of value. There is a paradox in this description, however. The objective gives rise to the subjective, but the subjective then constructs the objective. Objects give rise to subjects, but subjects then construct their objects, and different subjects may construct the world into different objects. This thesis shall attempt to resolve this paradox by describing the course of the emergence of value from the objective into the subjective and then back into the objective, without falling into the vicious circle that results from seeing the world as a juxtaposition of the objective and the subjective. As I hope to show, in the course of the first two chapters, and the ones to follow, the objective and the subjective are idealizations. They are two asymptotes which knowledge approaches but cannot touch. Knowledge ranges between objectivity and subjectivity, without attaining either. Knowledge is knowledge of something and is to that extent objective. Knowledge is knowledge by someone and is to that extent subjective. Because knowledge has an element of subjectivity, it cannot be purely objective. And because knowledge has an element of objectivity, it cannot be purely subjective. The resolution of the juxtaposition between the objective and the subjective, will allow us to describe the emergence of value out of the objective into the subjective and back in terms that do not presuppose either. Subjects arise out of reality that is undivided, and only then divide it into objects in accordance with their constitution, provided to them by undivided reality. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate

Orientador: Cássia Regina Coutinho Sossolote / Banca: Marina Célia Mendonça / Banca: Marília Blundi Onofre / Resumo: A dissertação intitulada Subjetividades tolhidas: a manifestação do pensamento frente aos critérios de avaliação da redação do Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio tem como objetivo defender que há, neste Exame, uma ideologia que nasce da política e não dos campos da Linguística e da Educação, a qual "determina" o critério de nulidade de avaliação da proposta de redação, de modo que, embora haja aspectos linguísticos na grade de correção que ganham o estatuto de critério para a avaliação do texto produzido pelos candidatos do Enem, subjaz, a essa grade, um critério sumário: defender o Direito Humano (DH) não escolhido pelas diretrizes políticas do Enem faz com que a redação seja anulada. Lastreiam este estudo diversos autores da Análise do Discurso de tradição francesa (AD), como Foucault (1979, 1996, 1999 e 2008) e Pechêux (1987, 1990), pioneiros em uma análise discursiva voltada para a compreensão, no primeiro caso, sobre como as instituições regulam o dizer e, no segundo, sobre de que maneira o discurso é afetado pela ideologia. Os estudos de Michel Foucault nos ofereceram evidências para demonstrar que há um cerceamento da subjetividade do candidato egresso do Ensino Médio na defesa do ponto de vista no Enem, mesmo quando o ponto de vista defendido não coincide com o seu. Os estudos de Michel Pechêux, por outro lado, permitiram compreender como sujeitos e sentidos constituem-se em um só movimento em relação à ideologia. Recorreu-se aos estudos sobre a paráfrase, ancorados em Fu... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The dissertation entitled Constrained subjectivies: the expression of thought towards the evaluation criteria for essays in the Brazilian National High School Exam aims to argue that persists, in this Exam, an ideology based on politics, and not on the fields of Linguistics or Education, which "determines" the nullity criterion for the evaluation of the Essay proposal so, although there are linguistic aspects in the ENEM correction table that gain the status of criterion of evaluation to the Essay produced by the candidates, underlies to this grid a summary criterion: defending the Human Right not chosen by the political guidelines of the ENEM leads to the nullity of the Essay. Several authors of Discourse Analysis of French Tradition (AD) permeates this study, such as Foucault (1979, 1996, 1999 and 2008) and Pechêux (1987, 1990), since they were pioneers in a discursive analysis directed towards understanding how institutions regulate the speech and, afterwards, to the understanding of how discourse is affected by ideology. The work of Michel Foucault provided evidences to demonstrate that there is a restriction of the candidate's subjectivity in defense of ENEM's point of view even when this opinion does not coincide with his own. The studies of Michel Pechêux, otherwise, allowed to understand how subjects and senses compose a single movement in relation to the ideology. The studies on paraphrase, anchored in Fuchs (1982, 1994, 2012), have been used to demonstrate that the ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Throughout their respective bodies of work, both Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor invoke recurring images of the mirror and the mirror-gazing act. Because of the preponderance of these images and because of how they inform our deeper understanding of character, theme, and genre, I argue that these images constitute an important trope in Morrison and Naylor\'s fiction. Although the mirror trope pervades both writers\' bodies of work, it has not garnered significant scholarly attention, particularly with respect to the ways in which the trope highlights an intertextual dialogue between two essential writers of the 20th century American narrative. In this project, then, I conduct an in-depth but by no means exhaustive exploration into the mirror trope. I am specifically concerned with how each writer brings this trope to bear on issues of representation, the politics of recognition, and the dilemma of black female subjectivity and agency in a racist and misogynistic American society. I argue, then, that because the mirror trope is where patriarchal and racist structures of power collide, it signifies a critical point of intersectionality between race and gender. For that reason, the mirror emerges as a space of contestation within these narratives. / Master of Arts

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Regardless of one's position on what has come to be called postmodern theory, there is no denying that this theoretical perspective is challenging the legitimacy of many of the traditional concepts of political and social theory. Foremost among these challenges is the opposition that postmodern theory pose to any attempt to provide foundational certainty on which subjectivity, our sense of who we are and our place in the world, can be established. This thesis explores this postmodern "decentering" of subjectivity and argues that is a useful insight for contemporary political theory. Using the work of Judith Butler and William Connolly, I argue that a perspective that refuses to assume any foundational premises on which essential subjectivity can be established leads to a more ethical negotiation of difference and, ultimately, to a re-invigorated democratic ethos that allows for multifarious ways of being to be politically recognized. / Master of Arts