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Hegel’s Speculative Idealism and the Truth of Freedom
No full textThis paper attempts to articulate the speculative nature of freedom within Hegel’s philosophical system. I begin with addressing how Hegel’s philosophy lives up to the speculative title through an articulation of his identity theory adapted from Fichtean Absolute Subjectivism. I then relate
the speculative aspect with the practical by forwarding a reading of freedom within Hegel’s philosophy as split between the freedom of thought as the Notion in its ideal ends, alongside and in relation to, the freedom of the will within a contingent historical era within empirical reality. A consequence of this speculative formulation of freedom is that it enables an approach to Hegelian philosophy to avoid the charge of positivism and totalitarianism, as was widely associated with his philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. An aspect of Hegel’s thinking that enables the overcoming of the charge of totalitarianism, as I attempt to show, is affirming the necessity of the individual in order to give validity to the authority of the Absolute Subject of a given historical era, in so doing, pointing to the requirement of individuals within the totality of Hegel’s claim that the “Truth is the whole.” Thus, the results of this approach reject the claim that Hegel’s system liquidates the individual in favour of the validity of any historical moment within civil society
Spectre’s Arcadia: The Dream of the Saint Hubert Plaza, 2018-2024
No full textThis ambulatory work takes at its heart Montreal’s Plaza Saint-Hubert as a magical quétaine dreamland akin to Walter Benjamin’s beloved and perplexing Paris Arcades as it undergoes refurbishment. Distracted by a “failed” audio walk made for her doctoral thesis, the hunt for the dialectical image, and a scholarly trip to the UK to study audio walks from the 1990s and 2000s and explore questions of urban space and place (and questions of the heart), the narrator of Spectre’s Arcadia meets with Walter Benjamin himself on the Plaza Saint-Hubert, a street of “fruitful juxtapositions,” in the hopes of decoding the language of glass and steel presented by the Plaza’s (in)famous marquee. The work collects the voices and stories of people who have lived near the Plaza or observed its myriad transformations from the 1960s to the present day. There are essays—many originally written for courses or conferences—on the role of fashion in urban space, on the history of the Plaza’s 1920s “movie palace,” on Walter Benjamin’s dialectical image, and on the history (and utopic future) of the Plaza Saint-Hubert, embedded in the experimental prose. There are also walks, a tour of the Plaza, a walk along the M11 highway in East London wielding a radio receiver to experience Graeme Miller’s audio walk LINKED, a walk along the Thames river to hear Toby Butler’s “Drifting,” and a walk through Whitechapel to hear Janet Cardiff’s “The Missing Voice: Case Study B.” The narrator sees these audio walks as inspiration for her own and also as spectral narratives of walks that no longer exist as they once did. Spectre’s Arcadia exists within the constellation of academic dissertation, experimental New Narrative prose, theory, urban geography, oral history, fashion studies and poetry. This project mobilizes the moving bodies of the narrator, contributors and participants through the transforming Saint-Hubert Plaza as an instrument for introducing disequilibrium to traditional academic methods of “knowing” and “writing” a place
“The Most Superstitious Christians in the World”: European Travelers and Russian Orthodoxy in the Age of Enlightenment
No full textThis thesis examines the accounts of thirteen Westerners who traveled to Russia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and argues that their negative perception of Russian Orthodoxy contributed to the notion of a generally backward, alien and un-European Russia. It links these travelogues to prevailing opinions in Western Europe and argues that, from the perspective of Western audiences, the lack of reform within the Russian Orthodox Church and the un-enlightened practices of popular Orthodoxy invalidated other Westernization efforts attempted by the Russian government
Mobile disruptive architecture: tactics for generating collectivity and meaning making
No full textThis study looks at four cases surrounding mobile disruptive architecture. A niche method for delivering pop-up arts-based programming via bikes, bike trailers, or trollies and into public space. Using mixed-methods, qualitative interview data from practitioners are understood through thematic analyses and compared alongside auto-ethnographic accounts. Henry Lefebvre’s (1991) theory of social space, Chantal Mouffe’s (2007) theory of agonistic interventions and Christina Standerfer, et al.’s (2022) theory on community readiness are also applied. My research question asks, How does mobile disruptive architecture generate new meaning in relation to place, and new forms of collectivity while fostering public dialogue? The projects analyzed are: 1) Bakery of Bread and Roses and its sequel, Museum on Wheels based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal; 2) Art Spin based in Toronto; 3) El BiciCrófono based in Los Angeles; and 4) PedalBox Gallery based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. This study includes an overview of each project and discusses the tactics involved in doing this work. It investigates the forms of collectivity that emerge and shows how meaning is generated in and through these projects. I advocate for further research into the experiences of those encounters from the perspective of the participant rather than the practitioner to gain better insight into the pedagogical potential of this method of social engagement
Multiple drivers of fish community change on Bahamian coral reefs
No full textCoral reef fish communities are essential for ecosystem health but are threatened by many of the same environmental stressors as coral. Marine heatwaves and hurricanes are intensifying with climate change and can adversely affect reef fish via physiological stress or coral loss. Additionally, Caribbean reef fish are threatened by invasive Indo-Pacific lionfish predation. Here, I determine the impacts of invasive lionfish, marine heatwaves, and hurricane passage on patch reef fish communities from 2009-2024 in The Bahamas. Using a metacommunity framework, I also analyze shifts in fish community composition spatially via network analysis to determine whether reef connectivity reduces fish species turnover through time and following hurricanes. Lionfish biomass was positively related to native fish biomass and species richness, possibly driven by attraction of lionfish to reefs with abundant prey. Although marine heatwaves negatively affected fish biomass, they had a consistent, positive effect on species richness, suggesting a complex, possibly non-linear relationship of temperature to diversity. Hurricane passage negatively affected fish biomass but had no clear impacts on species richness or turnover. Over the timeseries, beta diversity significantly increased in the metacommunity with more central, connected reefs experiencing lower species turnover, likely driven by dispersal. My findings show predictable changes in reef fish biomass to multiple stressors but demonstrate more complex responses of species richness, supporting the use of multiple metrics to more fully understand drivers of environmental change. Further, by using a metacommunity framework, my findings reinforce the prominent paradigm of a dynamic nature of reef fish assemblages over time
Le fondement hospitalier : Derrida entre le fleuve d'Héraclite et le ciel de Platon
No full textRésumé
Le fondement hospitalier : Derrida entre le fleuve d’Héraclite et le ciel de Platon
Félix Huard
Ce mémoire examine comment Jacques Derrida transforme le débat fondateur entre Héraclite et Platon concernant la possibilité de la connaissance dans un monde en perpétuel mouvement. Face au mobilisme héraclitéen qui menace toute vérité stable, Platon érige la métaphysique du principe premier – l’Essence intelligible du Bien – comme fondement immuable de la connaissance. Ma méthode consiste à analyser la pensée derridienne non pas à partir de ses propres textes, mais depuis cette scène originaire où s’est nouée la destinée métaphysique de l’Occident. Cette approche généalogique me permet d’exhumer et de répertorier – en une constellation inédite –
les seize conditions de possibilité du principe premier disséminées à travers le corpus derridien : saisissabilité, unicité, irréductibilité, simplicité absolue, clôture ontologique, clarté et distinction, auto-suffisance, auto-fondation, immuabilité, immédiateté, pureté et perfection, absoluité, nécessité, primauté, et supériorité. Je démontre comment la différance derridienne révèle que chacune de ces conditions de possibilité constitue simultanément sa propre condition d’impossibilité, sans que cette aporie (« impasse ») n’abolisse pour autant le principe premier qu’elles prétendaient garantir. C’est là, je le soutiens, le tour de force de la pensée derridienne : impossibiliser le possible tout en maintenant sa nécessité. Ma contribution originale consiste à établir que Derrida ne rejette pas la métaphysique mais la réinscrit : le principe premier demeure indispensable, mais comme « effet » de la différance qu’il prétendait pouvoir fonder. Cette réinscription ouvre une troisième voie philosophique qui préserve l’exigence de fondation tout en assumant son impossibilité constitutive, libérant ainsi la philosophie de cette prison qu’elle réclamait comme fondement
Integrated Cost-Availability Based Maintenance Management Models for Data Centers
No full textData centers (DCs) are the backbone of modern digital infrastructure, but their complexity, energy intensity, and need for continuous uptime pose major maintenance challenges. This dissertation reviews current Operations and Maintenance (O&M) practices and develops three novel optimization models specifically tailored to DCs.
The literature review highlights research gaps: existing O&M models rarely address DC-specific issues such as balancing cost and high availability. It underscores the importance of integrating reliability and availability analyses into predictive maintenance, energy efficiency, and system optimization.
Building on these findings, three optimization models are introduced. The first applies Dynamic Programming (DP) and the multiple knapsack problem to prioritize maintenance of UPS units under budget constraints, achieving a 61% improvement in availability with optimized resource allocation. The second model develops an availability-based cost optimization framework for UPS units in k-out-of-n configurations. Case studies show optimal selection (k = 5 of 10), delivering 99.991% availability above Tier I standards while minimizing costs. Sensitivity analysis confirmed that availability is more affected by repair times than failure rates, and the validation under varying conditions confirmed the robustness of the results. The third model, formulated as a Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Program (MINLP), optimizes maintenance in Series-Parallel systems. Results demonstrate 99.974% availability (above Tier I targets) while maintaining costs within budget.
Together, these models advance DC maintenance by integrating cost, reliability, and availability into scalable decision-making frameworks. The contributions provide operators with practical tools to reduce costs, improve reliability, and ensure compliance with strict uptime standards
Commoning, heterotopia, and transformation: An analytical framework for and from contested spaces
No full textCommoning occurs when people recognize that they share something and develop a sense of mutuality toward each other along with a shared responsibility for whatever they share. Because sharing and mutuality contrast with the individualism, competitiveness, and profit orientation of contemporary capitalist societies, commoning is widely heralded for its transformative potential. Nonetheless, commoning is not inherently transformative. We argue that whether commoning supports transformation depends on its relationship with heterotopic processes. Both commoning and heterotopia—ideal typical “other” spaces characterized by looseness and denormalization—present alternatives to hegemonic norms, especially those of state-centricity, hierarchical social organization, and the prioritization of market relationships and economic growth, but they are distinct processes that do not necessarily coincide. We propose an analytical framework to guide analysis of the relationship between commoning and heterotopia and illustrate it with examples from informal urban green spaces in Liège (Belgium), Montréal (Canada), and Brussels (Belgium)
Road Accident Analysis and Prevention using Autonomous Vehicles with application for Montreal.
No full textRoad safety in urban mobility is a rising issue worldwide. With increasing number of vehicle ownership and traffic congestion on outdated road infrastructure, the threat of accidents becomes a serious issue as it impacts gravely the victim and their families. In 2023, data from the Société de l’Assurance Automobile du Québec (SAAQ) shows that 380 people died in road accidents in Quebec. A detailed analysis of road accidents in Montreal from 2012-2021 is provided to observe the most accident-prone locations, hours, and traffic flow. This thesis investigates the impact of reaction time of a vehicle occupied by a human driver on a signalized intersection with the use of simulations. Microscopic traffic models (MTMs) are utilized to examine the consequences of autonomous vehicles in mixed traffic scenarios. Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) software with the Krauss car-following model was incorporated for case study 1 to do a quantitative comparison of the impact of reaction time on human-driven vehicles using microscopic simulations. The results show a positive correlation between the reaction time and number of collisions. Case Study 2 with the same setup was conducted to evaluate the dynamics of autonomous vehicles and human-driven vehicles in a mixed traffic environment on road safety. The AV market penetration rate is increased by 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% in the simulations. The results show that the existence of AVs enhances road safety and decreases the number of road conflicts
Managing Complaint Mechanisms for Regulatory Enforcement: Evidence From Human Rights Institutions During the COVID-19 Pandemic
No full textHow do regulatory bodies ensure that including the beneficiaries of regulation in regulatory processes improves governance? In many regulatory arrangements, beneficiaries' "fire alarm" monitoring and reporting of targets' violations via complaint mechanisms activate regulatory bodies' enforcement role. This article theorizes how beneficiaries may misuse complaint mechanisms, undermine regulators' performance, and prompt regulators to adopt strategies within and beyond the complaint process to regulate beneficiaries' behavior. It argues regulators' assessment of the issues driving misuse and their enforcement approach (cooperative or deterrent) affect their strategies for influencing beneficiaries. Case studies of two Canadian human rights institutions, which have different enforcement approaches but experienced similarly extreme levels of beneficiary misuse during the COVID-19 pandemic, evaluate these theoretical claims. Overall, the study illustrates potential enforcement challenges arising from using beneficiaries as intermediaries for monitoring and reporting violations and how regulating beneficiary participation may be required to improve decentralized regulatory governance