839 research outputs found
Raymond Williams and the limits of cultural materialism
Get PDFCultural materialism has become an influential discipline in recent
years, particularly so in 'Renaissance' studies, but also more generally in
'English', as well as departments defined as practising 'cultural' or
'communications' studies. The phrase is usually linked with the name of
Raymond Williams, but a cursory examination of Williams's own work
quickly establishes that it is a phrase he rarely uses, and only schematically
attempts to define. The thesis therefore takes the form of an investigation into
the way cultural materialism has come to be understood, by examining in
detail the trajectory of Raymond Williams's theoretical development, and how
his own engagement with various theoretical positions has helped to set
'limits' on the meaning of cultural materialism.
Chapters 1 and 2 deal with some of Williams's earliest work,
particularly Reading and Criticism, as a way of investigating how reasonable
it is to tag him as a 'Left-Leavisite', arguing that Leavis's undoubted
influence is resisted (though not entirely rejected) from a very early stage. The
first chapter considers in detail Leavis's work at Cambridge, the influence of
Eliot, and the significance of the 'Organic Community'. Chapter 2, which is
based around a comparative analysis of Williams's and Leavis's readings of
Dickens, argues that Williams rejects the 'organic community' in favour of his
'knowable community'. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with specific 'theoretical'
issues: the first, based around a reading of Terry Eagleton's critique of
Williams's use of the Marxist metaphor of 'base and superstructure', shows
some of the problems which arise from Williams's cultural model, as well as
suggesting refinements; the second deals with the influence of Volosinov's
theories on Williams. Chapter 6 comes out of Williams's readings of the
'Country-House' poems in The Country and the City, showing how his
practice of literary criticism relies on an acceptance of 'ideology' apparently
denied in his more 'theoretical' writings. This analysis is extended as a result
of investigations into the 'De L'Isle' manuscripts relating to the Penshurst
estate. Chapter 7 argues that it is possible to see the work of Fredric Jameson
as developing Williams's cultural materialism into Jameson's debates on
postmodernism.
In the Introduction and Conclusion, I have taken the opportunity to
look briefly at the activity of cultural materialism as it has developed since
Raymond Williams's death in 1988. The Introduction emphasizes what I see
to be important methodological differences between 'cultural materialism'
and 'new historicism'; the Conclusion deals with the continuing debate over
the value of a cultural materialist approach by considering the 'appropriation'
of Shakespeare
Zechariah 9-14 as the substructure of 1 Peter’s eschatological program
No full textThe principal aim of this study is to discern what has shaped the author of 1 Peter to regard Christian suffering as a necessary (1.6) and to-be-expected (4.12) component of faithful allegiance to Jesus Christ. Most research regarding suffering in 1 Peter has limited the scope of inquiry to two particular aspects—its cause and nature, and the strategies that the author of 1 Peter employs in order to enable his addressees to respond in faithfulness. There remains, however, the need for a comprehensive explanation for the source that has generated 1 Peter’s theology of Christian suffering. If Jesus truly is the Christ, God’s chosen redemptive agent who has come to restore God’s people, then how can it be that Christian suffering is a necessary part of discipleship after his coming, death and resurrection? What led the author of 1 Peter to such a startling conclusion, which seems to runs against the grain of the eschatological hopes and expectations of Jewish restoration ideology?
This thesis analyzes the appropriation of shepherd and fiery trials imagery,
and argues that the author of 1 Peter is dependent upon Zechariah 9-14 for his
theology of Christian suffering. Said in another way, the eschatological program of
Zechariah 9-14, read through the lens of the Gospel, functions as the substructure
for 1 Peter’s eschatology and thus its theology of Christian suffering.
In support of this hypothesis, this study highlights the fact that Zechariah 9-
14 was available and appropriated in early Christianity, in particular in the Passion
Narrative tradition; that the shepherd imagery of 1 Pet 2.25 is best understood
within the milieu of the Passion Narrative tradition, and that it alludes to the
eschatological program of Zechariah 9-14; that the fiery trials imagery found in 1
Peter 1.6-7 and 1 Pet 4.12 is distinct from that which we find in Greco-Roman and OT
wisdom sources, and that it shares exclusive parallels with some unique features of
the eschatological program of Zechariah 9-14; that Zechariah 9-14 offers a more
satisfying explanation for the modification of Isa 11.2 in 1 Pet 4.14, the transition
from 4.12-19 to 5.1-4, why Peter has oriented his letter with the term διασπορά,
and why he has described his addresses as οἶκος τοῦ θεοῦ; and finally that 1 Peter
contains an implicit foundational narrative that shares distinct parallels with the
eschatological program of Zechariah 9-14.
We can conclude that 1 Peter offers a unique vista into the way in which at
least one early Christian witness came to understand and to communicate the fact
that Christian suffering was a necessary feature of faithful allegiance to Jesus Christ
Adapting authoritarianism: institutions and co-optation in Egypt and Syria
No full textThis PhD thesis compares Egypt and Syria’s authoritarian political systems. While the tendency in social science political research treats Egypt and Syria as similarly authoritarian, this research emphasizes differences between the two systems with special reference to institutions and co-optation. Rather than reducibly understanding Egypt and Syria as sharing similar histories, institutional arrangements, or ascribing to the oft-repeated convention that “Syria is Egypt but 10 years behind,” this thesis focuses on how events and individual histories shaped each states current institutional strengthens and weaknesses. Specifically, it explains the how varying institutional politicization or de-politicization affects each state’s capabilities for co-opting elite and non-elite individuals.
Beginning with a theoretical framework that considers the limited utility of democratization and transition theoretical approaches, the work underscores the persistence and durability of authoritarianism. Chapter two details the politicized institutional divergence between Egypt and Syria that began in the 1970s. Chapter three and four examines how institutional politicization or de-politicization affects elite and non-elite individual co-optation in Egypt and Syria. Chapter five discusses the study’s general conclusions and theoretical implications.
This thesis’s argument is that Egypt and Syria co-opt elites and non-elites differently because of the varying degrees of institutional politicization in each governance system. Rather than view one country as more politically developed than the other, this work argues that Syria’s political institutions are more politicized than their Egyptian counterparts. Syria’s political arena is, thus, described as politicized-patrimonialism. Syria’s politicized-patrimonial arena produces uneven co-optation of elites and non-elites as they are diffused through competing institutions. Conversely, the Egyptian political arena remains highly personalized as weak institutions and individuals are manipulated and molded according to the president’s ruling clique. This is referred to as personalized-patrimonialism. As a consequence, Egypt’s political establishment demonstrates more flexibility in ad hoc altering and adapting its arena depending on the emergence of crises.
This study’s theoretical implications suggest that, contrary to modernization and democratization theory’s adage that institutions lead to a political development, politicized institutions within a patrimonial order actually hinder regime adaptation because consensus is harder to achieve and maintain. It is within this context that Egypt’s de-politicized institutional framework advantages its top political elite. In this reading of Egyptian and Syrian politics, Egypt’s personalized political arena is more adaptable than Syria’s. These conclusions do not indicate that political reform is a process underway in either state
Preamble before and discussion after screening of the short film, The Kiss : based on his short story of the same name
No full text"An author event presented by the Friends of the University of Adelaide Library, 18 August 2011, Ira Raymond Room, Barr Smith Library, the University of Adelaide." Recorded at the University of Adelaide, 18 August 2011.Writer/Director: Ashlee Page, original story: Peter Goldsworthy, producer: Sonya HumphreyPeter Goldsworth
Narrative worlds and fictional worlds: (be)coming and going in the novels of Raymond Queneau, Claude Simon, and Alain Robbe-Grillet
No full textThrough a focused exploration of “experimental” novels by Raymond Queneau, Claude Simon, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, the reading experience is reexamined in this dissertation. Special attention is paid to the process of “worldbuilding,” namely the symbiotic relationship between synthetic reading competency and higher-level acts of interpretation. It is argued throughout that readers interact with literary texts not simply as verbal structures, but also by co-creating a multiplicity of imaginary worlds subtended by intentional structures that span the divide between reader and text. The intentional attenuation of subject and object is characteristic of the aesthetic experience as described by Dufrenne, Iser, and Merleau-Ponty, and it is further intensified in the novels of Queneau, Simon, and Robbe-Grillet, which address the status of fiction in fiction. In this way, the reader’s attention wanders between the worlds depicted by texts and the words by means of which these worlds are depicted.
The work of these authors is marked by transition and transaction on the part of character and reader. Behind Queneau’s language-games, a multiplicity of fictional worlds rapidly cycles in and out of being. Simon’s densely packed prose shifts the novice reader into his fictional worlds through the figure of the “soldier-subject.” The geometric simplicity of Robbe-Grillet’s descriptions hides the impossibility of deciphering the events of his fictional worlds. The reader’s interaction with these texts is dynamic, relying upon the basic process of building a world out of disparate textual and extra-textual elements.
Following possible worlds theorists such as Dolezel and Pavel, the two primary worlds engendered by the literary artwork are conceived of as (1) “narrative,” whereby the reader manipulates the linguistic building blocks of the text, and (2) “fictional,” in which the reader transcends such language-based constraints to emerge into a space clearly distinguished from everyday life. Examination of the reader’s nonlinear movement between intertwined narrative and fictional worlds demonstrates Matei Calinescu’s provocative notion that every reader is a rereader. It is suggested that understanding the reader’s movement between absorption in a text and interaction with a text by means of worldbuilding might elucidate a novel kind of “rereading” exemplified by new technologies.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical references (p. 409-432)by Peter Sorrel
Political life writing in the Pacific
Get PDFThis book aims to reflect on the experiential side of writing political lives in the Pacific region. The collection touches on aspects of the life writing art that are particularly pertinent to political figures: public perception and ideology; identifying important political successes and policy initiatives; grappling with issues like corruption and age-old political science questions about leadership and ‘dirty hands’. These are general themes but they take on a particular significance in the Pacific context and so the contributions explore these themes in relation to patterns of colonisation and the memory of independence; issues elliptically captured by terms like ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’; the nature of ‘self’ presented in Pacific life writing; and the tendency for many of these texts to be written by ‘outsiders’, or at least the increasingly contested nature of what that term means
Economic incentives and point source emissions : choice of modeling platform
Get PDFThe purpose of this study is to identify the best modeling platform for the analysis of alternative environmental policy instruments designed to reduce the emission of pollutants from point sources, most notably, central power generating stations and manufacturing facilities. The primary analysis of concern is a cost-effectiveness investigation of the policy; where for the most part, the cost of compliance is a multidimensional variable that includes the private costs incurred by the owners of the facility, measures of the change in the cost of providing the facility's product, and estimates of the change in facility capacity factors. The range of pollutants under consideration include the usual menu of air- and waterborne emissions as well as solid and liquid wastes finding their way to landfills and other such disposal options. The range of policies considered include: (a) tariffs on the emission of pollutants; (b) tariffs and subsidies applied to the inputs or the outputs of the point source activities under consideration; (c) limits on the pollutant emissions themselves; and (d) directives regarding the installation of particular equipment and/or the alteration of process activities. The paper also discusses a nonexhaustive set of issues associated with the modeling of point source emissions and policies for their control.Economic Theory&Research,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Consumption,Environmental Economics&Policies
Nonlinear dynamics of mathematical models and proposed implementations in ultracold atoms
No full textNonlinear effects are ubiquitous in nature. Many interesting phenomena are described by differential equations that are nonlinear. Even richer dynamics can be observed with additional long-range spatial coupling. For example, an interesting type of pattern discovered recently can form in systems with nonlocal coupling. The pattern, called chimera states, is composed of both phase coherent and incoherent regions coexisting in the same system. Through numerical studies of oscillatory media with nonlocal diffusive coupling, I show here for the first time that stable chimera knot structures can exist in 3D. Knots were not previously known to be stable in oscillatory media, nor were such non-trivial chimera patterns known to exist in 3D.
To realize different nonlinear phenomena in a controlled way in experiments, a flexible physical system is required. Ultracold atomic systems, specifically, Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), are good candidates because of the high controllability of almost all parameters, including the nonlinearity, in real time. Hence, experimental studies can be carried out for a variety physical systems, including many classical and quantum field equations. In particular, in this thesis I study a setup of BECs with a third-order Kerr nonlinearity to generate Schr\"odinger cat states, which have applications in quantum metrology. I showed that cat states involving hundreds of atoms should be realizable in BECs. This requires careful optimization of the experimental parameters and analysis of the atom loss.
Inspired by the previous two projects, it is an interesting question if chimera states can exist in BECs. By analyzing the underlying mechanism of the effective nonlocal diffusive coupling, I establish here a new analogous mechanism to achieve mediated nonlocal spatial hopping for particles in BECs with two interconvertible states. By adiabatically eliminating the fast mediating channel, I obtain the mean-field of Bose-Hubbard model with fully tunable hopping strength, hopping range, and nonlinearity. This is the first known conservative system exhibiting chimera patterns. More importantly, I show that the model should be implementable in BECs with current technology
Post-war British working-class fiction with special reference to the novels of John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow, David Storey and Barry Hines
Get PDFThis study is about British working-class fiction in the post-war period.
It covers various authors such as Robert Tressell, George Orwell, Walter Greenwood, Lewis Grassic Gibbon and DH Lawrence from the early twentieth century; writers traditionally classified as 'Angry Young Men' like John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Shelagh Delaney, John Wain and
Kingsley Amis; and working-class novelists like John Braine, Stan Barstow, David Storey, Alan Sillitoe and Barry Hines from the 1950s and 1960s.
Some of the main issues dealt with in the course of this study are language, form, community, self/identity/autobiography, sexuality and relationship with bourgeois art. The major argument centres on two questions: representation of working-class life, and the
relationship between working-class literary tradition and dominant ideologies.
We will be arguing that while working-class fiction succeeded in challenging and rupturing bourgeois literary tradition, on the level of language and linguistic medium of expression for example, it utterly failed to break away from dominant, bourgeois modes of literary production in relation to form, for instance.
Our argument is situated within Marxist approaches to literature, a political and aesthetic position from which we attempt an analysis and an evaluation of this working-class literary tradition. These critical approaches provide us also with the theoretical tool to define the political perspective of this tradition, and to judge whether it was confined to a descriptive mode of representation or
located in a radical, political outlook
'Alive to kindness' : the early life and achievement of John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, Third Marquess of Bute, 1847-1881
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