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Description
This dissertation considers the potential of desire to protect humans, animals, and the environment in the biopolitical times of late capitalism. Through readings of recent South African Literature in English from a postcolonial ecocritical perspective, this project theorizes desire as a mode of resistance to the neocolonial and capitalist instrumentalization of communities of humans and nonhumans, where they are often seen as mere "resources" awaiting consumption and transformation into profit. Deleuze and Guattari posit this overconsumption as stemming in part from capitalism's deployment of the psychoanalytic definition of desire as lack, where all desires are defined according to the same tragedy and brought into a money economy. By defining desire, capitalism seeks to limit the productive unconscious and attempts to create manageable subjects who perform the work of the capitalist machine--subjects that facilitate the extraction of surplus value and pleasure for themselves and the dominant classes. Thinking desire differently as positive and as potentially revolutionary, after Deleuze and Guattari, offers possible resistances to this biopolitical management. This different, positive desire can also change views of others and the world as existing solely for human consumption: views which so often risk bodies towards death and render communities unsustainable. The representations of human and animal desires (and often their cross-species desires) in this literature imagine relationships to the world otherwise, outside of a colonial legacy, where ethical response obtains instead of the consumption of others and the environment by the dominant subjects of capitalism. This project also considers other attempts to protect communities such as animal rights, arguing that rethinking desire is a necessary corollary in the effort to protect communities and lives that are made available for a "non-criminal putting to death" since positive desire precedes the passing of any such laws and must exist for their proper administration. These texts often demonstrate the law's failures to protect communities through portraying corrupt officials who risk the communities they are charged with protecting when their protection competes with government officials' personal capitalist ambitions. Desire offers opportunities for imagining other creative options towards protecting communities, outside of legal discourse.
ContributorsPrice, Jason (Author) / Broglio, Ron (Thesis advisor) / Adamson, Joni (Committee member) / Mallot, J. Edward (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The hagiographic comedy written by Tirso de Molina Los lagos de San Vicente (1607) presents the journey of Santa Casilda in search of the cure of an illness in her blood that affects her. Casilda rejects the medical assistance offered to her by Muslim doctors and miraculously she finds the cure in the Christian world. In this quest, the intellectual and theological evolution of the future saint in defense of the Christian faith is presented. This dissertation will study the resources that Tirso de Molina employs to show the rejection and displacement against the Islamic world represented by a series of erotic behaviors that, in the effort of dramatizing these impertinences they are characterized within a second discourse. Tirso de Molina takes advantage of the hagiographic comedy's discourse nature and the baroque's obscure literary characteristics to express his messages. This dissertation will study in detail how the combination of hagiographic theatrical elements with linguistic expressions are used to convey a subversive discourse that therefore suggests the application of queer theory as a frame of reference. As a result of this investigation it is concluded that Tirso de Molina promotes the hagiographic model and in order to contrast the triumph of the moral Catholic world over the immoral Muslim world the play writer makes references to the nefarious sin.
ContributorsMurphy, Anayanci (Author) / Foster, David William (Thesis advisor) / Sanchez, Angel (Committee member) / Acereda, Alberto (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Volek, Emil (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
ABSTRACT As a writer and a journalist, I have always been interested in narrative. When I moved to the small town of Wickenburg, Arizona in 2003, and began to get acquainted, a friend said to me, "The only way you leave Wickenburg is in a box." The town of Wickenburg places much importance on its history, a focus that led me to explore its related literature of the U.S. West, moving from there to think about evocative objects, collections, and to Material Culture Theory. This thesis considers three objects as springboards for exploring identity, sense of place, memory, and the narrative threads that bring these together. Two of these objects are specific to local history. The first is one of the leather badges worn by the women of Las Damas, a Wickenburg horse riding association. The second is a bronze sculpture, "Fatal Dismount," created by local rancher Mary Cooper Hamill, in which the artist depicts a moment, highly significant to her family, that also speaks to and from local history. The third object is a gold bead heirloom necklace that was handed down to me, the fifth-generation recipient. I conclude with a discussion of how evocative objects, handed down across generations, shape two memoirs by Isabel Allende, Paula, and My Invented Country. In the case of each object, the study of material culture provides a framework for understanding how women have created spaces for themselves, both now and in the past by interacting with objects, articulating identities, making meaning and re-creating history through memories and storytelling.
ContributorsNeu, Lora (Author) / Horan, Elizabeth R (Thesis advisor) / Tobin, Mary E (Committee member) / Morris, Paul (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Reduced space is an important theme in the works of the Marquis de Sade including his epic novel The New Justine and his pornographic performance piece Philosophy in the Bedroom including the political/social treatise "Frenchmen, yet another effort is needed if you want to be a Republic". Through out his life Sade attempted to overcome reduction of space with writing. Tragically, his writing often prolonged the reduction of his space by sending him to or keeping him in prison. It is my theory that his violent, pornographic writing style is "une écriture de surjouissance" or "a writing of over-coming". Surjouissance is my theory for Sade's method, based on textual analysis of Sade's main works, that he combines through his syntactic structure, narrative voice, and semantic themes the orgasm of the mind represented by philosophical discourse with the orgasm of the body represented textually by orgiastic scenes and the language of orgasm to reach an ultimate state of complete freedom. In the political pamphlet "Frenchmen yet another effort..."Sade attempts to set this theory of sur-jouissance, or this transcendent state reached through the combination of physical and philosophical orgasm, as the political foundation for a new republic. Does he succeed in creating a viable political formula for a sustainable republic? My argument states absolutely not. His aristocratic elitism narrows his voice. But he does propose the combination of sexual, literary, and intellectual freedoms as a possible polemic against any form of reduced space.
ContributorsSwankie, Ryan James (Author) / Mullet, Isabelle (Thesis advisor) / Canovas, Frédéric (Committee member) / Bahtchevanova, Mariana (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The most horrific, darkest, and powerful forms of the sublime take place inside the enclosure of the human psyche; the interior of the mind is the playground for the sublime--not the crag and canyon filled natural world. For Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke, the driving force of the power of the sublime stems from the feelings of pain and fear: where is that more manifested than in the mind? Unlike the common, traditional, and overwhelmed discussion of Percy Shelley and his contemporaries and the power of the sublime in nature, I will argue that in The Cenci, Shelley, through well-chosen diction and precise composition of terrifying images, fashions characters and scenes in an emotion-driven play that elevates the mind of the reader to a transcendent sublime experience. Through a discussion of the theories of the aesthetic of the sublime laid out by Longinus, Burke, and Kant, I will provide a foundation for the later discussion of the rhetorical sublime evoked by Shelley in the ardent and horrifying play that is The Cenci. Looking at the conventional application of the theories of the sublime to romantic writing will make evident the holes in the discussion of the sublime and romantic writings that have almost forgotten the powerful and psychological rhetorical aspect of the sublime that is emphasized in the theoretical writings of both Burke and Kant. To clarify what is traditionally associated with Shelley and the sublime, a brief analysis of the Shelleyean sublime and Shelley's 1816 poem "Mont Blanc" will prepare the reader for an unconventional, but every bit important and powerful, function of the sublime in the 1819 play The Cenci based on the horrific happenings of a historical 16th century Italian noble family.
ContributorsGowan, Kaitlin (Author) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Corse, Douglas Taylor (Committee member) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The critical-thinking skill of problem solving needs to be part of the curriculum for all students, including those with learning disabilities living in poverty; yet, too often this is not the case. Too often students in poverty and students with learning disabilities are provided a curriculum that is watered down, focused on the basics, and aimed at managing their behaviors instead of helping them learn to think critically about their world. Despite their challenges, these students can learn to problem solve. Educators need to help students make connections between the critical-thinking skills learned in school and the problem-solving skills needed for life. One solution might be to use literature with characters facing similar problems, hold grand conversations, and teach them a problem solving method. Together, these three parts have the potential to motivate and lead students to better thinking. This action research study explored whether literature with characters facing similar problems to the study's participants, grand conversations, and the I SOLVE problem solving method would help students with disabilities living in poverty in the Southwestern United States develop the problem-solving skills they need to understand and successfully navigate their world. Data were collected using a mixed methods approach. The Motivation to Read Profile, I SOLVE problem-solving survey, thought bubbles, student journals, transcripts from grand conversations, and researcher's journal were tools used. To understand fully how and to what extent literature and grand conversations helped students gain the critical thinking skill of problem solving, data were mixed in a convergence model. Results show the I SOLVE problem-solving method was an effective way to teach problem-solving steps. Scores on the problem-solving survey rose pre- to post-test. Grand conversations focused on literature with character's facing problems led to an increase in students' motivation to read, and this population of students were able to make aesthetic connections and interpretations to the texts read. From these findings implications for teachers are provided.
ContributorsWells, Sheila (Author) / Zambo, Debby (Thesis advisor) / Hansen, Cory (Committee member) / Davidson, Carter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Michel Tremblay, one of the most renowned and beloved Quebecois writers, began his literary career in the 1960s. He is well known for writing many of his works exclusively in the Quebec dialect of joual. The history of Quebec, from its beginnings as a permanent settlement of New France, to its subsequent takeover by the British after the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, all were events that set the stage for the Quiet Revolution. The Quiet Revolution was a cultural, social and linguistic uprising set in motion by the French-speakers of Quebec who were tired of being dominated. Up until the 1960s, the majority of literary works produced in Quebec followed the classical French tradition. The desire in the 1960s to break free from the domination of the English language and culture as well as to be differentiated from the French from France brought with it a newfound nationalistic pride. From this point forward there was a push to create a distinct Quebecois literature. One way to differentiate the works of Quebec from those from France was to include characters and settings from within the Quebec society as well as to have those characters speak in their native dialect. Joual, a dialect version of the pronunciation of the French word cheval, meaning horse, was originally a rural dialect that eventually found its way to the inner city. For this reason, joual was most closely identified with the urban working-class of Montreal. This dialect was also perceived as the language of an uneducated, socially and economically inferior segment of the French-speaking Quebec society. By using joual in his literature, Tremblay was able to depict the social, cultural and economic effect that joual had on this element of Quebec's population. This thesis focuses on the impact of joual on this society through the study of two of Tremblay's plays: Les Belles-soeurs (1965), to show a women's perspective about a socially and economically inferior group, and Hosanna (1973), to show the perspective of homosexuals and transvestites, a socially prejudiced group.
ContributorsPrins, Melita (Author) / Cruse, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Ossipov, Helene (Committee member) / Canovas, Frédéric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
ABSTRACT This collection of poetry focuses on the experiences of a soldier who served six years in the Army National Guard and eleven months in Iraq. The collection is primarily divided into six sections (though each is not separated explicitly) and each section generally involves activities such as training for Iraq, deploying to Iraq, and returning home. In these poems, the speaker recalls different scenes from his experiences: encountering roadside bombs; performing guard duty; burning feces in a can; and living on small military base while at war. The main goal is to provide the reader with an in-depth, sincere, and unfiltered look at the life of a soldier in the military, and of course, in Iraq. The work relies on mostly free verse form with some of the work utilizing the sonnet form and couplets. The poems were greatly influenced by the work of Modernist Poets including Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and T.S. Eliot. This entire collection, which often does fall into that long trail of the war-poem genre, was influenced greatly by the following notable poets who went to war or served in the military: Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, Yusef Komunyakaa, Randall Jarrell, and Bruce Weigl.
ContributorsMartin, Hugh, 1984- (Author) / Hogue, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Ball, Sally (Committee member) / Dubie, Norman (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Self-awareness and liberation often start with an analysis of the relationship between individual and society, a relationship based on the delicate balance of personal desire and responsibility to others. While societal structures, such as family, tradition, religion, and community, may be repressive to individuals, they also provide direction, identity and meaning to an individual's life. In Kate Chopin's The Awakening and André Gide's L'Immoraliste the protagonists are faced with such a dilemma. Often informed by gender roles and socio-economic class, the container or filter that society offers to shape and mediate human experience is portrayed in both novels as a fictitious self donned for society's benefit --can seem repressive or inadequate. Yet far from being one-dimensional stories of individuals who eschew the bonds of a restrictive society, both novels show that liberation can lead to entrapment. Once society's limits are transgressed, the characters face the infinitude and insatiety of their liberated desires and the danger of self-absorption. Chopin and Gide explore these issues of desire, body, and social authority in order to portray Edna's and Michel's search for an authentic self. The characters' search for authenticity allows for the loosening of restriction and embrace of desire and the body, phenomena that appear to liberate them from the dominant bourgeois society. Yet, for both Edna and Michel, an embrace of the body and individual desire threatens to unsettle the balance between individual and society. As Edna and Michel break away from society's prescribed path, both struggle to find themselves. Edna and Michel become aware of themselves in a variety of different ways: speaking and interacting with others, observing the social mores of those around them and engaging in creative activity, such as, for Edna, painting and planning a dinner party, or for Michel, teaching and writing. Chopin's 1899 novel The Awakening and André Gide's 1902 novel L'Immoraliste explore the consequences of individual liberation from the constricting bonds of religion, society, and the family. In depicting these conflicts, the authors examine the relationship between individual and society, freedom and restraint, and what an individual's relationship to his or her community should be.
ContributorsMcCulla, Jessica (Author) / Canovas, Frédéric (Committee member) / Cruse, Markus (Committee member) / Losse, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Membrane proteins are very important for all living cells, being involved in respiration, photosynthesis, cellular uptake and signal transduction, amongst other vital functions. However, less than 300 unique membrane protein structures have been determined to date, often due to difficulties associated with the growth of sufficiently large and well-ordered crystals. This work has been focused on showing the first proof of concept for using membrane protein nanocrystals and microcrystals for high-resolution structure determination. Upon determining that crystals of the membrane protein Photosystem I, which is the largest and most complex membrane protein crystallized to date, exist with only a hundred unit cells with sizes of less than 200 nm on an edge, work was done to develop a technique that could exploit the growth of the Photosystem I nanocrystals and microcrystals. Femtosecond X-ray protein nanocrystallography was developed for use at the first high-energy X-ray free electron laser, the LCLS at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, in which a liquid jet would bring fully hydrated Photosystem I nanocrystals into the interaction region of the pulsed X-ray source. Diffraction patterns were recorded from millions of individual PSI nanocrystals and data from thousands of different, randomly oriented crystallites were integrated using Monte Carlo integration of the peak intensities. The short pulses ( 70 fs) provided by the LCLS allowed the possibility to collect the diffraction data before the onset of radiation damage, exploiting the diffract-before-destroy principle. At the initial experiments at the AMO beamline using 6.9- Å wavelength, Bragg peaks were recorded to 8.5- Å resolution, and an electron-density map was determined that did not show any effects of X-ray-induced radiation damage. Recently, femtosecond X-ray protein nanocrystallography experiments were done at the CXI beamline of the LCLS using 1.3- Å wavelength, and Bragg reflections were recorded to 3- Å resolution; the data are currently being processed. Many additional techniques still need to be developed to explore the femtosecond nanocrystallography technique for experimental phasing and time-resolved X-ray crystallography experiments. The first proof-of-principle results for the femtosecond nanocrystallography technique indicate the incredible potential of the technique to offer a new route to the structure determination of membrane proteins.
ContributorsHunter, Mark (Author) / Fromme, Petra (Thesis advisor) / Wolf, George (Committee member) / Levitus, Marcia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011