Browsing by Subject "Dialectic"
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Item Four facets of the relation of tragedy to dialectic and the theme of crisis of expectations(2009-05-15) Haris, MuhammadAs a whole, this work serves to illuminate the tragic as a fundamental human phenomenon and an objective fact that is distinct not only from comedy and irony but from other forms of calamity and modes of failure. I consider three distinct sources of philosophical knowledge on tragedy. The first is tragic drama and literature, the second is the theory of the tragic and the third source consists of the employment of the concept of tragedy to discuss events or characters that one encounters in life. I carefully draw upon the first two sources to thicken the elaborations of four different facets of the third. In this process, I extrapolate Szondi?s notion that tragedy is a specific dialectic in a specific space. In the course of this work, I place a greater emphasis upon this general concept of the tragic as opposed to a poetics of tragedy. The dissertation bears out, however, that it is ultimately poetics - and not the dialectic as general concept - that provide us with the richer insights into tragedy as it unravels in life. The specific dialectic of tragedy unravels so as to cause the irreplaceable loss of something of great value. This provides me with a structuring element that ties the four central chapters together. In terms of content, I emphasize also upon the tragic flaw as a set of character traits (manifested by an individual or some form of collective) which keep tragedy in place. The consideration of the figure of Willy Loman allows me to examine the tragedy of failure of expectations which is a distinct category of the tragic and yet it oscillates such that ties together the other themes. A central idea that emerges from an analysis of the overlapping themes is that prior to tragedy is the investment of the deepest inner resources into a process. This investment gives rise to identity and to expectations. As a tragedy unfolds, the source of the identity or of expectation becomes also the birth place or the generator of all threats to this identity and the collapse of long nurtured expectations.Item Hegel, Freud, and Lacan : the subject and ... the Other(1996) Myers, Perry, 1956-; Arens, Katherine, 1953-G.W.F. Hegel and Sigmund Freud both developed models of the human mind, identity and behavior. Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst, employed and revamped the Freudian model of human behavior. Tracing the genesis of the Freudian model of the unconscious in Hegel's version of the dialectic provides a clear avenue for showing the implications that Freud drew from Hegel to offer a new model for the diagnosis of human behavior, particularly of abnormal human consciousness. After outlining how Freud's core model derives from Hegel, I will turn, in the final sections of this discussion, to how Lacan employed and extended the Freudian system in order to develop his own theory of human behavior. Using this approach I will be able to show how Lacan's extension of the [Freudian] model revealed the possibility of phenomenologically-grounded intersubjectivity in analyzing human behavior.Item Playing fair : the rhetorical limits of liberalism in women's sport at the University of Texas, 1927-1992(2010-05) Bagley, Meredith M.; Cloud, Dana L.; Brummett, Barry; Hart, Roderick P.; Jarvis, Sharon E.; Carrington, BenThis dissertation situates the emergence of women’s intercollegiate sport at the University of Texas from 1927-1992 within the inherent tensions within liberal feminism regarding difference and equality. Specifically, it examines how the rhetoric of fair play functions as a resource for both resistance and social control. The rhetoric of fair play refers to a set of debates and discussions over the structure and meaning of competitive sport. The project proposes three tensions within fair play rhetoric: Discipline or Freedom, Rules as Control or Transformation, and the Universal or Political Athlete. Drawing upon the theoretical resources of liberal, radical and materialist feminism, as well as the cultural theory of Michel Foucault and Raymond Williams, the project argues that values of fairness and meritocracy within sport function dialectically to both empower demands for social change and to extend preexisting hierarchies. A number of questions guided this project: What social norms are at stake during sport competitions? How does fair play rhetoric uphold or challenge these norms? On what basis does fair play rhetoric challenge status quo social conditions? On what basis does it uphold them? And finally, how do the assumptions behind various usages of fair play rhetoric enable and limit their effects on society? Three case studies demonstrate how consecutive women’s sport administrators at Texas used claims to fair play to negotiate the dialectic tension of transcendent claims to sport identity and particular attachments to gender within women’s involvement in sport. Rhetorical tactics shifted from an invocation of sport’s public welfare benefits to political activism on behalf of women’s right to compete at sport. The project sets these varied tactics of sport advocacy within broader contexts of first wave feminism, interwar period Progressivism, social transformations of World War II, Civil Rights activism, and second wave feminism of the 1970s, culminating in the passage of Title IX. The dissertation concludes that the rhetoric of fair play exists within sport, and beyond, as a powerful form of discourse that can be wielded for social control or challenge. What is considered “playing fair” may change with time and perspective but the stakes remain high and thus merit scholarly attention.