Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Desire'
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1
Park, Ji sun. "Desire." Thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1523292.
Abstract:
Cultural aspects of South Korea fueled my artistic production for my Master of Fine Arts Project exhibition, Desire. The images of palaces, dollhouses, and castles that I depicted not only represented social expectations of wealth and social standing, but also fantasies many Koreans have about what it means to be successful a "desire" for wealth and improved social standing. With relief printed imagery, I created an environment where viewers walked through a labyrinth-like path, experiencing the fluid motion of psychological space. I aimed to visualize the acute societal pressures, which many young South Koreans suffer under.
2
Jacono, Adam Leebrick Gil. "Organizing Desire." [Greenville, N.C.] : East Carolina University, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10342/2672.
3
Magid, Jill S. (Jill Stephanie) 1973. "Monitoring desire." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76084.
Abstract:
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-37).
My thesis project consists of producing and wearing a system of self-surveillance that has been subversively inserted into an already existing informational and electronic system. By bringing surveillance technology closer in and attaching it to the body, I have been able to personalize a form of technological mirroring through which subjectivity and the body are reconstructed. Inside the field of view of this reconfigured vision, the wearer/user is open to create and explore the erotic formation of fluid identities and their potential transgressive relationships. Monitoring Desire was a performance at Harvard University's Science Center that, through a guerrilla act of appropriation, captured the image on the Center's informational monitor. The act of capture was performed by two women and took place within and between the Center's first floor and lower level lobbies. Components utilized within the performance consisted of a high-heeled shoe with a built-in surveillance camera and transmitter, the Center's informational monitor, and the monitor's remote control device. The image produced by the camera on the shoe assimilated an abstracted view up the wearer's skirt with the surrounding architecture. This image was transmitted from the wearer downstairs to the second performer upstairs by way of the Science Center's informational monitor. The real-time video image mediated communication between both the performers and the spectators located on the separate floor levels. In the course of this performance, our bodies, as reconfigured through our surveillance apparatus, came to effect our subjectivities as they were presented in public space. Through the act of hijacking the informational monitor, we performed our power to publicly re-present ourselves back into the space in which we were occupying.
by Jill S. Magid.
S.M.
4
Moyer, J. Brandon. "Of desire." The Ohio State University, 2002. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1328117641.
5
Jones, Kath Renark. "Re-thinking desire." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1996. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/66754/.
Abstract:
This thesis analyses the ways in which desire has been traditionally configured in terms of its relation to both being and becoming. Techniques for the domestication of desire through idealized concepts of community, the subject, the body, life and ethics, are analyzed in respect of their transcendental construction and the practices of power which they legitimate. The critical texts of Immanuel Kant are taken as the primary focus of an attempt to separate the negative values implicit in Humanism from the positive project of Enlightenment thinking. This separation, it is argued, effects a reconceptualization of the classical opposition between Man and Nature, allowing us to elaborate new definitional structures of the above themes (community, the subject, the body, life and ethics). In a postmodern era, these new formulations enable philosophical thought to accept the de-centering and dispersal of the subject without abandoning the critical project of self-experimentation, together with the political and ethical demands produced in the interactions and associations of selves in becoming. In the attempt to open up a space for thinking the desiring self of post-humanism, this writing follows a two-fold course. On the one hand, it argues against the internal organization and rationality of subject-producing ideologies. On the other, it seeks to elucidate the points of resistance in and against the power structures inherent in our societies and at work in our procedures of representation and objectification.
6
Pearson, Giles Benjamin. "Aristotle on desire." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.615903.
7
Tasooji, Reza. "Desire and Hope." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/52921.
Abstract:
"Desire and Hope" is three short animations. The main concept in these three animations is human desires; the goal in each animation was to explore a ways to tell this concept by adding some level of ambiguity, so viewers can watch it through their own vision.Master of Fine Arts
8
Crippa, Benedetta. "World of Desire." Thesis, Konstfack, Grafisk design & illustration, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:konstfack:diva-5855.
Abstract:
This project report offers an in-depth, detailed account of my creative process and work during my two-year Master in visual communication at Konstfack, Stockholm. My degree project is a celebration of plurality and visual democracy. Starting with identifying different norms pervading the graphic design discipline in the Western world today, both in terms of aesthetic values and systems of thinking, I have worked to propose and visualize alternative possible futures. Drawing has been my main carrier through an intense journey of un-learning and re-learning resulting in an artist’s book in unique copy. With this book, I want to problematize the dominant discourses around objectivity as a utopian ideal with a suppressive agenda, while visualizing a world I can recognize myself in. I have used decoration as a method, emotion and femininity as explorative standpoints, giving space to the metaphorical, the ambiguous and the spiritual to challenge current visual norms. This book emerges as an affirmation of my own quest for visual belonging as a graphic designer and a woman; a testimony of the practice of drawing as actualized power.
9
Armengol, Sans Andrés. "Vulnerability, desire and violence." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/403820.
Abstract:
Aquesta recerca pretén problematitzar el concepte de vulnerabilitat, prenent-ne com a referents les aportacions teòriques de les filòsofes feministes Judith Butler i Adriana Cavarero. Seguint una perspectiva de caire genealògic, es proporciona una anàlisi de la deconstrucció que aquest concepte comporta pel que fa a l’oblit del cos en el si del corpus de la metafísica, palesant al seu torn l’estatut que els discursos de Butler i Cavarero atorguen al subjecte encarnat. L’aparell crític que s’ha emprat de manera dialèctica en l’anàlisi d’aquest concepte remet a la psicoanàlisi, sobretot a la psicoanàlisi lacaniana, en tant que ambdues autores importen conceptes del corpus psicoanalític.
L’objectiu de tot plegat és el de construir un mapa teòric en torn del subjecte articulat pel discurs de la vulnerabilitat, alhora que es pretén eixamplar el marc teòric que aquest discurs elabora, anant més enllà d’una reflexió de caire ontològic. D’aquesta manera, a tenor d’una visió guiada per la psicoanàlisi, s’esgrimeix que la vulnerabilitat, en un pla discursiu, opera com a símptoma que respon als malestars subjectius que s’esdevenen en
la fase actual del capitalisme. Aquesta posició teòrica permet d’articular un prisma de caire materialista sobre aquesta qüestió, la qual cosa acaba suposant una nova versió del subjecte.This research aims at discussing the notion of vulnerability as it has been elaborated by the feminist philosophers Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero. By means of a genealogical perspective that offers an analysis of the deconstruction of the oblivion of the body in the metaphysical corpus, the goal of this dissertation is to enlighten which status is conferred to the embodied subject. The critical apparatus that has been used as a counterpoint for the notion of vulnerability is psychoanalysis, mainly Lacanian psychoanalysis, inasmuch as both Butler and Cavarero take concepts from the psychoanalytic corpus. The purpose is to offer a new theoretical mapping of the subject as it is articulated by the discourses on vulnerability, expanding the version according to which vulnerability would be an ontological condition of the subject. Instead, from a psychoanalytic axis, what is discussed here is the fact that vulnerability, at a discursive level, operates as a symptom in front of the malaises that subjects suffer under the current state of global capitalism, which offers a more materialistic approach towards this matter, and a different version of the subject.
10
Cullen, Philomena. "Daring to desire : towards a feminist pedagogy of desire in Catholic theology." Thesis, St Mary's University, Twickenham, 2011. http://research.stmarys.ac.uk/325/.
Abstract:
One could think of Catholicism as being about the control of desire. Desire is dangerous and disturbing and so the Church helps us tame this force in our lives. But that is only half the story. There is another, albeit less prominent, strand of the tradition of the Church that invites us to deepen our desires, to touch their hidden longings, and to liberate desire in recognition of its ultimate goal. that of relationship with the God who is racked with desire for us. My purpose in this thesis is first to show the centrality of desire for Catholic theology. Second, to begin to explore a specifically gendered trajectory of desire using a variety of emerging discourses of desire. And third, to show how we can begin to rethink and transform the official tradition so that it can be a positive resource for coming to a greater understanding of women's desires in particular. I describe this important task as being about a construction of a feminist pedagogy of desire. In chapters one and two, I offer analyses of why the current religious, social and symbolic order has made the actualising of women's desires difficult and therefore why we need a feminist pedagogy of desire within post-conciliar Catholic theology today. Then through empirical evidence acquired through an interview process with ten contemporary Catholic theologians, I have in chapters three and four, manifested the ongoing struggles and tensions that seem to exist within post-conciliar Catholic theology today to move beyond undifferentiated models of desire that run the risk of misrepresenting, and being biased against, women's desires. In chapters five and six, I have with the help of the twelfth century medieival abbess, Heloise, undertakien a theological anaylsis of literary work so as to begin to apply a gendered perspective to a well known narrative of female desire. I conclude by arguing that it is only when the official tradition itself learns to theorise desire from women's experience, that is through a more finely honed gendered perspective, that it can help create space for the female desiring subject and in doing so, truly orient us to desire more daringly in ways that will ultimately foster greater mutual flourishing for women and men today.
11
Matsumaru, Takashi Michael. "Defending Desire: Resident Activists in New Orleans‟ Desire Housing Project, 1956-1980." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2011. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/449.
Abstract:
The Desire Housing Project opened in 1956 as a segregated public housing development in New Orleans‟ Upper Ninth Ward. The Desire neighborhood, one of the few neighborhoods in the city where black homeownership had been encouraged, was transformed by the project. Hundreds of former Desire residents were displaced by the mammoth project, which became home to more than 13,000 residents by 1958. Built on what had once been a landfill, the Desire Housing Project came to epitomize the worst in public housing, before it was torn down by 2001. Although the project was isolated from the rest of the city and lacked basic services, residents worked to create a viable community, in spite of the pitfalls of segregation. Within the context of the civil rights movement, Desire residents fought to bring in basic services, pushing local government to more fully develop their neighborhood.
12
Byrne, James. "A poetics of desire." Thesis, Edge Hill University, 2016. http://repository.edgehill.ac.uk/7782/.
Abstract:
This PhD capping paper is an accompaniment to three published books of poetry: Blood/Sugar, White Coins and Everything Broken Up Dances. Blood/Sugar and White Coins (hereafter B/S and WC) were both published by Arc Publications in the UK, in November 2009 and April 2015. Everything Broken Up Dances (EBUD) by Tupelo Press in the US, in December 2015. I situate these books within a poetics of desire, exploring the idea of the self in my work and how this relates to the self as other, or desiring of the other. I also consider the possibilities of fragmentation in relation to form and utterance. Significantly—though among others—I examine key texts by Georg Hegel, Judith Butler, Maurice Blanchot, Edmond Jabès and Jacques Lacan and examine their various theories on desire and the function of the self to evaluate poems from each of my own books, as discussed.
13
Ryle, Simon John. "Shakespeare, cinema and desire." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610267.
14
Dayer, Carolina. "EROS: Desire in Architecture." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/30890.
Abstract:
Dear All,
Eros moves.
In January of 2007 I decided to do research about Eros and his presence in architecture. I decided to do a thesis about LOVE. This thesis it is a story about me, since when you love architecture you give yourself completely to it. What you see in these pages, it's me: my life, my desires, my passion for architecture, my fears, my bad moments, my good moments, my joy--all of me.
Desire in architecture seemed to me at that moment something with which I didn’t know how to start working. It was so abstract that, when considered, almost anything can be a desire, and maybe it is. But this thesis is a story of how desire opened for me an infinite world of imagination and wonder--how Eros made me love the drawing, the line, the color, the wall, the shadow, the material....the architecture.
I have chosen to explore desire through the designing of a post office, theatre school, and retail shops. The site is in Washington DC, in between 7th and 8th streets SE, adjacent to Eastern Market.Master of Architecture
15
Carroll, Jordan S. "Utopia, Kinship, and Desire." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1213363990.
16
Jahan, Nabila Farhin. "Effect of a 14-Day Mindfulness Intervention on Daily Desire Experiences and Desire Regulation." VCU Scholars Compass, 2019. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5817.
Abstract:
A growing body of research suggests that mindfulness, a receptive attentiveness to one’s present moment experiences, has the potential to adaptively regulate habitual behaviors. No prior study has tested the effect of mindfulness interventions on people’s daily desire experiences to inform the potential for adaptive desire regulation. The present exploratory randomized controlled trial examined the effect of a 14-day smartphone-based mindfulness intervention (versus a coping control intervention) on the frequency, intensity, duration, and enactment of everyday desires in 19 participants. The desire domains included basic need-based desires (i.e., for food, drink, sleep) and secondary desires (e.g., for sex, media, social interactions, work), assessed for 7 days pre- and post-intervention through ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Emotion data collected alongside, also through EMA, permitted examining the role of the mindfulness intervention in altering a potential link between experienced emotion (positive and negative) and desire. Results showed that intervention condition significantly predicted post-intervention desire frequency; those in the mindfulness condition experienced a higher frequency of desires post-training, and specifically, increased secondary desire frequency, but not basic desire frequency. Intervention condition did not predict the other desire outcomes (enactment, strength, or duration). Results also revealed that intervention significant moderated the association between positive emotion and overall desire frequency; those in the mindfulness condition experienced fewer desires when experiencing increased positive emotion, whereas there was no association between positive emotion and desire after coping training. Intervention condition did not moderate associations between positive emotions and other desire variables, or negative emotions and any desire variables.
17
Agrawal, Tanu. "Fear and desire in systems design : negotiating database usefulness." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42392.
Abstract:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-235).
Databases are ubiquitous. They are used for a host of functions including coordination, decision making, and memory archiving. Despite their importance and ubiquity, databases continue to frustrate us, often departing from the goals originally set for them. If databases are such essential ingredients for organizations, what diminishes their usefulness? Besides the nature of the data that is entered into the database, usefulness is also shaped by the fields, features, and functionalities that the database designers originally construct that then shape the kind of data that can be entered into the system. This dissertation examines the process of database design and the assumptions and concerns adopted by the stakeholders involved in it. I conducted a year long ethnographic study of a university that has been engaged in creating a self-sustaining Environment Health and Safety system to manage research related hazards and to ensure regulatory compliance. The integrated database system was envisioned as a tool that would allow the university to observe and improve compliance practices while keeping records that would be available for self-auditing and government inspection. My research observations suggest that actors imagine diverse purposes that the database, when complete, should serve. These purposes - entailing the three themes of accountability, efficiency and comparability - appear to guide the design process. As these imagined purposes gain momentum, they translate into both desires and fears for the features of the database. For instance, when efficiency is imagined as a purpose, it creates a desire for features such as drop-down menus that are easy enter information into. The inclusion of such features, however, creates a fear of oversimplification.
(cont.) Through a negotiated process, features such as text boxes are added to address the fears. Yet, every design change negotiated within the database system creates ripple effects with regard to other purposes, generating the need for still further changes. The process of database design becomes highly dynamic and the final database system is a negotiated compromise between multiple trade-offs over time. By juxtaposing these fears and desires, and through the use of causal-flow models, I articulate the process by which databases depart from their original goals.
by Tanu Agrawal.
Ph.D.
18
Olmarken, Linnéa. "Lust and Desire, A Design Project on Future Retail Architecture." Thesis, KTH, Arkitektur, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-280711.
Abstract:
How does future shopping look like? At the moment the physical shopping spaces are threatened by the e-commerce – A type of shopping that very often is a cure of boredom. It’s not a memorable experience, no story surrounding the object creating added value neither for the object or to the story connecting it with yourself. This thesis have been an investigation of physical retail architecture followed by a proposal: A 500 meter long railway tunnel, like a very long arcade, turned into a space for textile exhibitions, shopping and performance. Like an inverted Crystal Palace. All interior built up by scaffolding, ready to be torn down for the tunnel to once again serve the military in case of emergency. The walls are not made by glass, but lit up rock, reflecting the artificial light. It’s a linear experience. It goes from light to dark to colour. Dusk to dawn. The hidden becomes reviled, the unfocused becomes clear. It’s a space for your imagination, to experience new things, deepening your knowledge and escapism.
19
Balanuye, Cetin. "Ethico-political Acts Of Desire." Phd thesis, METU, 2006. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12607214/index.pdf.
Abstract:
The concept of desire has been central to most recent philosophical debates, in various forms and styles. I have argued in the present study that, one of the main motivations for this apparent interest in the concept of desire is the result of the increasing awareness of the shortcomings of those presuppositions revolving around an &ldquoautonomous subject&rdquo
, &ldquo
transcendence&rdquo
, &ldquo
representation&rdquo
, and &ldquo
moral subjectivity&rdquo
. Desire, in this vein, is conceived and put into practice by the traditional philosophy as one among the other attributes that cannot be considered without reference to man. Desire as such is conceived as something that is necessarily controlled and managed by reason. Ethics and politics, in terms of these ill-conceived presuppositions, are narratives erected upon this tension that necessarily refers to a self-conscious subject and her subversive desires. I argue, in this study, for the possibility of imagining other variants of desire, i.e., something other than traditionally established debates, where desire is no longer conceived in strict reference to human beings. These novel accounts, which I will attempt to uncover, hope, will help us see in what ways desire can be considered within the concept of pure immanence and the realm post-humanist ethico-politics. Spinoza, Nietzsche and certainly Deleuze and Guattari are on this side. Desire, according to this non-tradition, belongs to immanence. In arguing for the legitimacy of two affirmative notions of desire, namely, that of immanent desire and embodied desire, I tried to establish a continuity between immanence (totality of bodies and constant differing) and embodied desire (singular intensities), and by means of which I have drawn attention to the importance of a new vision of ethics and politics that might work, not through the already established form of subjectivities, but through new forms of individuation and flow-like encounters of bodies.
20
McInnis, Nadine. "Dorothy Livesay's poetics of desire." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/7902.
Abstract:
Dorothy Livesay's poetic exploration of love illuminates the relationship that exists between the individual woman artist and a culture shaped by men's experiences and stories. Chapter 1 surveys the critical treatment of Livesay's love poems, illustrating how theoretical superimposition can distort the subtext which gives the poems their energy and power. Chapter 2 analyses the thematic and imagistic portrayal of the love relationship present in the poems written during early womanhood, and establishes a link between sexuality and textuality. Chapter 3 explores the violent sexual/textual conflicts contained within the intensely erotic poems of Livesay's middle-age, framed by The Unquiet Bed (1967) and Disasters of the Sun (1971). Chapter 4 examines the resolution of these conflicts in the later poetry, starting with Ice Age (1975) and receiving clearest expression in Feeling the Worlds (1984). Livesay achieves a unified and unambiguous voice when she finds a way to unite her eroticism with her political concerns, and she ultimately succeeds in realizing a clear vision of her role as a woman writer.
21
SANTOS, SINDIA CRISTINA MARTINS DOS. "WRITING DESIRE AND ITS DIMENSIONS." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2012. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=30168@1.
Abstract:
PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIROCOORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DO PESSOAL DE ENSINO SUPERIOR
PROGRAMA DE SUPORTE À PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO DE INSTS. DE ENSINO
A dissertação apresentada é o primeiro movimento de uma pesquisa-intervenção que se empenha em cartografar o processo de escrita, aproximando a escrita do gesto. Nomeamos de pesquisa-intervenção porque esse movimento pressupõe um mergulho na experiência e afirma a inseparabilidade entre conhecer e fazer, entre pesquisar e intervir. Essa cartografia, transformada em dissertação, parte do seguinte problema: que desejo leva o escritor à árdua tarefa de rachar as palavras-muro? Palavras-muro são ao mesmo tempo abertura e os fracassos dessa abertura, afirmam, na sua construção, que, de nada adianta bater-lhes com força, é necessário outro corpo, talvez o corpo de um sujeito dissolvido, para mina-las e lima-las, com extrema paciência. Que corpo seria esse? As pistas estão na relação do corpo com a grafia: uma dança sobre a terra, um desenho na parede, uma marca no corpo. A escrita e a experiência, o afeto e o corpo. A noção de reportagem aqui nos foi muito útil, porque ela fez a ponte entre corpo, experiência, grafia. É impregnada dela que chegamos à construção da noção de trans-reportagem, processo de escrita em que a figura do autor está diluída, num parto construído a partir de tantos nascimentos simultâneos que não há mais sentido em falar de paternidade (e consequentemente de autoria, propriedade, etc). A autoria dá lugar a um agenciamento criativo, produtor de realidades infinitas e incessantes. O real se coloca aqui como criação. Esse primeiro movimento se preocupou em trabalhar com alguns dispositivos teóricos que auxiliassem a construir o conceito de trans-reportagem, necessário para pensar uma escrita situada na fronteira entre a literatura e o jornalismo.
The thesis presented is the first movement of a research-intervention which seeks to map the writing process, approaching the writing of the gesture. We nominate for intervention-research because this movement assumes a dip in claims experience and the inseparability of knowing and doing, between research and action. This mapping, transformed into a dissertation, part of the following problem: we want to take the writer to the arduous task of cracking the words-wall? Wall-words are both opening and the failures of this opening, say, in its construction, which is useless hit them hard, it needs another body, perhaps the body of a subject, dissolved them to mine and lime them with the utmost patience. What body would that be? The clues are in the relationship with the spelling of the body: a dance on the earth, drawing on a wall, a mark on the body. The writing and experience the warmth and body. The notion of story here to us was very helpful, because it made the bridge between body experience, spelling. It is imbued with it that we get to the construction of the notion of cross-reporting, writing process in which the author figure is diluted in a delivery constructed from many simultaneous births to no more sense in speaking of paternity (and hence of authorship, property, etc.). The author gives way to a creative agency, producing endless and incessant realities. The real place here as creation. This first movement was concerned with working with some theoretical devices that would help to build the concept of trans-reporting, need to think about writing on the border between literature and journalism.
22
Etlin, David Jeffrey. "Desire, belief, and conditional belief." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45898.
Abstract:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-132).
This dissertation studies the logics of value and conditionals, and the question of whether they should be given cognitivist analyses. Emotivist theories treat value judgments as expressions of desire, rather than beliefs about goodness. Inference ticket theories of conditionals treat them as expressions of conditional beliefs, rather than propositions. The two issues intersect in decision theory, where judgments of expected goodness are expressible by means of decision-making conditionals. In the first chapter, I argue that decision theory cannot be given a Humean foundation by means of money pump arguments, which purport to show that the transitivity of preference and indifference is a requirement of instrumental reason. Instead, I argue that Humeans should treat the constraints of decision theory as constitutive of the nature of preferences. Additionally, I argue that transitivity of preference is a stricter requirement than transitivity of indifference. In the second chapter, I investigate whether David Lewis has shown that decision theory is incompatible with anti-Humean theories of desire. His triviality proof against "desire as belief' seems to show that desires can be at best conditional beliefs about goodness. I argue that within causal decision theory we can articulate the cognitivist position where desires align with beliefs about goodness, articulated by the decision making conditional. In the third chapter, I turn to conditionals in their own right, and especially iterated conditionals.
(cont.) I defend the position that indicative conditionals obey the import-export equivalence rather than modus ponens (except for simple conditionals), while counterfactual subjunctive conditionals do obey modus ponens. The logic of indicative conditionals is often thought to be determined by conditional beliefs via the Ramsey Test. I argue that iterated conditionals show that the conditional beliefs involved in indicative supposition diverge from the conditional beliefs involved in learning, and that half of the Ramsey Test is untenable for iterated conditionals.
by David Jeffrey Etlin.
Ph.D.
23
Nowogrodzki, Anna (Anna Rose). "Sex, drugs, and women's desire." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/101363.
Abstract:
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies, September 2015.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "September 2015."
Includes bibliographical references (pages 28-34).
Low desire is the most common sexual dysfunction in women. Pharmaceuticals are being developed to treat it, most notably Flibanserin, owned by Sprout Pharmaceuticals. Sometimes inaccurately referred to as "female Viagra," Flibanserin actually treats an entirely different problem. Viagra allows men to get an erection, meaning that it treats physical arousal problems. Flibanserin, and other drugs for low sexual desire in women, act on the brain. Women with low desire don't have a problem with physical arousal or with orgasm, but with desiring sex before it starts. Most women with low sexual desire disorder have partners with higher desire than they do. So is low desire a medical, physiological problem in the brain? Or is it a sociocultural, interpersonal issue? Some experts think that the majority of women with what has been called a "disorder" of low sexual desire have no abnormal physiological problem, but instead are living in a sociocultural and medical system that encourages them to think of themselves as broken, and may be best treated with non-pharmaceutical methods. Other experts think that low desire is a physiological problem and drugs are important to treat it. Cultural shame around communicating about sex, undervaluing of women's sexuality compared to men's, and unrealistic sexual expectations all feed into and complicate the issue.
by Anna Nowogrodzki.
S.M.
24
Wilde, Anthony Edward. "Levinas : subjectivity, affectivity and desire." Thesis, University of Hull, 2013. http://hydra.hull.ac.uk/resources/hull:8617.
Abstract:
The thesis argues that Emmanuel Levinas’s later concept of ethical subjectivity, explicated in his late work Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, can really only be understood by taking into account the very early work On Escape. The thesis argues that the concept of ethical subjectivity emerges from his work via his attempts to articulate transcendence. Transcendence itself is ultimately identified with ethics. My thesis traces his continued attempts at a satisfactory conception of transcendence through the early works (Existence and Existents and Time and the Other), and via his other major work Totality and Infinity. On Escape articulates a very specific notion of need in terms of a need for escape which forms the conceptual seeds of Levinas’s idea of transcendence, and which will ultimately become his notion of metaphysical Desire. His notion of ethics as the arresting of the spontaneous ego’s conatus by the face of the Other, will turn out to ultimately requires the articulation of ethical subjectivity. The notion of ethical subjectivity is made possible, and thus his work reaches maturity, by the introduction of the notion of the trace. I argue that the idea of subjectivity as openness and vulnerability and the notion of an otherwise than being can be traced to the early work. My thesis takes as its starting point Levinas’s engagement and criticism of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. I argue that Levinas can best be understood as always in some sense in conversation with Heidegger.
25
Snider, Jesse Rhea. "Desire Lines: Dérive in Heterotopias." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2018. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1248523/.
Abstract:
This study provides an examination and application of heterotopic dérive, a concept that combines spatial theories originated by Foucault and psychogeographical methods advocated by the Situationists, as enacted within theatrical performance spaces. The first chapter reviews theories related to space, place, and heterotopias, as well as the psychogeographical methods of the Situationists, particularly the dérive. The literature review is augmented with accounts of my experiences of serendipitous heterotopic dérive over a period of several years as a cast member in, or a technical director for, theatrical productions in the Department of Communication Studies Black Box Theatre. Based on the review, I postulate that heterotopic dérive is a potentially valuable phenomenon that performance studies scholar/artists can utilize consciously in the rehearsal process for mounting theatrical performances. To test this proposition, I worked collaboratively with a theatrical cast to craft a devised performance, Desire Lines, with a conscious effort to engender heterotopic dérive in the process of creating the performance. This performance served as the basis for the second chapter of the study, which analyzes and discusses of the results of that investigation. This project enhances understanding of the significance of the places and spaces in which performers practice their craft, and argues for the potential of recognizing and utilizing the agency of heterotopic spaces such as the Black Box.
26
Fisher, Christina Angela. "Desire, Obsession and the Body." VCU Scholars Compass, 2007. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd_retro/89.
Abstract:
Driven by the crippling command of Eros, my work provides a veiled exposure to my secret life in love, desire, fear, and obsession. My sculptures are the physical evidence of an emotional realm coming forth in a coded language that is, even to me, only remotely accessible. The Demon that Lives in My Bedroom, the saga of the Cat People, the stories of Trasnichi and the Love Crusade; all came to me in a beam of thought. Once the beam takes hold, it becomes my obsession, and the era of that work begins. I can trace my development through these eras of obsessions.
27
Jacks, Mary E. "Gender differences in sexual desire." Online version, 1998. http://www.uwstout.edu/lib/thesis/1998/1998jacksm.pdf.
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Santos, Maristela Campos Alves dos. "What we desire is african." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UFSC, 2012. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/handle/123456789/93098.
Abstract:
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura CorrespondenteMade available in DSpace on 2012-10-24T16:35:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 276932.pdf: 624885 bytes, checksum: 5ef322ddea1c9f5b08c1db66c7f8e813 (MD5)
Este trabalho investiga a intertextualidade entre as poesias de Solano Trindade e George Elliot Clarke. O estudo analisa o uso de um eu-enunciador que descreve a luta dos poetas contra a invisibilidade do "eu" negro, a construção de um anti-épico que reconta a história do ponto de vista do negro, a reversão de valores que reafirma a tradição e a cultura negras, e a tentativa de construir uma nova ordem simbólica que se expressa pela ruptura de estereótipos nos textos dos dois autores. A pesquisa revê o discurso da negritude e sua presença na Poesia negra hoje.
29
Phillips, Martin. "I'm your common space, create me! : From the desire to participate to the construction of the city." Thesis, KTH, Stadsbyggnad, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-146863.
Abstract:
Participatory planning and design is a subject that has been around for quite some time. It has been theorized by several authors and put in practice by many practitioners. After going through some of the literature and studying in detail some real-life participatory experiences, it’s still hard to tackle the subject because of its complexity. I could have tried to simplify it and look into one type of participation, but instead I tried to understand it in all its complexity and diversity, maybe leaving some unsolved questions. Throughout this semester I studied four different cases of participatory planning/design and I analyzed and compared them. These are located in Paris (France), Medellín (Colombia), Banjarmasin (Indonesia) and Gothenburg (Sweden). I looked at them through some of the concepts I found in the literature, like for example the idea of desire treated by Doina Petrescu in some of her texts. After extracting some conclusions from the case studies I got involved in a real-life participatory process carried out in the School of Architecture at KTH to include students, teachers and others in the design of a new location for the school. I took part in one of their meetings and I had three parallel workshops in English with the participation of some students. This helped me experience and understand better what participation really means and implies. I put myself in the role of a facilitator who initiates a process, and therefore carries it out. I learned about the importance of the invitation to participate and how important it is to be clear on the activities and questions posed to the participants.
30
Karlsson, Marie Elisabeth. "Deadly Desire : A Psychoanalytical Reading of Desire and Death in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-10735.
Abstract:
Dylan Thomas' work is often explored in light of the poet himself, and he has been referred to as modernism's l'enfant terrible or even described as a late romanticist. The aim in this essay is to explore the poetry without regard to his personal life as well as highlight previously ignored oedipal elements in said poetry. The main goal is to assert Thomas' place amongst the modernist literati, of which most were heavily influenced by Freud, as well as to be an acknowledgement of his work without considering his biography.
31
Oberlechner, Steve A. "Arm-wrestling the slipstream a collection of stories /." Morgantown, W. Va. : [West Virginia University Libraries], 2003. http://etd.wvu.edu/templates/showETD.cfm?recnum=3086.
32
Jude, Christine. "The vision of desire : an analysis of concepts of sexual desire in the nineteenth century novel." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.319358.
Abstract:
This thesis investigates the representation of sexual desire in the nineteenth century novel. It explores the conjuncture of forces - historical, social, economic, political and cultural - in which desire is produced and defined, and the ways in which dominant representations of desire are negotiated within fiction. My analyses of the novels attend to the ways in which meaning is produced in literature and the relationship between ideologies and their symbolic representation. Primarily I address the ways in which the reader is interpellated by the text, by all its processes of signification and the ideological complex which produces and is reproduced by them. This encompasses an analysis of interactions within and between levels of discourse and the contradictions thus produced. The thesis seeks to identify hegemonic concepts of desire, and their characteristic dictions and grammars of representation, and to assess interactions between such concepts and ideologies which interrogate or subvert them. Close attention is paid to the gender and class-specific nature of representation and the processes by which subjectivity is constructed, and this is related in turn to the complex of ideas and associations by which desire is negotiated within the writing. The thesis establishes the fundamental importance of the relationship between desire and the material and ideological conditions in which it has existence and takes effect. It elud dates the tensi ons which exist between conventional concepts of desire and desires for which there are no overt or available means of fulfilment. The ways in which texts represent and reconcile these tensions differ markedly. These differences are articulated partly through contestations between idealist and materialist notions of identity, partly through a contrasting use of rational and extra-rational discourses. Through the text's special interpretation of these relationships, dominant representations of desire are reinvested with value or interrogated and subverted.
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Zimmerli, Tanya. "Water | Desire: Design of a Responsible Urban Retreat in Georgetown, Washington, DC." VCU Scholars Compass, 2013. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/3027.
Abstract:
The design of an urban retreat within an industrial building in Georgetown, DC provides an opportunity to experience water in the built environment. The location of the building between two bodies of water—the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Potomac River—creates an opportunity to connect water and the visitors. Management of the water to ensure responsible resource use was researched and accommodated in the design. Water is further used to shape the space and the moods created by the volumes, materials and finishes. The final project provides a luxurious shower and locker room, a series of pools, and a tea room, open to the sky, across three levels.
34
Butlin, Patrick Mark. "The direction of fit of desire." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2016. http://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-direction-of-fit-of-desire(ac70d5c3-b3cd-41be-98d6-87972ba30b4f).html.
Abstract:
It is a familiar tenet that desires and beliefs have opposite directions of fit. Our beliefs, according to this view, should be changed to fit the world – if necessary – because they are for saying how things are. Our desires give us reasons to change the world, because they are for saying what to do, or how things should be. I argue that like beliefs, desires have only the mind-to-world direction of fit. In arguing for this conclusion, I present new accounts of both desire and direction of fit. Desires are inputs to the goal-directed system – a system for behavioural control studied in psychology and neuroscience – with the function of tracking the reward values of outcomes. In the goal-directed system these states are combined with further states representing contingencies between actions and outcomes, in order to select the actions which offer greatest reward. According to this account, desires come in occurrent and standing forms, are likely to have a wide range of outcomes as their objects, and interact with habits, emotions and intentions in familiar ways. My account of direction of fit uses a teleosemantic framework. Teleosemantics is a family of theories of representation that aim to identify the characteristic functions of representations and the systems in which they operate, and focus on representation as a biological phenomenon. It is particularly suited to thinking about direction of fit, because representations have their directions of fit in virtue of what they are for – that is, their functions. I claim that representations have the mind-toworld direction of fit when the systems that produce them have the function of doing so under specific conditions, and the world-to-mind direction of fit when the systems that consume them have the function of behaving in specific ways, whenever the representations occur. Desires do not have the world-to-mind direction of fit, because what the goal-directed system should do when any given desire is occurrent also depends on what other desires are occurrent at the time, and on the agent’s beliefs. It does not follow that we have no reason to try to make the world fit our desires; instead, this conclusion shows that the place of desires in rational motivation is less closely tied to their properties as representations than some philosophers have thought.
35
McNeil, Alison. "Structure of desire, consumerism and architecture." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/mq39687.pdf.
36
Lewis, Jill. "Paul Eluard : of politics and desire." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.330284.
37
Megone, Christopher. "Rationality, desire and what to do." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.316154.
38
Fossey, Peter. "Desire and value in practical reasoning." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2014. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/70116/.
Abstract:
Intentional actions are those which are performed because the subject sees something tobe said for performing them; the subject sees performing the action “in a positive light”. Intentional actions are therefore susceptible to a distinctive kind of explanation, which explains them as intentional; that is, which accounts for them in terms oftheir unique property, of being performed because the subject sees that there is something to be said for doing so. Practical reasoning is the process of figuring out what there is reason to do; that is, what actions are best supported by the considerations available to the subject. To put it another way, practical reasoning is the process of figuring out which actions there is the most to be said for; so practical reasoning explains intentional action “properly”, i.e., in terms of its special properties. Many philosophers, loosely following the lead of David Hume, have argued for a close connection between desire and intentional action. If desires explain intentional actions properly, then they must do so through practical reasoning; that being the case, how do they do it? Another sizeable group of philosophers, the anti-Humeans, have argued that desires cannot explain intentional actions properly; they claim that desires are not the right sorts of things to appear in the premises of arguments, do not count in favour of any action, do not constitute evaluations of any action, and are in any case too fickle and lawless to take part in distinctively normative forms of explanation. The central question in this thesis is, what is the role of desire in practical reasoning? I put forward a characterisation of desire which explains how some desires can explain intentional actions properly, and leaves the question open whether all intentional actions are properly explained by desires.
39
Fuller, Jack. "Desire and the ethics of adverstising." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:fbf15b78-2712-4c2d-a07a-fcdce4799425.
Abstract:
The aim of this thesis is to examine advertising from the point of view of Christian ethics: how it works, what is wrong with it and how it might go right as a practice. It argues that much existing criticism of advertising is justified, but that its power to create desire might be turned towards serving the good of the education of desire, leading us towards, or strengthening, a love of God, and helping us relate to products and services based on this love. This is significant because learning to desire well is central to living a Christian life, and because advertising influences how many people desire today. In contrast to authors who simply criticise advertising, often as part of a general critique of consumer culture, this thesis offers a constructive and detailed examination of the practice itself, looking at how its techniques work and how they might be reformed into an 'art of advertising'. In making this argument the thesis draws primarily on Augustine, in addition to Plato, and modern critics of advertising. First, it describes desire, before examining how advertisements create desire, followed by an assessment of existing criticisms of this process. It then develops an account of the education of desire, identifying what an art of advertising should aim to achieve, before examining the techniques by which an advertisement might achieve this. The argument is intended to contribute to a project within Christian ethics of critiquing advertising, and presenting a workable ethical vision for the future of the industry.
40
Philibert, Céline Lydia Germaine. "French postmodern cinema : desire in question /." The Ohio State University, 1992. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487760357819381.
41
Bramble, Ben Ellis. "Pleasure and Desire in Moral Theory." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9898.
Abstract:
Increasingly, moral philosophers are seeking to combine (1) An objectivist or value-based theory of reasons for action, on which one’s reasons are provided, not by one’s desires, but by “facts about what is relevantly good, or worth achieving” (Parfit, 2001), with (2) Subjectivist theories of some of the key elements of the good – chiefly, pleasure and well-being – on which one’s desires (or other subjective states such as likings) help to constitute these good things. This picture, which I call The New Standard View, is proving attractive to so many largely because it offers the possibility of explaining the widespread intuition that subjective states have a significant role to play in shaping what we have a reason to do, without giving these states full reign over our reasons and so entailing (counterintuitively) that a person who cares nothing about others (and who still would not care even if she were fully informed and vividly imagining relevant facts) has no reason to treat them well. I accept that there is an important sense in which our reasons are provided by good things. If nothing were good or bad, then nobody would have a reason to do anything. But I disagree with just about everything else in The New Standard View. Indeed, I think this view has things back to front. We should be objectivists about the good, and subjectivists about reasons. On the picture I favour, which I call The New Rival View, the good consists just in whatever makes people better off in some way (welfarism), what makes people better off is just anything that increases the pleasurableness (or decreases the unpleasurableness) of their lives (hedonism about well-being), and for an experience to be pleasurable (or unpleasurable) is just for it to have a certain phenomenology. Reasons, in turn, are provided by desires (subjectivism about reasons). But, of necessity, there is only one thing each of us intrinsically desires: that the good be done (the guise of the good). It follows that each of us has a reason to do just whatever is good in some way.
42
Luz, Bernardo Martins da. "Bayesian BDI agents and approaches to desire selection." reponame:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRGS, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10183/78473.
Abstract:
O raciocínio realizado em agentes BDI envolve essencialmente manipular três estruturas de dados representando suas crenças, desejos e intenções. Crenças de agentes BDI tradicionais não representam incerteza, e podem ser expressas como um conjunto fechado de literais ground. As restrições que indicam se um dado desejo é viável e pode ser adotado como uma intenção em agentes BDI tradicionais podem ser representadas como expressões lógicas sobre crenças. Dado que Redes Bayesianas permitem que representem-se informações com incerteza probabilisticamente, agentes BDI bayesianos as empregam para suportar incerteza em suas crenças. Em agentes BDI bayesianos, crenças representadas em Redes Bayesianas referem-se a estados de variáveis de eventos, possuindo probabilidades dinâmicas individuais que referem-se à incerteza. Os processos the constituem o raciocínio neste modelo de agente requerem mudanças a fim de acomodar esta diferença. Dentre estes processos, este trabalho concentra-se especificamente na seleção de desejos. Uma estratégia prévia para seleção de desejos é baseada em aplicar um limiar a probabilidades de crenças. Entretanto, tal abordagem impede que um agente selecione desejos condicionados em crenças cujas probabilidades estejam abaixo de um certo limiar, mesmo que tais desejos pudessem ser atingidos caso fossem selecionados. Para lidar com esta limitação, desenvolvemos três abordagens alternativas para seleção de desejos sob incerteza: Ranking Probabilístico, Loteria Viciada e Seleção Multidesejos Aleatória com Viés. Probability Ranking seleciona um desejo usando uma lista de desejos ordenados em ordem decrescente de probabilidade de pré-condição. Loteria Viciada seleciona um desejo usando um valor numérico aleatório e intervalos numéricos – associados a desejos – proporcionais às probabilidades de suas pré-condições. Seleção Multidesejos Aleatória com Viés seleciona múltiplos desejos usando valores numéricos aleatórios e considerando as probabilidades de suas pré-condições. Apresentamos exemplos, incluindo o agente Vigia, assim como experimentos envolvendo este, para mostrar como essas abordagens permitem que um agente às vezes selecione desejos cujas crenças pré-condições possuem probabilidades muito baixas.The reasoning performed in BDI agents essentially involves manipulating three data structures representing their beliefs, desires and intentions. Traditional BDI agents’ beliefs do not represent uncertainty, and may be expressed as a closed set of ground literals. The constraints that indicate whether a given desire is viable and passive to be adopted as an intention in traditional BDI agents may be represented as logical expressions over beliefs. Given that Bayesian Networks allow one to represent uncertain information probabilistically, Bayesian BDI agents employ Bayesian Networks to support uncertainty in their beliefs. In Bayesian BDI agents, beliefs represented in Bayesian Networks refer to states of event variables, holding individual dynamic probabilities that account for the uncertainty. The processes that constitute reasoning in this agent model require changes in order to accomodate this difference. Among these processes, this work is specifically concerned with desire selection. A previous strategy for desire selection is based on applying a threshold on belief probabilities. However, such an approach precludes an agent from selecting desires conditioned on beliefs with probabilities below a certain threshold, even if those desires could be achieved if they were selected. To address this limitation, we develop three alternative approaches to desire selection under uncertainty: Probability Ranking, Biased Lottery and Multi-Desire Biased Random Selection. Probability Ranking selects a desire using a list of desires sorted in decreasing order of precondition probability. Biased Lottery selects a desire using one random numeric value and desire-associated numeric intervals proportional to the probabilities of the desires’ preconditions. Multi-Desire Biased Random Selection selects multiple desires using random numeric values and considering the probabilities of their preconditions. We present examples, including theWatchman agent, as well as experiments involving the latter, to show how these approaches allow an agent to sometimes select desires whose belief preconditions have very low probabilities.
43
Gledhill, Susan Ellen. "Desire in the winter’s pale : a hermeneutic interpretation of the experience of sexual desire in older age." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2011. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/47987/1/Susan_Gledhill_Thesis.pdf.
Abstract:
The experience of sexual desire in older age remains an aspect of the ageing experience about which little is known; much less understood. To address this gap in knowledge, the purpose of this hermeneutic interpretive study was to describe and understand how sexual desire is experienced in a sample of 11 purposively selected men and six women aged between 62 and 92 years. The study was based on audio-taped interviews with participants who were willing to discuss their experiences of sexual desire. The study was guided by the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur through the process of interview transcription to the interpretation of the experience of sexual desire in older age. Participants’ narratives were analysed for emergent themes using a twofold methodology inspired by Ricoeur. The narratives provided first-hand accounts of the experience of sexual desire in an ageing context. Findings revealed that participants identified as a sexual being regardless of age and availability of sexual partner. Findings also revealed that sexual selfhood was acknowledged through physiological response, that sexual desire could be influenced by socio-cultural factors and experienced within an ethical relational domain. Major themes explicated during the study included the experience of health and wellbeing, experience of sexual response, experience of sexual inadequacy, being socialised and re-entering the social scene.
44
Martin, Linda. "Death of desire, desire of death, an exploration of narcissism and death in Madame Bovary and The Awakening." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ32691.pdf.
45
Taylor, Daniel. "Freedom, power and collective desire in Spinoza." Thesis, University of Roehampton, 2017. https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/en/studentthesis/freedom-power-and-collective-desire-in-spinoza(16afce5e-7f02-40f4-a960-0a11a6ea279e).html.
46
Skatland, Jørgen Hallås. "On the desire to create something beautiful." Thesis, Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, Fakultet for arkitektur og billedkunst, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:no:ntnu:diva-13898.
47
Althoff, Julie. "Il Sacro Bosco d'amore, communication through desire." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/mq64104.pdf.
48
Wong, Yu-bon Nicholas. "The pomobody body parts, desire and fetishism /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2008. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B39707507.
49
Beer, Lewis. "Fortune and desire in Guillaume de Machaut." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2010. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3896/.
Abstract:
There is a pervasive tendency, in Machaut scholarship, to read his poetry as having value only insofar as it speaks to our postmodern age: either it is fragmented and riven with ambiguities, or it celebrates eroticism and the things of this world for their own sake; in any case, it resists religious and moral orthodoxy. Such readings, while often valuable in themselves, fail to take sufficient account of the influence which Boethian and Neoplatonic ideas had upon Machaut, and thus misunderstand his work on a fundamental level. By paying attention to the Boethian content in the narrative dits, and by analysing Machaut's verse more thoroughly than has been done before, my thesis demonstrates not only this author's moral orthodoxy, but also his extremely sophisticated didactic methods. I begin with the Confort d'ami, Machaut's most overtly moral work. The Confort engages with the supposed 'worldly' perspective of its imprisoned addressee, adapting biblical and classical exempla in order to coax Charles of Navarre towards a deeper understanding of worldly fortune. In Chapter 2 I show how, in the Prologue and the Dit du vergier, the ambiguity so beloved of critics can serve as a moral commentary on the carnality and self-absorption of the erotic and artistic points of view. Having established, in the preceding chapters, that this author's approach to his subject is ambiguous and critical, in Chapter 3 I explore the extremes of his pessimism, and show how his love poetry can incorporate sophisticated philosophical ideas, through my analysis of the Jugement du roy de Behaigne. The thesis culminates in a detailed reading of the Remede de Fortune. Through his deliberately idealised statements about education, through his application of these views to the art of courtly love, through his composition (and setting to music) of a sequence of virtuoso lyrics, and through his explicit invocations of and borrowings from Boethius, Machaut develops an empathic but ultimately, as I argue, deeply sceptical vision of earthly love.
50
Kurata, Kenichi. "Vicissitudes of desire in George Eliot’s fiction." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2010. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3751/.
Abstract:
Critics have long recognised the conflicting tendencies towards progress and conservatism in George Eliot, which are reflected in the behaviour of her characters. This study focuses on the oscillating pattern of desire in this behaviour. As the characters alternately fight with and succumb to their desires, these desires seem to be disproportionately intensified, often leading to tragic consequences. The thesis seeks to analyse this process in the light of G. W. F. Hegel's and Jacques Lacan's elaborations on the nature of desire, which provide the theoretical basis for the discussion of the fiction. While Lacan sees desire as seeking its own sustenance and intensification, ultimately converting itself into a desire for an unfulfilled desire, Hegel sees desire as a movement of self-consciousness towards a return to itself that is accomplished by desiring the desire of another self-consciousness, that is, recognition. The thesis will explore several variations on the logic of desire which divert it from its path towards recognition, and these can also be seen as various types of addiction: namely, the art of hunger, Protestantism, money-hoarding, Orphic desire, the vicious circle of writing, the gambling appetite and the dialectic of homecoming. By examining through close reading how these motifs are given vivid illustration in George Eliot's fiction, this thesis will demonstrate that the theme of intensified desire is a prominent feature that runs throughout her works and is of central importance in understanding the complex emotional lives and interactions of her characters. The myth of Orpheus's descent to the underworld, which depicts an intensification of a desire for a structurally unattainable love object that is the dead Eurydice, can be seen as a paradigm that is applicable to Eliot's early works. The ascetic figure of Maggie in The Mill on the Floss is then compared to the hunger artist in Franz Kafka's short story, through analysing the abundant food references in the novel. Her adolescent asceticism can be figuratively understood as a kind of anorexia and later develops into a kind of bulimia in her relationship with Stephen. Silas in Silas Marner, too, can be seen as a hunger artist in his addiction to work, until he is freed from his fixation through raising Eppie. In Middlemarch, there is a continuity between the earlier figure of Maggie and Dorothea, and also between Silas and Casaubon. Dorothea, who marries Casaubon out of her art of hunger, utilises her marital relationship to work out and overcome that same art of hunger, guided by Ladislaw as the advocate of spontaneous enjoyment. In the other unhappy marriage, Lydgate's relationship with Rosamond is examined in relation to his appetite for gambling, and that appetite is then seen to play a central part in Daniel Deronda where it is related to Gwendolen's mode of desire, which feeds off and intensifies the desires of others until it is stifled by Grandcourt. Deronda, on the other hand, finds a tentative solution to the impasses of desire in his commitment to the Jewish cause, which can be understood in relation to the text's references to the myth of Ulysses. The centrality of the problem of desire in Eliot's fiction is finally underlined by its reappearance in the work of one of her important successors in the exploration of the psyche, Henry James, whose The Portrait of a Lady can be seen to inherit its critique of desire from Daniel Deronda.