Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Intimate realism'

In an attempt to address the issues in research and theory on consent, this thesis explores what consent can be seen as "doing" through an 'Intuitive Inquiry' (Anderson 2011a) and 'Agential Realism' (Barad 2007). Various manifestations of consent appears through: the experience of the researcher, consent research and theory, consent legislation, interviews with professionals in intimate-sexual consent, and, feminist fanzines. Consent evokes issues around agency, power, communication, respect, violence, risk, morals and ethics that go beyond sexual-intimate negotiation. Consent emerges as multiple, complex and fluid in 'intra-action' (ibid.) with the context. Entanglements and paradoxes of consent are further explored in 'diffractive analysis' (ibid.) through "bodily autonomy" and"rights/obligations". As a phenomenon, consent appears to make agency and power intelligible (to different degrees), but, can not be said to provide a viable strategy against sexual violence. The tenets of consent discourse risk (re)producing anxieties around intimacy and sex, responsibilizing survivors and obfuscating sexual violence. Further and improved research on communication in everyday sexual negotiation, sexual violence, consent legislation and what consent "does" is urgently needed.Through creative method and new epistemology the thesis (re)presents a knowledge process true to lived experience, as well as, an invitation to pull the terrible wonderful world, it's complexities, and us in it, closer.
I ett försök att ta itu med problem inom forskning och teori om 'consent' undersöker denna avhandling vad samtycke kan ses som ”göra” genom 'Intuitiv Inquiry' (Anderson 2011a) och'Agential Realism' (Barad 2007). Olika manifestationer av 'consent' framträder genom: forskarens erfarenheter, samtyckes-forskning och teori, samtyckelagstiftning, intervjuer med professionella inom samtycke, och, feministiska fanzines. Samtycke väcker frågor kring agens, makt, kommunikation, respekt, våld, risk, moral och etik som går bortom sexuella-intima förhandlingar. Samtycke framträder som multipelt, komplext och rörligt i 'intra-action' (ibid.) med kontexten. 'Entanglements' och paradoxer inom samtycke undersöks vidare i 'diffraktiv analys' (ibid.) genom "kroppslig autonomi" och"rättigheter/skyldigheter". Som ett fenomen gör samtycke agens och makt möjlig att tänka (iolika grad), men kan inte sägas bidra med en hållbar strategi mot sexuellt våld. Grundsatserna i samtyckesdiskursen riskerar att (re)producera ängsla kring intima-sexuella situationer, responsibilisera offer och dölja sexuellt våld. Ytterligare och förbättrad forskning är i akut behov kring kommunikation i vardagliga sexuella förhandlingar, sexuellt våld, samtyckeslagstiftning och vad samtycke "gör". Genom kreativ metod och ny epistemologi (re)presenterar avhandlingen en kunskapsprocesssom är trogen till levd verklighet, samt en inbjudan att närma sig, den fruktansvärda underbara världen, dess komplexitet, och oss inom den.

This thesis approaches 'trauma' in theatre and performance from the perspective of communication studies. Since 'trauma' is an unspeakable and unrepresentable inner state, I thus conceptualize the term 'the traumatic/spectrum' to refer to layers of reality, meaning and experience that can be expressed, represented and/or spoken about in relation to a traumatizing encounter. Through practice-led research, I propose a multi-sensorial devising tool for theatre & performance makers primarily, and artists of all disciplines, to facilitate a performance process for individuals who have walked through a traumatic or post-traumatic journey ('journeyers'), and have a desire, need or purpose to communicate to an audience. Based on a syncretism in journalism, ethnography, psychology, and art therapy techniques, this methodology draws out the form and the content through which individuals desire to communicate about their experiences. Conceptualized here as the re-creation process, this methodology tackles different types of communication predicaments or 'distance' between audiences and 'journeyers' when addressing the traumatic, including: disbelief, voyeurism or sensationalism, and the tendency to habituate, fatigue, de-sensitize, avoid, avert and/or alienate from the traumatic and those who journey with this reality. In response, I endorse the interrelation of two aesthetic manifestations that can 'bridge' different types of psychological, emotional, sociocultural and physical 'distance': one is a realm of theatre & performance which renders semantic and somatic forms of expression indivisible, and the other is Magical Realism. These aesthetics are applied as channels and strategies to engage participants in a meaningful, empowering, and pleasurable 'shared' experience beyond the therapeutic. Finally, I propose the term traumagical realism to further identify and explore the parallels between Magical Realism and the traumatic. Traumagical Realism is a liminal territory that can offer a deeper understanding of the traumatic, and catalyze a social, aesthetic and affective force of engagement or 'commun(e)ication' between 'journeyers' and all participants involved in the devising process and culmination of a performance.

This thesis is concerned with both the dangers and opportunities of China’s relations with the contemporary world and with the U.S.-led West in particular. It takes an unconventional approach to these issues in critically examining mainstream Western studies of Chinese foreign policy as a particular kind of discourse. The thesis focuses, more specifically, on the two dominant Western perspectives on China, (neo)realism and (neo)-liberalism. In doing so, it engages the questions of how Western discursive practice has come to shape and dominate the ways we think of and deal with ‘China’ in international relations, and how, as a result, China has often come to formulate its foreign policy in line with the prescribed meaning given to it by Western-based China scholars. In this context, the thesis argues that to deconstruct the processes by which China is given particular ‘meanings’ by Western discourses—and by which those meanings are transformed into both Western and Chinese foreign policy—is the key to a more profound understanding of Sino-Western relations and, perhaps, a first step towards ameliorating its problems and realising its potential for long-term peace and mutual prosperity.

Knowledge of genetic predisposition to future illness and disability creates uncertainties that shape and influence life decisions about reproduction, career, health behavior, and the need for care. Current research has not yet identified the meaning of the experience of feeling uncertain among intimate partners of persons who have received genetic information pertaining to future health status. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the meaning of uncertainty as a lived experienced among intimate partners of persons who have tested positive for a mutation in the gene causing Huntington disease (HD) but have not yet been clinically diagnosed with HD. The specific aims were to create a rich, vivid description of uncertainty as experienced by this population and to present these findings within an existential phenomenological perspective. Using van Manen's hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology, experiential descriptions from 10 intimate partners of persons in the prodromal phase of HD were obtained. Thematic aspects of the lived experience of uncertainty were uncovered and isolated; essential themes were determined; and linguistic transformations were composed. The analysis revealed four essential themes, indicating that the meaning of the lived experience of uncertainty was 1) an intangible reality characterized by 2) anticipating with ebbing and flowing disquietude while feeling 3) a weighty pull to dwell upon, towards inner turmoil and 4) a subdued presence with freeing possibilities. The implications of these findings are that nurses need to ensure adequate opportunity is created in which the meaning of the lived experience of uncertainty can be ascertained and explored among persons who are on the cusp of the inevitable but not yet graspable. Continued research is needed to further address the implications of being situated in this potentially fracturing phase of the disease trajectory and to determine appropriate interventions.

Violence against women and children is a pervasive challenge across the globe. Research has shown that survivors of interpersonal violence, such as child maltreatment and intimate partner violence, may develop a complex form of post-traumatic stress disorder accompanied by, for example, difficulties in regulating emotions and relating to others. Additional mental health and social problems contribute to survivors' long-term impairment. Therefore, it is imperative that we understand the key elements and processes that facilitate trauma recovery. The majority of research places survivors as individuals at the core of understanding trauma and recovery, which makes it an intrapsychic problem focused on, for example, the individual's cognitive bias, maladaptive interpersonal behaviour, or emotion dysregulation which need repairing, rather than considering appropriately the role of context, external factors and social processes. Thus, trauma recovery may be more complicated. The current study explored key elements and processes of trauma recovery in female adult survivors with a focus on emotional and interpersonal skills, within the narratives of individuals constructing their own recovery within an interpersonal context. Fifteen female adult survivors were recruited from a statutory clinical service and a third-sector community project. Participants were interviewed individually, and data were analysed qualitatively using grounded theory. The study constructed a framework of four key components. Women survivors initially disengaged from feelings, other people and themselves (1), gradually made hidden experiences visible (2) and examined these (3), and eventually reconstructed their reality (4). Although not always a linear process, this framework revealed a transition from self-guided to supported self-management. Women survivors sought out relationships, were impacted by relationships, and these relationships changed the way survivors responded. Thus, female trauma survivors reconstructed abuse, trauma and identity through various supportive others. Similarly, female survivors reframed emotional and interpersonal difficulties and gradually managed these through relationships. Future research as well as theories, practices and policies need to consider the multifaceted and relational nature of interpersonal trauma recovery. Guidelines and practices, for instance, could include community-focused strategies that provide a larger network of support to survivors and, thus, would offer multiple opportunities to experience positive interactions. Equally, mandatory training of health care staff about interpersonal violence and subsequent trauma as well as training in relating positively to survivors would make a real difference.

L’état de surveillance dans lequel est plongée la société contemporaine contraint à ériger des dispositifs spécifiques de sécurité. Les méthodes de surveillance utilisées relèvent principalement de l’observation et de l’écoute. De ce fait, le septième art, jouant sur « l’audio – visuel », se serait réapproprié certains de ces dispositifs comme celui de la caméra de surveillance.Ce travail de recherche s’inscrit dans le courant des Visual Culture Studies, etcherche à faire l’archéologie puis l’analyse d’un regard particulier, tel que le cinéma de fiction l’actualise très souvent depuis plusieurs années, celui des caméras de surveillance. Ainsi, la prolifération de ces images de surveillance dans les filmsmontre l’impact de phénomènes sociaux dans la représentation tant des images desautorités, que celles produites par les citoyens A travers les concepts de la surveillance, en passant par ceux de la sousveillance, la caméra de surveillance aucinéma apporte des points de vues divers sur le monde qui nous entoure en puisantégalement dans des représentations hybrides via l’intermédialité proposée par les films
The contemporary society is immersed in a state of surveillance, which forces it to set up specific security devices. The surveillance techniques used are mainlybased on observation and listening. Thus, cinema, as an audio and visual art has adopted some of these devices, such as the surveillance camera.This research takes part in the Visual Culture Studies, and aims to offer anarcheological description followed by the analysis of a specific gaze, that of the surveillance cameras, which has often been actualized over the past several years through narrative cinema. Consequently, the increased presence of thesesurveillance images in the movies shows the impact of social phenomenons in the representation of images produced by the authorities and those produced by private citizens. With the notions of surveillance and sousveillance, the surveillance camerain cinema displays several points of view of the world that surrounds us, using also hybrid representations through the intermediality offered by films

Este trabalho tem como objeto de estudo a investigação da poética de Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão buscando entender o que é fala perfeita para a Autora. Analisamos minuciosamente o poema Teoria da Realidade tratando-a por tu, que é toda uma poética, e o relacionamos com sua obra, demonstrando assim uma coerência em seu projeto poético. O poema analisado faz parte da série Poéticas, do livro Cenas Vivas de 2000. Nesse poema há um desdobramento do sujeito poético que persegue sua voz desde seus balbucios. Podemos dizer que o sujeito da enunciação nos conta como sua voz poética apareceu, desenvolveu, adquiriu a fala perfeita e a ofereceu aos leitores. Desde a publicação de Morfismos, em 1961, que a Autora preocupou-se em resgatar a língua da estreiteza de seu uso comum e em dar autonomia à linguagem, buscando o que chamou de poesia/ substantivo, assim se filiando à tradição da modernidade e especificamente a Mallarmé. Seus poemas são testemunhos de tudo o que foi escrito e lido por ela, desde as grandes epopeias e a Bíblia, à tradição anglo-germânica, aos grandes poetas americanos e à tradição portuguesa. Fizemos um percurso em sua obra perseguindo poemas que são poéticas, ou seja, que o tema é a própria poesia para descobrir como se dá a visão e o conhecimento que Fiama tem do real e do poético. Constatamos que fez uma opção pela realidade. A matéria poética de Fiama pertence à terra, há uma preocupação em desvendar o real. Podemos constatar essas questões, a partir da nossa leitura dos poemas de Obra Breve Poesia Reunida. Selecionamos um percurso poético que desaguou em Teoria da Realidade tratando-a por tu, o que nos mostrou a intimidade que adquiriu com a realidade, além de nos revelar como sua voz poética desabrochou.
This study has its object of research the poetry of Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão, attempting the understanding of what the perfect speech means to the author herself. Detailed examination of the poem Teoria da Realidade tratando-a por tu (The Theory or Reality getting familiar with it), reflects the complete author´s poetic, embracing Fiama´s work as a whole. The poem analyzed makes part of the series Poetics (Poetics) from the Cenas Vivas (Living Scenes) book dated from the year 2000. There is in this poem the unfolded poetic subject that chases her muttering voice. We can say the enunciation subject tells us how the poetic voice had emerged, developed, acquiring the perfect speech thus offering it at last to its readers. Since the publication of Morfismos (Morphisms) in 1961, the Author worries about the language narrowness, rescuing from its ordinary use. Giving autonomy to it as well as searching what she had called the poetry/noun. This way Fiama´s poetry filiation relies on the modern tradition and specifically in Mallarmé. Her poems witness all the things that has been written and read by her. From great epics to the Bible, the Anglo-Germanic tradition to the great American poets also including in this list the Portuguese tradition as well. The path throughout her work has chased poems that are poetic, in other words, that the theme is the poetry itself, revealing the envisioning and the knowledge Fiama has from reality as well as poetry. It has been detected she opted for reality. The poetic material for her, belongs to the Earth where there is a concern to unveil what is real. These matters have been attested based on the reading of the poems of the Obra Breve Poesia Reunida (Brief Works). The poetic path selected ended up in the Teoria da Realidade tratando-a por tu (Theory of Reality- getting familiar with it), this has exposed us the intimacy that she has gained with reality, revealing at same the time how her poetic voice blossomed.

This dissertation tracks a series of literary interventions into scientific debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showing how the realist novel generated new techniques of description in response to pressing philosophical problems about agency, materiality, and embodiment. In close conversation with developments in the sciences, writers such as George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Olive Schreiner portrayed human agency as contiguous with rather than opposed to the pulsations of the physical world. The human, for these authors, was not a privileged or even an autonomous entity but a node in a web of interactive and co-constitutive materialities. Focused on works of English fiction published between 1870-1920, I argue that the historical convergence of a British materialist science and a vitalistic Continental natural philosophy led to the rise of a dynamic realism attentive to material forces productive of “character.” Through the literary figure of character and the novelistic practice of description, I show, turn-of-the-century realists explored what it meant to be an embodied subject, how qualities in organisms emerge and develop, and the relationship between nature and culture more broadly.

ABSTRACT This thesis analyses a range of reality television programmes produced in New Zealand as part of a wider investigation into the affective strategies and discursive practices of the medium of television itself. The capacity of television, and more specifically reality television, to bring things close and render them present - spatially, temporally, socially and emotionally – is the thematic fulcrum of this study. Closeness is variously interpreted here as proximity (in terms of space, geography or social position), co-incidence (in terms of time) and intimacy (in terms of emotional affect). The present-ness of reality programming is both temporal (occurring now, in the present tense) and physical (occurring here, in this body, in this home, in this country). It is through this affect of present-ness that reality television most clearly engages with the domain of the real. Thus, this study also turns upon a consideration of the various significant ways in which reality television defines, pursues and manifests moments of realness on screen. The thesis is broken down into two parts, entitled Here and Now respectively, reflecting the double axis of spatial (incorporating social) and temporal present-ness. Within this bi-partite structure, six chapters focus in turn on a number of different discursive threads: Viscerality, Ordinariness, Community, Amateurism, Intimacy and Temporal Immediacy, producing a cumulative theoretical framework through which to address reality TV. In terms of methodology, this thesis pursues its exploration of reality television through close textual readings of selected programmes which have been produced for a New Zealand audience. Where appropriate, however, it draws on international examples of reality programming, in particular, those high-profile formats from Europe and the United States which have generated new paradigms for the production and reception of reality television worldwide. In addition, this thesis analyses programme form and content through a range of theoretical frameworks drawn from television studies and other academic disciplines. It also seeks to engage with international critical and academic debates surrounding the often controversial rise of reality programming as a televisual phenomenon in the nineties and into the twenty-first century. The production of this thesis coincides with a surge in academic output on the subject of reality television, and has benefited from recent publications in this area. This thesis attempts to balance both general and specific interests in New Zealand’s reality programming. On one hand, it places reality television within the context of long-established, international academic discussions about television as a medium, with the intent of showing that reality programming has an innate applicability to the domestic medium out of which it has arisen. On the other, this thesis pursues a more specific project, as it considers locally-produced programming as the particular output of the island nation of New Zealand. In this case, I argue that the particular aesthetic and discursive practices of reality programming, which devolve upon the ordinary, the domestic and the local, are well-suited to the ongoing production of culture and identity in a settler nation such as New Zealand.

This thesis represents a partial translation of the short story collection Omedetō by Kawakami Hiromi. Published in 2000, the collection contains twelve short stories, each narrating an intimate relationship between two people. It was favorably received by the literary world and was republished twice, in 2003 and 2007. My critical introduction provides context to Omedetō by discussing Kawakami’s biography and writing style, and the book’s reception in Japan. I also make note of my translation methods, domestication and dynamic equivalence, and provide examples of how I translated onomatopoeia. Finally, I give historical background to Japanese intimacy at the turn of the millennium and argue that each story serves as a commentary on Japanese modern intimacy, which Kawakami defines as a combination of physical and emotional closeness or a yearning for such.

Ce mémoire est consacré à la production culturelle en contexte de convergence au Québec. Dans le premier chapitre, je démontre comment différents éléments en sont venus à façonner la production culturelle contemporaine québécoise et comment la convergence médiatique est susceptible d’orienter la production et la parution de textes culturels. J'y expose aussi les bases d'une approche de la circulation par le biais de laquelle je propose de construire théoriquement mon objet d'étude. Le deuxième chapitre est consacré à la démarche méthodologique qui a présidé ma recherche. J'y présente d'abord le terrain de l'analyse, soit la téléréalité Occupation Double, en tant que phénomène intertextuel dont j'étudie les diverses configurations sur et à travers les principales plates-formes de Quebecor. Je poursuis en décrivant la constitution du corpus de textes à l'étude ainsi que les principaux paramètres d'analyse inspirés de la théorie de la circulation et de la méthode intertextuelle privilégiée. Le troisième chapitre rend compte des résultats d’analyse, présentant deux circuits médiatiques m’ayant permis d’observer les possibilités d’émergence de personnages construits autour des concurrents de la téléréalité Occupation Double. J’initie par la suite une piste de réflexion sur la création de zones d’intimité performées par ces mêmes personnages. En conclusion, je fais un retour sur l’évolution de mes recherches et constats et propose une réflexion sur l’intimité performée et les genres possiblement pressentis pour l’endosser.
This thesis is devoted to cultural production in the context of convergence in Quebec. In the first chapter, I demonstrate how different elements have come to shape the contemporary cultural production in Quebec and how media convergence may influence the production and publication of cultural texts. I also expose the foundations of an approach of circulation through which I propose to construct theoretically the subject of my study. The second chapter is devoted to the methodological approach that led to my research. I first presented the field of analysis, the reality TV Occupation Double, as an intertextual phenomenon which I study the various configurations across the main platforms of Quebecor. I continue by describing the corpus of texts under study and the main parameters of analysis inspired by the theory of circulation and the chosen intertextual method. The third chapter reveals the results of analysis, with two media channels which allowed me to observe the possibilities of emergence of characters built around the contestants in reality TV Occupation Double. I initiate a subsequent line of thought on the creation of zones of intimacy performed by these characters. In conclusion, I look back on the evolution of my research and findings and offer a reflection on performed intimacy and possibly approached types to endorse it.

À l’image des théories de la bande dessinée imprimée, la BD numérique est elle aussi accaparée par les analyses formalistes, dont la plus connue, celle de Scott McCloud, est critiquable, car elle réduit le média à un langage. Or, les mutations provoquées par la remédiation numérique ne sont pas uniquement formelles : l’expérience du lecteur, de l’auteur, et le rapport qu’ils entretiennent ensemble sont modifiés. Ce nouveau rapport influence le contenu des œuvres : on ne raconte pas la même chose dans le livre que sur Internet. L’autobiographie en BD, courant qui a explosé dans l’édition indépendante des années 1990, puis a été largement repris par les blogueurs, permet d’observer les différences de contenus et d’approches véhiculées par le livre et le numérique. Le dispositif du blogue propose un outil de liberté d’expression et de réflexion, mais les paramètres de son exécution (immédiateté, interactivité, désir de popularité, etc.) peuvent détourner cet objectif. Ainsi, beaucoup d’auteurs de blogues n’ont pas produit une autobiographie singulière, mais ont reproduit un courant de pensée existant (en exposant une libido fortement orientée vers la consommation) ainsi qu’un genre codifié, au sein duquel les autobiographies deviennent uniformes. Pour qualifier leurs blogues, on ne peut pas vraiment parler d’autobiographies, car ils ne mettent pas en scène un passé rétrospectif. Il s’agirait davantage de journaux intimes dont l’intimité est communiquée (ou publicisée) plutôt qu’expérimentée. Ce à quoi ces blogues ressemblent finalement le plus, c’est à une sorte de télé-réalité, une « bédé-réalité ».
Digital comics, like their printed counterparts, are heavily analyzed in a formalist approach: the most famous analysis, Scott McCloud's, could be criticized for it reduction of the media form to a language. But the changes that stem from the digital remediation aren't solely formal: the reader's experience, the author's, and the relation they share are all modified. This new relation changes the work's content: one doesn't tell the same thing in print and online. Autobiography in comics (a trend that exploded in the independent wave of the 90s and was later re-appropriated by bloggers) allows us to compare differences in approach between books and digital formats. The blog offers a tool for free speech and reflection, but at the same time diverts from such goals by the parameters of its execution (immediacy, interactivity, social networking, etc.). Indeed, many blog authors don't produce a singular autobiography as much as reproduce an existing trend (with a consumption-oriented libido) and a now-codified genre, in which autobiographies become uniform. Those blogs can't be completely considered as autobiographical anymore, as they don't tell of a retrospective past; they are more akin to personal diaries whose intimacy would be communicated (or publicized) instead of experienced. In that way, such blogs are closer to reality shows and could therefore be considered as a form of "reality comic".