Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Monstres – Philosophie'

Le XXe siècle en Occident a hérité de l’imaginaire animal et monstrueux du passé pour le transformer. Les mythes fondateurs de l’altérité moderne sont nés au XIXè siècle : Frankenstein ou le Prométhée moderne de Shelley, Dracula de Stoker, L’étrange cas du dr. Jekyll et M. Hyde de Stevenson. Le Horla, de Maupassant incarne le monstre indicible. L’île du docteur Moreau de Wells est un exemple de « l’humanimal », entre l’homme et la bête. Les genres fantastiques, de science-fiction et d’horreur, que ce soit en littérature comme au cinéma, bande dessinée ou jeux d’ordinateur ont absorbé le monstre et l’animalité dans des formes classiques et innovatrices, notamment en ce qui concerne le corps. L’animalité reflète le non sens de la vie dans La métamorphose de Kafka. Elle prend parfois le parti de l’ironie et de l’humour dans des formes brèves (Borges et Cortázar, par exemple), dans les fables animalières (Truismes de Darrieussecq, Les grands singes de W. Self) ou dans la réécriture des contes traditionnels (Le cabinet sanglant d’A. Carter). En tant que confrontation à l’autre, les trois enjeux principaux du monstre sont la peur, la mort et le mal. Il peut ainsi être idéalisé, comme dans Les chroniques martiennes de Bradbury ou vu comme ennemi, tels les Grands Anciens de Lovecraft. La mort s’incarne dans des êtres comme les zombies ou les vampires et dans la quête de l’immortalité, à travers l’homme artificiel, que ce soit le golem (Le Golem de Meyrink), le robot (R. U. R. De Čapek), le mutant ou le cyborg. Incarné par Satan, le mal absolu est aujourd’hui représenté par la malignité dans l’homme comme l’exprime L’Orange mécanique de Burgess. Le système monstrueux, évoqué par 1984 d’Orwell, s’est concrétisé dans l’histoire véritable. La bande dessinée Maus d’Art Spiegelman, le démontre. Solaris de S. Lem, dépasse le problème du bien et du mal et pose d’autres questions métaphysiques
XXth century’s Western culture has inherited from the past to recreate its own animal and monstrous imaginary. But the founder myths of modern alterity are born in the XIXth century : Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, by Shelley, Dracula, by Stoker, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Stevenson. The Horla, by Maupassant embodies the unspeakable monster. The Island of Doctor Moreau, by Wells is an example of “humanimal”, between man and beast. Literary genres as fantasy, science-fiction or horror, in fiction, films, comics or computer games, have adopted monsters and animality in classical or new forms, especially concerning the approach to the body as a theme. Animality reflects life’s nonsense in Kafkas’s Metamorphosis, but sometimes it chooses rather irony and humor in short genres (Borges and Cortázar), in animal fables (Truismes, by Darrieussecq, Great Apes, by Will Self) or in a renewal of traditional fairy tales (The Company of Wolves, by A. Carter). The three main stakes from the monster as a confrontation with the other are fear, death and evil. So it can be idealized (as in Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles) or taken as an enemy (as Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones). Death can be represented by zombies or vampires, also in a search for immortality, through the figure of artificial man, golem (The Golem, by Meyrink), robot (R. U. R. By Čapek), mutants or cyborgs. Absolute evil is incarnated by Satan. Today’s society believes rather in man’s inner evil, as Bradbury’s A Clockwork Orange describes. Orwell’s 1984 shows the monstrous political system. The comic Maus, by Spiegelman, describes how horror has actually been in real history. Solaris, by S. Lem, on the contrary, goes beyond good and evil in a rather metaphysical science-fiction story

Ce travail a pour but l'analyse des créatures monstrueuses dans trois textes appartenant au répertoire littéraire allemand du Moyen-Age : l'Alexandre de Strasbourg, le Herzog Ernst B et le Wigalois de Wirnt von Grafenberg, rédigés entre 1180 et 1220. Il se concentre sur la recherche du concept du monstre au Moyen-Age à travers l'analyse d'un corpus de représentations dites monstrueuses, de peuples et d'individus similaires à l'être humain, avec lesquels les héros entretiennent un contact lors d'un voyage. Cette étude a permis de comprendre la valeur de ce concept dans l'espace germanique de l'époque, ainsi que le champ lexical utilisé pour l'exprimer. La variété de termes correspond à la variété es fonctions que ces êtres exercent dans la littérature, mais aussi à la pluralité de facettes qu'ils peuvent assumer. En tant que représentations de l'altérité, ils collaborent à définir les limites du Soi par le héros et, par extension, par le lecteur. La différence physique ne constitue pas forcément une barrière empêchant le contact amical avec l'autrui. Cependant, une intégration absolue entre le Soi et l'Autre, au sens de l'ouverture d'un processus d'inclusion, reste difficile ; cela dépendra de la forme assumée par cet Autrui. En dernière instance, les monstres, insaisissables par excellence, échappent à la normalité - ils sont l'expression de l'impalpable
This thesis aims to analyze a series of monstrous creatures in three Middle High German texts : the Alexander of Strasbourg, the Herzog Ernst B and Wirnt von Grafenberg's Wigalois, written between 1180 and 1220. It focuses on the research of the concepts of monster and monstrosity in the Middle Ages through the study of a corpus of so-called monstrous representations, of peoples and individuals similar tu huaman beings with whom the heroes maintain a contact along a journey. This research has allowed us to understand the value of this concept in the germanic literature of the chosen period, as well as to know the lexical field used to describe it. The plurality of words corresponds therefore to the variety of functions assumed by these creatures in literature, but also to their variety of forms. As representations of the Other, they help to define the limits of the Self by both the hero and the reader. Their physical difference does not establish a barrier that disallows a friendly contact with the Other. However, an absolute integration between the Self and the Other, in terms of a process of inclusion, remains problematic - this will finally depend of the form they assume. Conclusively, as expressions of the untouchable, the monsters slip out of normality and remain the face of the intangible

Dans l'imaginaire des Grecs et des Romains, Scylla est un monstre qui combine des éléments canin, féminin, et marin. Ce travail analyse les différentes peurs qu'elle vint à incarner dans la littérature et l'iconographie antiques ainsi que les métaphores qui les unissent symboliquement et donnent au développement de la figure sa cohérence à travers époques et genres. On montre en particulier que trois modèles — le monstre dévorant, la femme fatale et la jeune fille nubile — sous-tendent nombre des représentations de Scylla et que tous trois impliquent un passage difficile, qu'il s'agisse de la gueule d'un prédateur, du sexe féminin ou de la transition vers l'âge adulte. À partir de l'exemple de Scylla sont abordées des questions théoriques plus larges comme celles de la relation entre textes et images, de la pertinence des concepts de " mythe " et de " figure mythique ", et du rôle de la sexualité dans les représentations de la monstruosité
In ancient Greek and Roman cultures, Scylla is a sea-monster that usually combines – albeit in manifold ways – features of a dog, a woman, and a fish. Through a close study of her representations in texts and images, this thesis analyses the fears that Scylla comes to embody in various sources as well as the metaphors that connect those fears and secure the coherence of her development across time and genres. In particular, it is argued that three models underlie many of Scylla's representations – the rapacious sea-monster, the sexually aggressive woman, and the bride-to-be – and that they all involve a narrow and potentially dangerous passage, be it the throat of a predator, the female genitals, or the transition into womanhood. By focusing on a specific figure of Greek and Roman mythology, the thesis sheds light on current theoretical debates including the relation between texts and images, the relevance of the notions of “myth” and “mythical figure,” and the role of gender in representations of monstrosity

Face à une galerie de personnages nommés monstres dans la production théâtrale et romanesque de Hugo, nous nous interrogeons sur ce que serait sa conception du monstre et de la monstruosité. En abordant deux genres littéraires, nous mettons en rapport des types différents de monstres, dont la création se situe à des moments distincts de la production hugolienne. Cette profusion de monstres amène à réfléchir sur la possibilité d'établir des catégories, identifiables ou contradictoires en soi. Nous partons de perspectives méthodologiques majeures, en abordant les monstruosités physique, sociopolitique et morale. Néanmoins, la notion hugolienne de monstre excède toute définition totalisante et présuppose le refus de l'unification ; sa force transgressive impliquant un versant négatif et autre affirmatif, dévoilant sa complication
Faced with a gallery of characters known as monsters in Victor Hugo's plays and novels, we examine his conception of monsters and monstrosity. By treating two literary genres, we may compare and contrast different types of monsters whose creation occurs at distinct moments in Hugo's production. This profusion of monsters leads us to reflect on the possibility of establishing categories; whether they are identifiable or contradictory. This research is made up of major methodological perspectives, dealing with physical, socio-political, and moral monstrosity. The notion of the monster in Hugo exceeds any all-encompassing definition and presupposes the refusal of unification, and its transgressive force implies two sides, a negative pole and a positive one, revealing its complexity

Académiciens et encyclopédistes cherchent a naturaliser les monstres, sur le mode aristotélicien. La notion "d'anomalie" se constitue contre celle "d'anormal". Le contexte providentialiste occulte est exemplaire d'un état de grâce de "l'observation". La contribution de Diderot fournit un modèle méthodologique au philosophe des sciences. Les résistances métaphysiques contre l'accidentalisme et l'épigenèse sont contextualisées. Auto-organisation de la matière et parcours accidenté bouleversent l'histoire naturelle. Les monstres doubles confirment les limites du dualisme à concevoir la mort, la volonté, l'identité personnelle. Le contexte est anthropologique. Les débats sur les monstres relèvent bien d'une période préscientifique. L'instrumentalisation diderotienne objective moins ces propriétés vitalistes qu'il ne consacre l'inscription du sujet connaissant dans la théorie de la connaissance : scepticisme n'équivaut pas à relativisme. La médecine légale émergente se réfère à la norme naturelle et dénonce la confusion de critères sociaux et naturels de discrimination. Cet égalitarisme théorique autorise l'exclusion sociale sur des modes particuliers, selon des critères naturels. Les traitements de la difformité et de l'inégalité relèvent de la médecine ou de la morale. Reste à spécialiser les instituts. Diderot expose les impasses de cette naturalisation dans ses objectifs d'intégration et de rationalisation de l'assistance, sans substituer à ces acquis positifs une apologie de la "différence". Sa lucidité sur les pouvoirs du corps, sur les limites de l'éducation, et sur l'intolérance à la souffrance consacre une "normativité biologique". À la sacralisation de la vie, comme à un eugénisme libéral, Diderot oppose des résistances conceptuelles fortes, éclairant les débats contemporains sur la sélection. Paradoxalement, l'axiologie ressortit à une philosophie matérialiste, contre une neutralisation finaliste et spiritualiste
Academicians and encyclopedists want to naturalize monsters, according to aristotelian way. Notion of "anomaly" appears rather than notion of "abnormal". Exemplarily, the method founded on "observation" allows academicians to occult providentialism in dispute. Diderot's contribution gives a methodological pattern to the philosopher of science. He shows the background of metaphysical resistances in order to establish accidentalism and epigenesis. The self-organization of matter and the emphasis of accidents make up a new natural history. Double monsters prove limits of dualism to think death, will and personal identity. The context is anthropological. These debates on monsters are indubitably dependent on such a pre-scientific era. Diderot's method aims less at objectifying these vitalistic properties than at establishing his own inscription in the theory of knowledge : scepticism is not a relativism. Newborn legal medicine refers the norm to natural normality, and exposes the confusion between social and natural criterions to legitimate discimination. Medicine and moral science have to take care of malformations and material inequalities, in so far as they commend specialization of institutions. Diderot shows the deadlock of this way of naturalization which is inable to integrate abnormal beings and to rationalize social welfare. However, he doesn't substitute an apology for "difference" for these scientist basis. On the contrary, he dwells on the powers of bodies, the limits to education, and the spontaneous intolerance to pain, so that he institutes a "biological normalcy". Diderot builds up strong conceptual resistances to two contemporary standards of thinking "selection" regarding prenatal diagnosis. He neither makes life sacred nor initiates liberal eugenics. Paradoxically, axiology is rather more dependent on materialistic philosophy than on finalist and spiritualistic systems. The latter are more efficient to consider ways of neutralizing affects

La critique récente sur Aphra Behn (1640-1689) a montré d’une part que ses courts romans entretiennent des liens privilégiés avec le champ de la philosophie naturelle montante et d’autre part, que le monstrueux ou l’exotique sont des motifs privilégiés de ses œuvres. Ce travail vise à mettre en lien ces deux différentes approches, en établissant la centralité de la notion de curiosité dans la fiction d’Aphra Behn. La curiosité est une notion ambivalente au XVIIe siècle qui, bien qu’elle continue à porter des connotations négatives d’origine chrétienne et médiévale, s’est vue revalorisée par la philosophie naturelle. A la même époque, la notion de curiosité suscite également un regain d’intérêt de la part des théoriciens du roman ; Behn se positionne dans le débat esthétique et épistémologique de son temps en revendiquant une mimesis originale du vrai absolu, qui refuse d’intéresser son lecteur par une curiosité pour les choses familières, et choisit de représenter l’extra-ordinaire. Behn tente de discriminer entre une « bonne » et une « mauvaise » curiosité, pour se poser en curieuse et en collectionneuse avisée, mais continue d’entretenir des liens avec une culture plus populaire de la curiosité, celle des spectacles de foires. Le « cabinet de curiosité littéraire » que construit Aphra Behn privilégie des figures de monstres atypiques, qui permettent d’inventer une forme romanesque curieuse et transgressive
Recent research on Aphra Behn has shown the link between the scientific prose of the period and Behn’s narrative fiction, while other scholars have underscored the importance of bodily and moral deformity in her works. Drawing on these apparently heterogeneous studies, this project aims at providing a global aesthetic framework for Behn’s fiction. The epistemological context of the late seventeenth century offers a stimulating insight in Behn’s fiction, especially through the notion of “curiosity”. This notion is at the centre of both the scientific and literary concerns of the period; the growing interest in natural philosophy progressively rehabilitates curiosity – which had been an object of scorn in the Augustinian tradition – first by valuing curiosity as the ideal attitude of the “scientist”, and by having curiosities as its major object of study – the rare, new, and unusual objects of the Wunderkammern replacing the “universal” objects of study of the Medieval and Renaissance science. At exactly the same time, in the literary field, the notion of curiosity undergoes a redefinition, in a somewhat similar fashion to that which occurs in the scientific field, shifting from the “generalities” of idealized romance to a new conception of curiosity in the emerging genre of the novel. Behn advocates for a radical mimesis of truth and extraordinary curiosities. At the time when Aphra Behn writes her fictional texts, curiosity is therefore a polysemic notion, whose unity can nonetheless be found in a set of specificities: curiosity is concerned, both in science and in literature, with the emotions/reactions of the “curious” scientist or reader; it is what leads us to experiment, and it comes from a desire for knowledge. But curiosity is also a transgressive desire: the distinction between two types of curiosity, a “good” and a “bad” curiosity, is central in Behn’s discourse. The parallel between Behn’s fascination with curiosities and the scientific episteme of her time is obvious in the numerous descriptions of exotica in Oroonoko, as the narrator explicitly compares the objects she shows to those which form part of the Royal Society repository, but the rest of Behn’s fiction is also concerned with this preoccupation with curiosity: in several of her other works, moral irregularities are conjoined with ‘natural’/physical irregularities which belong to the realm of curiosities. The various transgressions depicted in Behn’s fiction can therefore be seen as “curiosities”; Behn’s work can be read as a sort of Wunderkammern, as she herself seems to suggest when she wishes her novels were “esteem’d as Medals in the Cabinets of Men of Wit” – novelists collect and experiment on human nature just as natural philosophers do with nature (and art) in the cabinets of curiosities. But in her fiction Behn actually goes beyond the conventional notion of the cabinet of curiosities, by insisting on moral and physical monstrosity. In underlining the importance of the realm of curiosity in Behn’s fiction, this study aims at showing the specificity of her aesthetics and the originality of her conception of the novel; as she states in the preface to Oroonoko, writers, like painters, are supposed to “erase” defects: by deliberately choosing not to idealize nature, men, or society, and by choosing to systematically depict deformity and exceptions instead (rather than exemplary individuals), Aphra Behn invents her own conception of the novel, a sensationalist aesthetic of the “strange and novel”

L’imaginaire lié aux antipodes constitue à la Renaissance un dispositif rhétorique puissant, qui permet d’imaginer de nouveaux mondes à partir de croyances, rêves et légendes accumulés au cours des siècles. Face aux bouleversements produits par l’expansion européenne outre-mer, les antipodes contribuent à la transition entre la cosmologie médiévale et la géographie moderne. En outre, ils remettent en question la distinction entre ce qui est humain et ce qui ne l’est pas : l’habitant des antipodes, jadis identifié avec les races pliniennes ou les peuples des extrémités de la terre, se transforme dans le sauvage de l’idéologie coloniale moderne. Quatre grands courants mythiques se fondent dans ce creuset imaginaire : l’Age d’Or classique, le Paradis terrestre de la tradition judéo-chrétienne, l’Empire universel gréco-romain, et le pays de Cocagne de la culture populaire. Cette fusion donne naissance au mythe d’Utopie, et contribue de façon décisive à la formation de l’idée d’Europe
During the Renaissance, the imagination associated with the antipodes acted as a powerful rhetorical devise to imagine new worlds on the basis of beliefs, dreams and legends accumulated through the preceding centuries. Facing the cultural upheaval due to the European expansion overseas, the antipodes contributed to the transition from Christian cosmology to modern geography, and to the reappraisal of the distinction human vs non-human. The inhabitant of the antipodes, once identified with either the races described by Pliny or the peoples at the extreme borders of the Earth, became the savage of the modern colonial ideology. Four main myths joined together in this imaginary melting pot: the classical Golden Age; the Paradise on Earth of the Judaeo-Christian tradition; the Greco-Roman idea of a universal Empire; and the land of Cockaigne of the Medieval folk-lore. This fusion gave birth to the myth of Utopia and it provided a decisive contribution to the development of the idea of Europe

Dans le langage scientifique, un individu que l'on qualifie de monstrueux est atteint d'une perturbation de la morphogenèse. Il est alors rejeté par la norme corporelle instaurée par la société. Liés par la chair, les frères siamois représentent deux identités fusionnées dans un seul corps. Quant aux androgynes et hermaphrodites, ils regroupent les deux entités sexuelles au sein d'une anatomie unique. Ces corps hors norme, non séparés, aux identités duelles, sont mis en scène par les artistes contemporains. C’est ainsi, qu’ils utilisent l'image des frères siamois comme une métaphore de la structuration de l’identité dans le rapport à l’autre. Ils s’inspirent aussi de l’anatomie bisexuelle des androgynes et des transsexuels oscillant entre deux sexes, pour projeter un nouvel équilibre identitaire entre l’homme et la femme. Enfin, ils inventent ou s’inspirent de créatures hybrides et mythiques en mélangeant le corps de l’homme à celui de l’animal. Ses diverses représentations monstrueuses traduiraient-elles une inquiétude sur l’avenir de l’être humain manipulé par la science et la technique ?
In the scientific language, a person who is qualified as monstrous is reached with disturbance of morphogenesis. It is then rejected by the body standard founded by the society. Bound by the flesh, the Siamese twins represent two identities amalgamated in only one body. As for the androgynies and hermaphrodites, they gather two sexual entities in a single anatomy. These bodies except standard no separated double identities. They are represented by the contemporary artists. They use the Siamese image as a metaphor of the identity structure in the relation with the other. They are also inspired by the bisexual anatomy of the androgynies and the transsexual’s oscillation between two sexes, to project a new equilibrium identity between the man and the woman. At last, they invent or take as starting points with the hybrids and mythical creatures to mix the human body of the animal body. The question can be put: do these various monstrous representations translate the restlessness of the human future, manipulated by science and technology?

Le monstre est un terme paradoxal, il est à la fois mot et chose, mot blanc et mot ésotérique. Il désigne un invisible qui se manifeste toutefois sous la forme d'une information irrationnelle. Autrement dit, ce qui se révèle à travers le monstre, se présente souvent comme un non-sens, une aberration. Le monstre se donne alors comme un problème mathématique dans une situation où s'annonce une différence en soi, intangible. Cette différence, je l'étends dans l'étendue de l'écart entre zéro et zéro de l'expérience où fulgurance du geste créateur et œuvre d'art coïncident: un lieu topologique qui porte la trace de l'intellect en donnant une transparence à l'image, son « cristal ». Ce lieu impossible de l'expérience serait la place logique d'où provient le langage et vers quoi il converge. Dans cette recherche, il ne s'agit pas de monstres tératologiques, mais de mouvements, d'une puissance qui traverse l'artiste au risque de la rupture. C'est alors que nous attribuons au Monstre une haute définition de la création à l'épreuve de l'existence
The term monster is paradoxical; it is at the same time word and thing, the former being bath blank and esoteric. lt designates an invisible that is nevertheless manifested in the form of irrational information. ln other words, that which is revealed through the monster often appears as nonsense, an aberration. As such, the monster is given in the guise of a mathematical question whereby difference, in itself intangible, is announced. ln the present research, difference is understood in the gaping stretch between the zero and the zero of experience where bath work of art and the dazzling speed of the creative act coïncide; a topological place that bears the trace of the intellect while endowing the image with transparency or its "crystal". This impossible place of experience would be the place of logic; a place towards which language converges and from which it emerges all at once. This research is primarily concerned with the question of movements rather than with the teratology of monsters; it deals with this force, thus described, as it traverses the artist facing the perils of rupture. For that matter, the monster is associated with a higher order of creation, one that is, nevertheless, constantly submitted to the test of existence

Alfred Jarry est le créateur d’une oeuvre fascinante et déconcertante. Sa poétique confirme par de nombreux aspects les principes esthétiques du symbolisme, mais d’autres aspects restent énigmatiques si la grille interprétative du symbolisme n’est pas complétée par des perspectives distinctes. Le danger d’une approche chaotique n’est pas insurmontable, car les idées de cet auteur singulier sont subordonnées à une notion directrice qui les ordonne et les rend cohérentes : il s’agit de l’identité des contraires. Notre travail est consacré à l’étude de son fonctionnement dans la poétique de Jarry. L’idée directrice de notre exploration est l’avatar symboliste d’une notion philosophique qui a connu une grande popularité dans les milieux érudits à la Renaissance, quand elle circulait surtout dans sa variante latine, la coincidentia oppositorum. Jarry, qui pénètre en profondeur la complexité du contexte renaissant de cette idée, se l’approprie, l’assimile et… la détourne, pour l’exploiter comme moteur esthétique de sa littérature. Après un premier temps où elle examine le contexte d’origine de la notion, notre étude fixe les repères de la manière dont la coincidentia oppositorum, informe la poétique de Jarry. Certaines des “contradictions“ les plus poignantes de l’univers imaginaire issu de sa plume se donnent à lire de la sorte comme résultat du mélange inhabituel, mais cohérent, de deux visions du monde séparées par quelques siècles de variations culturelles
Alfred Jarry is the creator of a fascinating and disconcerting work. By many aspects, his poetics confirms the aesthetic principles of symbolism, but some other aspects remain enigmatic if the interpretive grid of symbolism is not complemented by distinct perspectives. The danger of a chaotic approach is not insurmountable, because all the ideas of this singular author are leaded by a directing notion that ordons and gives them coherence : that is the identity of opposites. Our essay is devoted to the study of its operation in the poetics of Jarry. The thrust of our exploration is the symbolist avatar of a philosophical notion that has been very popular in the erudite circles during the Renaissance, when it was mainly traveling in his Latin variant, the coincidentia oppositorum. Jarry, who penetrates deep into the complexity of the idea’s Renaissance context, appropriates, assimilates and. . . Diverts it, so that he can use it as a aesthetic engine for its literature. In the beginning, our study examines the context of the original concept, and then marks out how the coincidentia oppositorum informs the poetics of Jarry. This way, some of the most poignant "inconsistencies" of the fantasy world issued from his pen can be read as a result of the unusual, but coherent, mix of two worldviews separated by several centuries of cultural variations

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2014.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 115-120).
This dissertation is about person features, their representation and interpretation in natural language. I will argue that there are several ways in which person features can be represented and interpreted. Most importantly, I will provide evidence for a kind of person features that are parts of referential indices of pronouns, constraining possible values that the assignment function maps the indices to (cf. Minor 2011, Sudo 2012). It is this particular way of representing person features that allows to postulate operators that manipulate the assignment in way that all pronouns with certain person features are affected. Such operators, as I will demonstrate, do exist. They come in at least two varieties, imposter operators and monster operators. Imposter operators manipulate the assignment by making all free 1st person indices (or all 2nd person indices) undefined in their scope, and when 1st or 2nd person indices are undefined 3rd person indices can be used instead. Building on the observations from Collins and Postal 2012, I will argue that we can interpret the 3rd person pronoun in sentences like Yours truly's dissertation wasfiled a week before his birthday as referring to the speaker because there is a silent imposter operator that suppresses 1st person indices in the domain that includes the imposter yours truly and the pronoun. Furthermore, it is due to the presence of the same operator that the 1st person pronoun and the 3rd person pronoun in sentences like Yours truly filed his dissertation before my birthday cannot be understood as coreferential. Another likely candidate for a person-sensitive assignment-manipulating operator is the monster operator in Mishar Tatar (strictly speaking, it is not a Kaplanian monster, but I will use the term anyway). This operator is responsible for the fact that a subclass of indexical pronouns in this language may shift to denote the coordinates of the context embedded under an attitude predicate. Thus, the dissertation contains two case studies: one on imposters in English (Chapter 1) and one on indexical shifting in Mishar Tatar (Chapter 2). The overall hope is to build a case in which possible interpretations of person pronouns can inform us about their syntactic representation.
by Alexander Podobryaev.
Ph. D.

Ce travail se propose d'étudier ce que le monstre humain physique est pour nous, les représentations contemporaines qui laissent penser et parfois dire "c'est un monstre" à propos d'un être au corps difforme. Les outils que sont la phénomenologie du corps propre (Merleau-Ponty) et la psychanalyse (Freud et Anzieu) permettent de comprendre en quoi la perception de la déformation corporelle chez autrui nous touche si intimement. L'enquête porte sur la période contemporaine (XIXème et XX ème siècles) où se développe en France la tératologie scientifique. Elle confronte représentations communes et scientifiques à travers les oeuvres fondatrices d'Etienne et Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Camille Dareste et Etienne Wolff. L'exemple de l'unité et de la dualité du corps chez les monstres doubles y est particulièrement mis en valeur. Ces recherches éclairent le rapport au handicap physique et donnent une nouvelle dimension à l'étude anthropologique du corps, saisi dans sa différence radicale
The aim of this dissertation is to study what the human monster means for us, those representations that lead us to think and sometimes say "this is a monster" in relation to a human being with a deformed body. The phenomenology of the body as self (corps propre) (Merlau-Ponty) and psychoanalysis (Freud and Didier Anzieu) provide instruments to understand how perceiving deformity in others affects us deeply. The survey encompasses the 19th and 20th centuries, during which period teratology, as a science, was developed in France. It compares scientific and common representations in the founding works of Etienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Camille Dareste and Etienne Wolff. The problem of the unity or duality of the body in the case of conjoined twins receives special notice. This inquiry throws light on our relationship to physical handicaps and leads to enhance the anthropological study of the body, with respect to its radical difference

Ce projet analyse le mémoire hybride Mean de Myriam Gurba et la nouvelle « The Husband Stitch » de Carmen Maria Machado en se concentrant sur différentes itérations de monstruosité féminine dans des récits portant sur la culture du viol. Je démontre comment les corps féminins codés comme monstrueux deviennent le site d’un contre-discours qui perturbe et élargi les conceptions sociales qui sont faites de la violence sexuelle. Les écrits de Nathalie Wilson et Sara Ahmed informent la théorisation des monstres et de leurs rôles prescrits, tandis que les idées de corporéalité, embodiment, et abjection illuminent les possibilités représentatives du corps féminin et insistent sur ses capacités comme agent de changements culturels. Le premier chapitre examine la notion de corporéalité à travers différentes descriptions des traitements du corps féminin monstrueux. Les concepts d’embodiment et d’abjection signalent l’impact de la culture du viol sur le corps, considèrent tous les espaces comme potentiellement dangereux, et illustrent les similarités entre l’acte physique de viol et certaines techniques narratives. Le deuxième chapitre analyse la multiplicité de façons de régulariser le corps féminin monstrueux et de le subjuguer à des fins patriarcales. Par la juxtaposition délibérée de plusieurs moments clés à l’inclusion de cautionary tales subversifs, la nouvelle élabore une épistémologie radicalement politisée. Dans ce chapitre, l’abjection est perçue comme une technique expérimentale qui dérange la conception que le lecteur se fait de sa propre corporéalité et subjectivité.
This thesis analyzes Myriam Gurba’s hybrid memoir Mean and Carmen Maria Machado’s short story “The Husband Stitch” through a focus on different iterations of female monstrosity in narratives about rape culture. I demonstrate how female bodies coded as monstrous become the site of a counter-discourse that disrupts and enlarges the social conceptions of sexual violence. The writings of Nathalie Wilson and Sara Ahmed inform the theorization of monsters and their prescribed roles, while the ideas of corporeality, embodiment, and abjection engage the representative possibilities of the female body and insist on its possibilities as agent of cultural change. The first chapter examines the notion of corporeality through different descriptions of the treatment of the monstrous female body. The concepts of embodiment and abjection signal the impact of rape culture on the body, consider all spaces as potentially dangerous, and illustrate the similarities between the physical act of rape and certain narrative techniques. The second chapter analyzes the multiple ways of regularizing the monstrous female body and of subjugating it for patriarchal purposes. Through the deliberate juxtaposition of several key moments with the inclusion of subversive cautionary tales, the short story elaborates a radically politicized epistemology. In this chapter, abjection is understood as an experimental technique that disturbs the reader’s conception of their own corporeality and subjectivity.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
The aim of this study is to examine the meaning of the act of thinking and its implications on the possibility of doing or not philosophy. From the exposition of Gilles Deleuze about what the thought is, I try to point out his secret or not formally announced uses. This means that if philosophy creates concepts, it is because they refer to universal problems, meaning, in other words, that they always repeat themselves, responding to the particular needs of each time. If the problem of thought as noted by Deleuze is universal, this work tries to comprehend how philosophical discourses are constructed, either causing the difference or neutralizing the ability that the Other also have to think and create. Hence, even exercised by images (in the case of the art), philosophy as a way to justify the intentions of thought would create double-sided monsters with the retails of its history: both affirming the forms of life and making the existence an unhappy process of recognition.
O objetivo deste trabalho é examinar o significado do ato de pensar e suas implicações diante da possibilidade de se fazer ou não filosofia. Partindo da exposição de Gilles Deleuze sobre o que é pensamento, procuro apontar para seus usos secretos ou não formalmente anunciados. Isso significa que se a filosofia cria conceitos, é porque eles referem a problemas universais, ou seja, que se repetem sempre, respondendo não obstante às necessidades particulares de cada tempo. Se o problema do pensamento tal como notado por Deleuze é universal, trata-se de compreender a forma como os discursos filosóficos são construídos, seja para provocar a diferença, seja para neutralizar a capacidade que o Outro também teria de pensar e criar. Donde, até mesmo exercitada por imagens (no caso da arte), a filosofia como forma de justificar as intenções do pensamento criaria com retalhos de sua história um monstro de dupla face: tanto afirmando as formas de vida quanto tornando a existência um processo infeliz de recognição.
Mestre em Filosofia

L'objet de ce travail de thèse est l'analyse des monstruosités biologiques en tant qu'elles posent question quant à la nature même de la vie et quant à la puissance de la raison à pouvoir l'appréhender. En mettant l'accent sur le travail d'Étienne et d'Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, nous nous sommes attachés à montrer en quoi la tératologie parvenait à intégrer les monstres dans des procédures rationnelles - ici celles des sciences biologiques. Mais cette intégration se fait au prix d'un oubli : la dimension nécessairement normative du concept de monstre. Nous nous sommes alors efforcés d'intégrer cette dimension normative et nous avons alors mis au jour la question de savoir ce qu'est la vie en elle-même pour qu'elle soit capable de produire des êtres vivants monstrueux. Cette question nous a amené à élaborer une métaphysique de la vie selon laquelle elle est, en son être même, errance vitale. Penser les monstres revient à devoir penser la vie comme puissance d'écart.

This paper examines the relationship between literature and philosophy, with special regards to how literature can contribute to deepen the understanding in philosophical matters. This is executed by a comparison between how a work of fiction, versus works of philosophy, can tackle the issue of personhood. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is being compared with philosopher Lynne Rudder Baker’s Persons and Bodies and Jacques Maritain’s The Person and the Common Good in order to map out how literature can contribute to the philosophical discourse regarding personhood. The paper finalizes that the main character in Frankenstein, “the monster” displays several issues that may show up when trying to define what it means to be a person, and where the line is to be drawn between a person and a non-person. The paper thus serves a two-folded purpose: to expand and challenge the traditional philosophical methodology, and find new understanding within the subject of personhood.

Through the lens of the horror film and the fairy tale, this thesis explores the notion of the grotesque as a boundary phenomenon—a negotiation of what is self and what is other. As such, it locates the function that the monstrous and the grotesque have in the formation of a personal and social identity. In asking why we take pleasure in the perverse, I explore how permutations of guilt, victimhood, and desire can be actively rewritten, in order to construct a stable sense of self.

Despite his own conservative values, D.H. Lawrence writes sexually liberated female characters. The most subversive female characters in Lawrence’s oeuvre are the Brangwens of The Rainbow. The Brangwens are prototypical models of a form of femininity that connects women to Nature while distancing them from society; his women are cast as monsters, but are strengthened from their link with Nature. They represent what I am calling the Lawrentian-Woman. The Lawrentian-Woman has proven influential for contemporary British authors. I examine the Lawrentian-Woman’s adoption by later writers and her evolution from modernist frame to postmodern appropriation. First, I look at the Brangwens. They establish the tropes of the Lawrentian-Woman and provide the base from which to compare the model’s subsequent mutations. Next, I examine modern British writers and their appropriation of the Lawrentian-Woman. The Lawrentian-Woman’s attributes remain intact, but are deconstructed in ways that explore women’s continued liminality in patriarchal society.

x, 197 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
This dissertation investigates the cultural importance of the "monstrous Other" in postmodern literature, including novels from Sweden, Finland, and the United States. While the theoretical concept of "the Other" is in wide circulation in the humanities and social sciences, the concept has only recently been modified with the adjective "monstrous" to highlight a special case of the Other that plays an important role in the formation of human subjectivity. In order to better understand the representational legacy of the monstrous Other, I explore some of the principal venues in which it has appeared in western literature, philosophy, folklore, and politics. Using a Foucauldian archaeological approach in my literature survey allows me to trace the tradition of the monstrous Other in such sources as medieval bestiaries, the wild man motif in folklore and popular culture, and the medicalization of intersexual embodiment. In all cases, the monstrous Other is a complex phenomenon with broad implications for the politics of subjectivity and the future of social and political justice. Moreover, the monstrous Other poses significant challenges for the ongoing tenability of normative notions of the human, including such primary human traits as sexuality and a gendered, "natural" embodiment. Given the complexities of the monstrous Other and the ways in which it both upholds and intervenes in normative human identities, no single theoretical approach is adequate to the task of examining its functioning. Instead, the project calls for an approach that blends the methodologies of (post)psychoanalytic and queer theory while retaining a critical awareness of both the representational nature of subjectivity and its material effects. By employing both strains of theory, I am able to "read" the monstrous Other as both a necessary condition of subjectivity and a model of intersubjectivity that could provide an alternative to the positivism and binarism of normative subjectivity. The texts that I examine here reveal the ways in which postmodern reconfigurations of the monstrous Other challenge the (hetero)normativity of human subjectivity and its hierarchical forms of differentiation. My reading of these texts locates the possibilities for a hybridized, cyborgian existence beyond the outermost limits of positivistic, western subjectivity.
Committee in charge: Ellen Rees, Chairperson, German and Scandinavian; Daniel Wojcik, Member, English; Jenifer Presto, Member, Comparative Literature; Aletta Biersack, Outside Member, Anthropology

La thèse explore les différentes voies du désordre empruntées par l’œuvre de Jean Giono, en adoptant une lecture littéraire, mais aussi anthropologique, ethnologique et sociologique des textes. L’étude s’intéresse d’abord à l’importance thématique de la nature, et montre qu’au-delà des apparents désordres climatiques ou saisonniers, le monde gionien est globalement ordonné. La deuxième partie de la thèse examine alors le traitement que Giono réserve aux hommes : confrontés à un ordre quotidien ennuyeux, ceux-ci explorent des divertissements qui les conduisent à un désordre de l’action démesuré et mortifère. Finalement, l’étude aboutit à l’idée que seul le désordre parfaitement organisé de l’art, et plus particulièrement de la littérature, constitue un divertissement suffisant selon Giono qui, tout au long de son œuvre, expérimente dans le contenu comme dans la forme de ses textes un désordre total au travers duquel il cherche à profiter d’un vertige systématique, d’un déséquilibre savamment maîtrisé
This thesis deals with the various forms of disorder that can be found in Jean Giono’s literary work. The chosen approach for this analysis is multifaceted, mainly literary but also anthropological, ethnological and sociological. The study first examines the thematic importance of nature. It reveals, despite climatic and seasonal disorders, the orderliness of the natural world Giono usually describes. The study then focuses on human beings in Giono’s work: philosophically bored by the monotony of a day-to-day order, they investigate various forms of diversions, and in doing so eventually experiment a dangerous violent action disorder, which leads them to physical or mental death. The study finally proves that artistic disorder seems to be the only one that can save mankind from everlasting metaphysical boredom: Giono’s work insists on the value of literary disorder. Writing enables him to test absolute disorder, considered to be the only way to benefit from a systematic vertiginous lack of balance

La présente thèse est une étude interdisciplinaire portant sur la représentation de la maladie psychophysique dans l’œuvre de Denis Diderot, placée dans un rapport dialectique ouvert avec les théories médicales produites par l’école vitaliste de Montpellier, vers la moitié du 18e siècle. La considération de l’organisme en tant qu’animata anatome où l’esprit se fait chair par le biais de la sensibilité, est le préalable à l’étude d’une maladie qui touche au physique et au moral à la fois et c’est aussi le premier acquis d’un renouveau épistémologique et méthodologique de la médecine opéré par les vitalistes. Les traités de notre corpus, justifié par les notes de Diderot dans ses Éléments de physiologie et également les articles de l’Encyclopédie à matière médicale, présentent des tentatives de théorisation de ce type de maladie. Dans la transcription de leurs expériences, les médecins emploient des solutions poétiques qui ouvrent le traité médical aux formes et aux modes du roman. Autant de propositions poétiques s’affichent dans les Éléments de physiologie. Diderot énonce ainsi sa science de l’homme, réfléchit sur les conséquences du déterminisme physiologique e aboutit à la conception de l’homme comme un complexe enchevêtrement de besoins et de relations. Les romans et les contes de Diderot sont le laboratoire où il interroge la complexité des rapports entre l’individu et le réel et où il pourvoit la maladie psychosomatique de fonctions narratives et esthétiques. Par la représentation vraisemblable des manifestations physiologiques maladives, il s’approprie l’observation clinique propre aux médecins, implique son lecteur dans la narration et met en question la philosophie morale classique
This thesis is an interdisciplinary study about the representation of the psychosomatic disease in Denis Diderot’s work put in an open dialectical relationship with Vitalistic medical theories from Montpellier medical school, around the mid-18th century. The notion of the organism as an animata anatome where soul is made flesh through sensibility is the precondition for the study of a disease that affects both the body and the mind. This is also the main finding proposed by the vitalists in their epistemological and methodological renewal of medicine. The treatises taken into consideration in our corpus following Diderot’s notes in Éléments de physiologie, as well as the articles of the Encyclopédie concerning medical matters, present attempts to theorize this new type of disease. By transcribing their experiences, doctors use poetic solutions that open the medical treatise to the forms and modes of the novel. The same figurative and poetic approaches can be found in Éléments de physiologie. In this essay, Diderot thus formulates his “science de l’homme”, he reflects on the consequences of physiological determinism, and he finally envisions the human being as a complex convolution of needs and relations. Diderot's novels and tales are the laboratory where he questions the complexity of the relationship between the individual and reality and he provides the psychosomatic disease with narrative and aesthetic functions. By representing sick physiological manifestations in a realistic way, Diderot appropriates the clinical observation specific to physicians, he involves his reader in the narration, and he questions classical moral philosophy

abstract: This dissertation addresses the tendency among some disability scholars to overlook the importance of congenital deformity and disability in the pre-modern West. It argues that congenital deformity and disability deviated so greatly from able-bodied norms that they have played a pivotal role in the history of Western Civilization. In particular, it explores the evolution of two seemingly separate, but ultimately related, ideas from classical antiquity through the First World War: (1) the idea that there was some type of significance, whether supernatural or natural, to the existence of congenital deformity and (2) the idea that the existence of disabled people has resulted in a disability problem for western societies because many disabilities can hinder labor productivity to such an extent that large numbers of the disabled cannot survive without taking precious resources from their more productive, able-bodied counterparts. It also looks at how certain categories of disabled people, including, monsters, hunchbacks, cripples, the blind, the deaf and dumb, and dwarfs, which signified aesthetic and functional deviations from able-bodied norms, often reinforced able-bodied prejudices against the disabled.
Dissertation/Thesis
Ph.D. History 2013