Arts Collected Works - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 16
-
ItemPerforming Emiria Sunassa : reframing the female subject in post(University of Melbourne, 2012)The central figure of this thesis is Emiria Sunassa, a woman who was born in 1894 in Tanah Wangko, North Sulawesi. She grew up in colonial Indonesia, and later during the 1940s, amidst the transition from colonial to Independent Indonesia, she became the new nation�s most prominent female painter. Sources show that Emiria lived an extraordinary life as a nurse, plantation administrator, tiger and elephant hunter, businesswoman, poison-maker, and as a princess from the island Sultanate of Tidore who fought for Papuan independence from the Dutch. During the early 1960s Emiria �disappeared� from Jakarta, which later meant that those who remembered her often regarded Emiria as a �mystery�, and over the decades that followed she gradually disappeared from Indonesian public memory. The recent excavation of Emiria in the late 1990s and 2000s prompts the question of how does one embark on the task of reconstructing the subject of Emiria amidst so many conflicting narratives, artifacts and imaginings, and partial and fragmentary memories? This thesis examines Emiria�s creative practice, political commitments and everyday life as located at the centre of the discursive and practical project of the formation of a modern Indonesian culture during late colonial Indonesia. It introduces a framework for reconceptualising Emiria�s subjectivity through the performative tropes of princess/ primitive; home/ mother; and body/ self to enable an articulation of the feminine which has been negated or co-opted through singular or totalising narratives of the nation and colonialism. Emiria�s performance of these tropes is central as a historicising vehicle for the thesis and as a way for rewriting Emiria�s slippery, multiple and fragmented subjectivity. The thesis shows how Emiria transformed this apparent fragmentation as a strategy to continually reinvent herself, thus eluding subjugation and enclosure within categories fixed through nationalist and colonial power structures. I show how Emiria�s performances of the feminine can thus be reconfigured as potential sites for rupture and contestation.
-
Item
-
ItemThe problem of the Other in the work of Merleau-Ponty : from epistemology to ethics(University of Melbourne, 2012)This thesis explicates Merleau-Ponty�s implicit ethics. Part one concerns Merleau-Ponty�s interrogations of alterity, from its early elaboration as the �trace of the other� through to its ontological re-casting in terms of the reversibility thesis as this applies to the visible (the phenomenal world) and the invisible (the domains of language and culture). I examine and refute various criticisms regarding The Reversibility Thesis. The viability of the reversibility thesis is crucial to ensure real connection and real difference, thereby overcoming skeptical objections and avoiding solipsism. The Other revealed is a genuine, irreducible Other - neither projected nor introjected. Part two argues that Merleau-Ponty�s non-dual ontology leads to a radical reconfiguration of our understanding of ethics. I begin with an examination of the intersections between phenomenology, neuroscience and Buddhist Philosophy, specifically how these can illuminate the domain of intersubjectivity. I propose that intersubjectivity, like subjectivity is most usefully understood as three-tiered - primary, secondary and tertiary. Until recently the accounts of subjectivity and intersubjectivity have overlooked the primary level. I argue that through a proper appreciation of this primary level together with Merleau-Ponty�s notion of hyperreflection ethics can be re-visioned. I further argue that this ethical dimension completes Merleau-Ponty�s ontology of interdependence.
-
ItemSamsara : Conflicting visions for Buddhist nuns in an interconnected world(University of Melbourne, 2012)This dissertation explores very human, lived experiences of rapid religiocultural change arising from globalisation and modernity and, in turn, new complexities stemming from ever-increasing encounters with cultural difference, religious pluralism, and 'modern gender expectations'. In a rapidly interconnecting world, Buddhism is migrating worldwide, proliferating outside those Asian nations in which Buddhism has existed for centuries. However, although Buddhism has become global, it has not done so without selective re-fashioning, resulting in multiple localised forms of Buddhism. Transnational interaction between different Buddhist communities is now commonplace; while these cross-cultural encounters often result in rich, rewarding relationships, they are also a source of religiocultural tension and, sometimes, conflict. The latter is exemplified by recent disputes about proposals to introduce full (Tibetan: gelongma) ordination for Tibetan Buddhist nuns. I conceptualise local and global debates about gelongma ordination as a tight matrix of interwoven but conflicting religiocultural imaginaries, visions and politics. To unravel this, I explore three main threads, which interweave throughout this thesis - globalisation, modernity and gender. Accordingly, I draw on my ethnographic fieldwork conducted in local and transnational Buddhist communities. I first present 'Drolkar Choling�, a nun's community in north India, where only novice ordination is available. I then present 'Keumgangsa', a nun's community in South Korea, where full ordination is routinely undertaken. Interwoven throughout my dissertation is discussion of the transnational Buddhist community, who regularly meet and together attempt to negotiate the continuing forms, practices and meanings of Buddhism. Like my field research, this thesis moves back and forth between local and transnational Buddhist communities to show how both local religiocultural politics and intercultural encounters shape, and mutually reshape, engagements with, and imaginaries around, the gelongma ordination debate. While some Buddhists and scholars argue that the central problem around the lack of gelongma ordination is one of religious orthodoxy, others argue it is sexism and patriarchy. I argue, however, that debates around gender and full ordination are grounded in attempts to negotiate the complex intersection of globalisation and modernity. In particular, I argue that disputes about gelongma ordination are driven by struggles over religious and cultural 'legitimacy', ontological (insecurities, gender and identity politics, and contests over meaning as Buddhist modernities collide. In other words, struggles over gelongma ordination reveal that there are different, often taken-for-granted, visions for how things could and 'should' be within Buddhist communities. In turn, this presented each Buddhist group with a profound conundrum: how to contend with difference in a 'global world�. What emerges is both a universal and a particular story, involving the sticky entanglements of interconnections across difference ... and, from a Buddhist perspective, the unsatisfactoriness of samsara - worldly life.
-
ItemAnimal welfare, rights and utilitarianism(University of Melbourne, 2012)This thesis explores the relationship between ethical frameworks and animal protection movements. Arguments against the industrialised exploitation of animals frequently rely on deontological structures and the language of animal rights. Conversely, it's often claimed that utilitarian theorists are limited to a regulative approach to animal protection, and cannot make effective arguments against the systematic use of nonhuman animals while there is a possibility this use may produce more utility overall. In this thesis I argue that classic animal welfarism can be supported by a theory of rights, and that utilitarianism can support the abolitionist program to at least the same extent as the current animal rights framework can. The first two chapters begin with an investigation of certain key themes in the debate. In Chapter Two I consider different concepts of autonomy, and demonstrate that some animals - pigeons - are capable of autonomy understood as second-order volition. Chapter Three focuses on the role of sentience as it used to ground both animal rights and fundamental interests in a utilitarian framework. I argue that sentience alone is not a suitable basis on which to ground the strong abolitionist rights that are sometimes claimed, but that it can function as a foundation for a hedonistic understanding of utilitarianism. Chapters Four and Five focus on deontological conceptions of welfarism. In Chapter Four I seek to refute a defence of the moral orthodoxy which assigns rights to all and only humans. I consider an argument based on the evolutionary underpinnings of our moral framework and argue that understood as a variety of tertiary speciesism, it cannot be justified. The harmful effects of restricting rights to humans are also discussed, and in Chapter Five I suggest we might better capture the mainstream perspective with a program of welfare rights for animals. I do this by demonstrating that such a framework is already in place. In Chapters Six and Seven I turn to the utilitarian defence of abolitionism. Chapter Six starts by asking whether the utilitarian can respond to the claim that we ought to breed animals for human purposes because these animals 'wouldn't have lived otherwise'. 1 consider this challenge as a variation of Derek Parfit's 'Repugnant Conclusion' and investigate various solutions, as well as puzzles relating to our asymmetrical attitudes towards preventing suffering and promoting pleasure with respect to decisions about breeding. While these problems don't permit of an easy solution, it is not clear they affect only utilitarian abolitionism. In the final chapter 1 investigate the harm of exploitation and ask to what extent the property status contributes to this harm in a utilitarian framework. 1 ultimately apply a Marxian analysis to show that systematic animal exploitation results in a net utility loss wherever animals are commodified within the current global market. This contributes, therefore, to a stronger claim that utilitarianism can support an abolitionist approach to animal protection.
-
ItemUnsheathed : Unveiling our fear of love with Jean-Paul Sartre(University of Melbourne, 2012)
-
ItemRe-Calling The Game : Oral History, Popular Memory and Followers of Australian Rules Football(University of Melbourne, 2012)
-
ItemAn autobiographical narrative of the Black Power Movement and the 1972 Aboriginal Embassy(University of Melbourne, 2012)
-
ItemNo Preview AvailablePaphlagonia in late antiquity : landscape and material culture in north-central Anatolia(University of Melbourne, 2011)
-
ItemCryptic glyptic : a rhizomatic exploration of ambiguity in selected Minoan Neopalatial glyptic images(University of Melbourne, 2011)This thesis explores ambiguity in Bronze Age Aegean glyptic imagery. As glyptic forms have often produced conflicting interpretations, it is questioned whether positioning glyptic as ambiguous in fact conceals a deliberate muitivalency. Using a rhizomatic model, this thesis connects glyptic motifs together outside the construct of categorical classification, to explore the potential of glyptic images as multivalent. it is proposed that muitivalency functioned as a form of condensed expression, and examples of glyptic imagery are explored to support this argument.