School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemThe discussion of myth in Dialectic Of Enlightenment: myth and the unfinished task of enlightenment( 2014)My thesis examines the discussion of myth in Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic Of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Contesting Habermas’ influential reading of Dialectic Of Enlightenment as a ‘totalising critique of reason,’ I argue that Horkheimer and Adorno entwine two concepts of myth into a highly original study of philosophical self-reflection. I call the first concept of myth ‘allegorical’; it stems from aesthetics. I call the second concept of myth ‘anthropological’. In chapter 1 I first provide a brief outline of Dialectic Of Enlightenment and the mainstream Anglophone commentaries on the book. I then argue that the Anglophone mainstream has largely overlooked a concept of self-reflection which is to be found through a detailed examination of Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of modern reason, a critique which is built, in large part, around the particular theme of myth. In Chapter 2 I unpack Horkheimer and Adorno’s allegorical reading of myth, a reading which treats the figure of Odysseus sailing past the Sirens as an allegory for the ‘myth’ of instrumental reason. Odysseus is here presented as an exemplar of the isolated, alienated subject of the modern world whose ability for thought and reflection is conditioned by the dehumanising instrumental reason of modern industrialised society. In a line of thought that is modelled upon aesthetics, I argue that this reading of myth illuminates a potential for qualitatively new forms of self-reflection and human solidarity. In chapter 3 I present Horkheimer and Adorno’s anthropological reading of myth. Myth in this reading is ‘myth’ seen through the eyes of the modern anthropologist; it is a kind of symbolic support for customs, traditions and kinship bonds of pre- or non-modern cultures. Through an innovative reading of Homer’s Odyssey as documenting the cultural memory of an early stage of settled European civilisation, Horkheimer and Adorno unravel the Homeric memory of traces of this anthropological concept of myth reaching into our species’ distant past. Upon this basis, I argue that Horkheimer and Adorno’s interpretation of the Odyssey becomes a highly original attempt to establish an anthropological underpinning for the concept of self-reflection which is sketched out in the authors’ allegorical reading of myth. Finally, I conclude that Horkheimer and Adorno’s discussion of myth presents a valuable perspective on philosophical self-reflection which has been largely overlooked in the mainstream secondary literature on Dialectic Of Enlightenment.
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ItemAn ethico-aesthetics of injecting drug use: body, space, memory, capital( 2009)Harm minimisation approaches to illicit drug use have proven extremely successful in reducing drug-related harm and improving health outcomes for those using drugs, their families and the broader community. Despite these successes, however, many harm minimisation programmes face strong community opposition, and many others are limited in their effectiveness by their reluctance to acknowledge the complex ways in which drug using contexts, social relationships, desire, pleasure and aesthetics are involved in the production and reduction of drug-related harm.[NP] Deleuze and Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic philosophy offers a conceptual framework through which to begin to grapple with the sensory and affective elements of illicit drug use and their implications for an embodied ethics. Following an introduction to their key concepts, this thesis explores the implications of their ontology for understandings of injecting drug use across four inter-related dimensions: the drug using body; urban spaces of injecting; public overdose memorials; and drug referenced, ‘heroin chic’ advertising imagery. It argues that aesthetics and ethics are complexly intertwined, and that ethically positive responses to drug use require an active appreciation of the ways in which aesthetics affect bodies and their capacities to form relations with others.