School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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    Hubris in the Odyssey
    Walstab, A. ( 1999)
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    Neither bad nor mad : the competing discourses of psychiatry, law and politics
    Greig, Deidre Ngaio ( 1999)
    Garry David's dramatic threats of violence against individuals and the community, as well as his acts of gross self-mutilation, set in train a discourse between psychiatry, the law and politics, which focused on the place of the severely personality-disordered in the institutional context. The Victorian Labor Government's determination to detain him in custody, in the absence of either criminality or a legally-defined mental illness, tested the way in which the historically uncertain boundary between 'madness and 'badness' is drawn, as well as the differences between the concept of a mental illness and a mental disorder. It is argued that Garry shared many of the characteristics of other personality-disordered prisoners', who are ultimately released and, therefore, the reasons for his preventive detention and singular actions of the Government need to be understood, especially in the light of the social justice strategies, which had enhanced the rights of mentally disordered offenders by limiting their detention in custody. A major theme explores why he was singled out, and the significance of the Government's decision to proceed with the implementation of 'one-person' legislation, which was clumsily drafted, out of step with fundamental legal principles, and came dangerously close to making him a martyr through the exercise of powers of attainder. A sub-theme considers the interaction between psychiatry and the law, particularly in the courtroom, and the different way in which each discipline constructs its response to the same problem. It was concluded that the state's unusual action was triggered by the coalescence of a number of factors, rather than any clear demonstration of Garry David's propensity for dangerousness, apart from his sel-mutilation. Of particular importance were: the arousal of intuitive fears about dangerous persons in the wake of some recent multiple killings; the Government's need to reaffirm its support for the Victoria Police; the influence of structural changes within forensic psychiatry; and finally, the way in which Garry's dramatic and articulate threats were intensified by his ability to violate his own body and by his unusual tenacity in resisting carceral pressure. The legacy of Garry David was three fold: more general preventive detention legislation was implemented under the provisions of the Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic); a niche was created for the treatment of some of the more severely personality-disordered; and the High. Court of Australia rejected singular legislation for dangerous persons. This case is a palpable demonstration of the need to safeguard the traditional distinction between the Executive and Judiciary, and it points to the inadvisability of governments directly intervening in professional areas of decision-making.
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    Wheel of time, wheel of history : cultural change and cultural production in an A mdo Tibetan community
    Stevenson, Mark J ( 1999)
    Examining art, literature and mass media this dissertation aims to understand processes of social and cultural change in Rebkong (Tibetan: Reb gong; Chinese: Huangnan Zangzu Zizhi Zhou [Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture]). Located in Tibet's north-eastern province of Amdo (now on the eastern edge of China's Qinghai Province), Rebkong has long been part of the Sino-Tibetan interface where symbols of identity and power were negotiated through complex and hybrid oppositions. The chapters in Part I describe the historical expansions of Tibetan and Chinese powers into Amdo, focusing on forms of administration and their relation to competing ideologies. From those findings it is argued that the cultural and administrative structures supported by the Chinese state in Amdo today have evolved from earlier forms of colonisation and, in response to forms of imperialism introduced by Western powers, are a modern advance on them. Continuing this theme in Part II the dissertation analyses cultural politics in Rebkong through an examination of ritual art and performance, temple scrolls (T: thang ka), butter sculpture, "socialised" painting, and the lives of individual artists. The mass-media and its impact on questions of identity and new forms of knowledge in Rebkong are also examined in the context of the "outsideness" of the ethnographer. The argument throughout is that change is always a question of power, particularly in colonial contexts. In Rebkong the opposition between Tibetan and Chinese visions of authority has resulted in a series of contrasting values, the most important of which has been that of religious versus secular, or ideal versus material. Since 1949 there have been a number of Chinese political movements that have attempted to eliminate Tibetan Buddhism, along with its symbols, institutions and representatives. The body of research developed here makes it clear that while such strategies have caused much destruction they ultimately strengthen the symbolic power of the cultural values they attempt to displace; as new forms of heterodoxy "Tibetan" values fall outside state control and become unmanageable. Finally the dissertation draws attention to forces of globalisation and to China's own ongoing cultural and ideological crisis. It is argued that the type of cultural analysis presented here, as well as the humanistic opportunities within the ethnographic encounter itself, can suggest new readings of "tradition" as a positive and liberating force for confronting reified and over-politicised forms of cultural life.
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    The evolution of Wittgenstein's views of meaning
    Tran, Tuan Phong ( 1999)
    The problems of meaning and language play a crucial role in Wittgenstein's philosophy. Wittgenstein believes that philosophical problems are rooted in language, and that they can be understood and resolved when questions about linguistic meaning and the way language relates to reality are properly addressed. During his philosophical development Wittgenstein held different approaches to the problem of meaning and language. A clear view about his view about meaning is necessary in order for us to be in position to understand assess his philosophy. The aim of my thesis is to explore different accounts of meaning in different periods of the development of Wittgenstein's thought. In his first account of meaning, known as the Picture Theory of Meaning in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein developed a highly sophisticated and complex picture-theory which is the basis of his contention that language is a mirror of reality. At this early stage Wittgenstein had been influenced by the thoughts of Frege and Russell. In the Picture Theory of Meaning the notion of logical form plays a crucial role. Just as each proposition must share its logical form with the state of affairs it depicts, so language, the totality of propositions, must share logical form with what it depicts the. The harmony between language and reality which makes representation is - possible is logical-pictorial isomorphism, the structural identity between what represents and what is represented. Just as the elements in a picture correspond to a possible arrangement of objects in reality, so sentences contain names, which correspond to objects in the world; and the arrangement of names in the sentence corresponds to a possible arrangement of objects in the world. Meaning is possible because language mirrors reality in this way: from the structure of language we can read off the structure of reality. In other words we can learn about the structure of reality from sentences of language. In his early view, Wittgenstein believed that fact-stating discourse is really all the meaningful discourse there is. But in the later works it turns out that fact-stating discourse is just one type of discourse among many other types, just one type of language game along with a countless number of other types of language-game. So in his later works, Wittgenstein abandoned the picture theory of meaning in favour of a use account of meaning. He urges us to think of words as tools, think of sentences as instruments. To get a correct account of language and meaning we need simply to look at how it functions in real life; we need to look at what people do with words. Whereas the Tractatus envisioned a logical structure as the essential form and link of language and world, in the later works there are flexible constraints connected with human activities, with language-games and forms of life as the basis and structure of language. A shift has occurred from a pictorial structural approach to use-activity approach. Language is not just words and rules but words and rules in the practice of use. Meaning is understood as a social phenomenon. The meaning of words should be found in the practical context of everyday life, in the stream of thought and activity, in which a given use of words is embedded.