Figurations et relations : le sujet dans les romans à la première personne et les textes philosophiques du XVIIe siècle

Cette thèse a pour objectif de déterminer quelques aspects des figurations du sujet au XVIIe siècle à travers une lecture conjointe des romans à la première personne et des textes philosophiques de cette période. Partant de questionnements proches, ces deux genres discursifs construisent une figure du sujet savant et itinérant : être animé d'un désir de connaissance et amené à repenser les conditions d'énonciation de son expérience particulière. Pour les auteurs du corpus, la vérité se découvre au fil d'expériences singulières si bien que dire le monde avec exactitude revient à l'énoncer à la première personne, à en rendre une perception d'abord subjective. Se pose alors le problème de la légitimation de l'énonciation personnelle, légitimation qui permet d'articuler la première personne à une altérité tout en conservant la singularité du sujet. Cette singularité se double toujours d'une dispersion des identités du sujet et des référents de la première personne. Mais narration, fiction et usages du corps figurent cette identité en constellation. Les deux premières exposent la diversité des visages du « je », leurs concordances ou leurs discordances, à la fois être passé et présent, homme réel et personnage imaginaire, narrateur et auteur. Dans les usages liés aux peines et aux plaisirs du corps se dessine une autre forme de rencontre possible entre la particularité du sujet et l'autre : celui qu'il désire, avec lequel il souffre, avec lequel il jouit, qui vit en lui. Par tous ces aspects, énonciatif, narratif, fictionnel, physique, la subjectivité construite par les textes est toujours et essentiellement une relation : récit raconté pour rejoindre autrui.

Archipel suivi de L'étrangère en son royaume : la psyché du lieu chez Marguerite Duras

À partir de courts récits, la narratrice reconstitue le passé d’une famille. Le personnage central, une petite fille, est la narratrice qui retrace les événements qui ont mené à l’éclatement de la cellule familiale. Cette histoire autobiographique est rédigée au « elle » dans un souci de se distancier de ce passé. La petite fille a grandi et la narratrice qu’elle est devenue se réapproprie son héritage : la possibilité d’écrire cette histoire. Dans l’œuvre de Marguerite Duras, les lieux sont souvent sollicités pour participer à la narration des événements. Dans La pute de la côte normande et Écrire, deux œuvres autobiographiques rédigées au « je », les lieux sont ceux du quotidien. Ceux-ci sont révélateurs de la psychologie de l’auteure et se mêlent à la préoccupation d’écrire. Ainsi, Marguerite Duras, ses lieux et son écriture se retrouvent-ils liés par le langage de l’auteure, lequel témoigne du vide laissé par la mort de son père.

Histoires possibles et impossibles ; suivi de Le narrateur dans le texte fantastique

Six courts récits, qui peuvent n’en former qu’un, se penchent sur les possibilités de la voix narrative (à la troisième personne, au « je », au « nous », au « tu »). Ils réfléchissent sur l’acte de création comme construction et sur les effets de la narration. Pour preuve, le dernier texte reprend intégralement le premier. Le fantastique surgit au moment de l’hésitation du lecteur devant la nature des faits qui lui sont présentés. C’est avec les différentes instances que composent les destinateurs et les destinataires du récit que ce texte joue. La voix narrative, dans un texte fantastique, a une grande importance et doit créer une tension chez le lecteur, qui n’arrivera pas à trouver une explication pour certains aspects du récit. Le narrateur, souvent au « je », se confond avec un personnage. À l’aide de l’analyse du déroulement de l’intrigue et des procédés narratifs utilisés dans trois nouvelles : La Vénus d’Ille (Mérimée), Apparition (Maupassant), Ligeia (Poe), nous cherchons à montrer le rôle du narrateur dans le texte fantastique.

Instantes líricos de revelação: a narrativa poética em A paixão segundo G. H

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A estética do grotesco em Harmada e A céu aberto, de João Gilberto Noll

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Autobiografia e Ficção: análise do narrador em Extinção - Uma Derrocada, de Thomas Bernhard

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

The First Child In A Chinese Family Who Could Read Prior To Entry Into Elementary School: A Qualitative Intrinsic Case Study

ABSTRACT This study is an account of the literacy-related human environment a Chinese girl experienced as the first person in the history of her family who was able to read prior to entry into elementary school. Temporally speaking, the study spanned more than a decade from the initial, tentative research question to the formal, primary research question. Spatially speaking, it crossed three cultures: the Chinese, Korean, and American cultures. The study was inspired by the Zero Project in China, known as the "Project of Quality Education and Implementation for Children Aged Zero (fetus) to Six." The significance of the content issue in a child's literacy curriculum was explored in an interdisciplinary way. Case study served as a holistic research approach and provided the researcher with free temporal and spatial distance to pursue the indefinably multi-dimensional intricacies of a child's early literacy acquisition among generations in the family. Interpretation of the case was based on the relevant concepts within the scope of the researcher's knowledge of Chinese culture. Major findings revealed that the child's literacy acquisition was inseparably related to her parents' background as well as their awareness of and attitudes towards literacy, and that the foundation of all this was the harmony of the family. Through the lens of generational attitudes towards literacy and especially the lens of the researcher's multicultural life experiences, this study contributes to the field of curriculum studies in general and early literacy curriculum in particular by stimulating people to reconsider what to read to children, besides how to read to them. It calls attention once again to the classic curriculum question, "What knowledge is of most worth?" as well as what is the most essential spiritual food human beings need besides physical needs. This study suggests that Chinese philosophy should be included in a child's early literacy curriculum in China and calls for dialogues on the content issue of curriculum to gain a deeper understanding of human nature so that humans might co-live peacefully with all beings in the universe.

Nothing Normal Happens to Me: True Stories of a Journey from Madness to Motherhood

Written in first person, NOTHING NORMAL HAPPENS TO ME is a memoir in essays that traces the narrator’s journey from self-destruction to creation. Part one encompasses the narrator’s lost years, after she breaks free from the tyranny of her mentally ill mother and goes to live on her own at 17. Part two provides context for those bad girl years, exploring her childhood when she identified with her histrionic mother. Part three comprises stories about the narrator’s years of awakening when she seeks out transcendence, faith, and a family of her own. The pieces vary tonally and stylistically as they attempt to trace the maturing voice of the narrator. Like SEEKING RAPTURE: SCENES FROM A WOMAN’S LIFE by Kathryn Harrison, this collection centers on a young girl, who without her mother’s love, struggles to love herself. It is both a cautionary tale and a story of redemption.

The Cameraman

In this novel segment titled The Cameraman, a fictionalized version of silent film icon Buster Keaton grapples with his newfound role at big picture studio MGM, which has stripped him of his creative influence. For the first time in his career, Buster must operate with little authority in what was the beginning of the Hollywood studio system. This excerpt’s narrative present takes place in New York City in 1928 during the filming of The Cameraman, with flashbacks to Los Angeles in 1927, prior to the filming. The close third-person narrator examines what it means for Buster to be famous, to be an artist, and what happens when public and private identities are conflated.

The experiences of African women giving birth in Brisbane, Australia

Our purpose in this research was to uncover first-person descriptions of the birth experiences of African refugee women in Brisbane, Australia, and to explore the common themes that emerged from their experiences. We conducted semistructured interviews with 10 African refugees who had given birth in Brisbane. Essences universal to childbirth such as pain, control, and experiences of caregivers featured prominently in participants’ descriptions of their experiences. Their experiences, however, were further overshadowed by issues such as language barriers, the refugee experience, female genital mutilation (FGM), and encounters with health services with limited cultural competence.

Fictionalising oral history : narrative analysis, voice and identity

Details of a project which fictionalises the oral history of the life of the author's polio-afflicted grandmother Beth Bevan and her experiences at a home for children with disabilities are presented. The speech and language patterns recognised in the first person narration are described, as also the sense of voice and identity communicated through the oral history.

The voices of the exegesis

In a recent journal article, Luke Jaaniste and I identified an emergent model of exegesis. From a content analysis of submitted exegeses within a local archive, we identified an approach that is quite different from the traditional thesis, but is also distinct from previously identified forms of exegesis, which Milech and Schilo have described as a ‘context model’ (which assumes the voice of academic objectivity and provides an historical or theoretical context for the creative practice) and a ‘commentary’ model’ (which takes the form of a first person reflection on the challenges, insights and achievements of the practice). The model we identified combines these dichotomous forms and assumes a dual orientation–looking outwards to the established field of research, exemplars and theories, and inwards to the methodologies, processes and outcomes of the practice. We went on to argue that this ‘connective’ exegesis offers clear benefits to the researcher in connecting the practice to an established field while allowing the researcher to demonstrate how the methods have led to outcomes that advance the field in some way. And, while it helps the candidate to articulate objective claims for research innovation, it enables them to retain a voiced, personal relationship with their practice. However, it also poses considerable complexities and challenges in the writing. It requires a reconciliation of multi-perspectival subject positions: the disinterested perspective and academic objectivity of an observer/ethnographer/analyst/theorist at times and the invested perspective of the practitioner/ producer at others. The author must also contend with a range of writing styles, speech genres and voices: from the formal, polemical voice of the theorist to the personal, questioning and sometimes emotive voice of reflexivity. Moreover, the connective exegesis requires the researcher to synthesize various perspectives, subject positions, writing styles, and voices into a unified and coherent text. In this paper I consider strategies for writing a hybrid, connective exegesis. I first ground the discussion on polyvocality and alternate textual structures through reference to recent discussions in philosophy and critical theory, and point to examples of emergent approaches to texts and practices in related fields. I then return to the collection of archived exegeses to investigate the strategies that postgraduate candidates have adopted to resolve the problems that arise from a polyvocal, connective exegesis.

Doing new things with texts : multimodality and Mao’s Last Dancer

This paper describes a senior, multimodal task developed by Shauna O’Connor and the English staff at Brigidine College after consultation in the form of media workshops with Anita Jetnikoff. Gunther Kress (2006) suggested recently that due to the affordances of media platforms such as Web 2.0, “we need to be doing new things with texts”. The year 11 unit’s Finding a Voice parent text was the memoir, Mao’s last Dancer. The summative assessment task morphed over time from an ‘identity portrait’, into ‘a multimodal, first person narrative’.

Modeling player-like behaviour for game Al design

The design of artificial intelligence in computer games is an important component of a player's game play experience. As games are becoming more life-like and interactive, the need for more realistic game AI will increase. This is particularly the case with respect to AI that simulates how human players act, behave and make decisions. The purpose of this research is to establish a model of player-like behavior that may be effectively used to inform the design of artificial intelligence to more accurately mimic a player's decision making process. The research uses a qualitative analysis of player opinions and reactions while playing a first person shooter video game, with recordings of their in game actions, speech and facial characteristics. The initial studies provide player data that has been used to design a model of how a player behaves.

Narrative : family trauma or challenge and resilience in the Galapagos Archipelago

The chapter is a "here and now" narration in the first person as witnessed and experienced by the author during field work in the Galapagos Islands in 1976-79. The story begins on the most remote volcanic island of Fernandina where the breeding biology of Flightless cormorants was being studied. A small selection of the many potentially life threatening situations and challenges is described including stories related to the birth of their son.