Social & Political Thought

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Critique and Transcendence: A Phenomenological Investigation into the Normative Foundation of Critical Social Theory
(2024-11-07) Ghanbari, Mahdi; Steigerwald, Joan
This dissertation investigates the normative foundation of critical social theory, arguing that a lack of recognition of epistemological subjectivity as the foundation of normativity has permitted various forms of objectivistic (metaphysical) thinking to dominate the field. Metaphysical thinking uncritically posits a reality grounded solely in the mind’s ‘intentional’ theoretical projections as a mind-independent object. By adhering to this mode of thought, critical social theory misconstrues social reality, which is primarily formed through the practices of real human subjects, as being metaphysically constituted. Metaphysical thinking also falsely integrates transcendental subjectivity in the objective order of things and, thus, overlooks the essential need for transcendence as the foundation for normative practices. To liberate social theory from this alienation of the transcendental subject, this project begins with an analysis of metaphysical thought in general, drawing on Edmund Husserl’s method of transcendental phenomenology, and offers an expanded version of Kant’s critique of speculative reason. The scope of Kant’s critical investigation is confined to scholastic metaphysics, which limits its applicability in contemporary contexts. To overcome this limitation, this dissertation explores further transcendental elements at work in metaphysical thinking beyond those investigated by Kant and analyses two examples of contemporary metaphysical thinking, namely, the philosophies of Heidegger and Derrida. Transcendental phenomenology has been critiqued for purportedly advocating an ahistorical, disembodied, purely epistemological notion of subjectivity. This dissertation challenges such critiques by showing that commitment to transcendental-theoretical subjectivity allows for an analysis of material and historical subjectivity as part of a broader understanding of transcendental phenomenology. A phenomenology of material subjectivity then traces the origin of the fundamental concepts of social theory—such as alienation, justice, freedom, etc.—back to the economic structure of the lifeworld while asserting that a purely materialist and genetic analysis of these concepts fails to reveal their essentially normative nature. By maintaining a firm distinction between the transcendental and the material through epoche, transcendental phenomenology is capable of providing a normative ground for critique. This approach lays the groundwork for developing a phenomenologically clarified notion of teleological rationality on non-metaphysical grounds as an alternative to the instrumental rationality dominant in Western civilization.
Open Access
Safety.net? Care, Charity, and Medical Crowdfunding in Canada
(2024-11-07) Li, Vincci Tammy; Vosko, Leah
In a country that prides itself on a universal public health insurance system, why are a growing number of people turning to GoFundMe and similar crowdfunding platforms for health-related expenses in Canada, as beneficiaries and contributors? This dissertation argues that while assisting loved ones monetarily in times of need is not a new phenomenon, the increasing use and visibility of personal crowdfunding as a response to illness and injury signals a shift in the ways we think about, and engage in, giving and care relations. This research project offers a critical look at personal medical crowdfunding in Canada through a lens of feminist political economy complemented by multiple approaches to critical discourse analysis. It reveals personal medical crowdfunding as a space and practice that reflects and further cultivates neo-liberal ideals of privatization, individualism, and entrepreneurialism in relation to health-related financial struggles. Discourses and behaviours within the confines of crowdfunding platforms are found to be shaped – and at times, constrained – by the unique dynamics of personal medical crowdfunding as a practice, including “unspoken rules” around personal fundraising etiquette. This dissertation begins by situating the practice of personal medical crowdfunding within a context of neo-liberal re-structuring of Canadian health and social welfare policies which increasingly downloads responsibility for citizen well-being onto individual households and registered charities. Drawing on three sources of data – GoFundMe’s promotional materials, GoFundMe medical campaigns, and in-depth interviews with people who have participated in personal medical crowdfunding as a campaign creator, beneficiary, or contributor – I examine the ways in which crowdfunding discourses produce, reproduce, or challenge “common-sense” ideas about deservingness, responsibility for individual well-being, and health. Despite conflicted feelings amongst interview participants, GoFundMe decisively frames medical crowdfunding as a form of charity. An analysis of medical crowdfunding campaigns further illustrates that campaigns contain discourses of deservingness that characterize the beneficiary as hardworking, generous, and typically, as someone who would “never ask for help” for themself. By touting self-reliance as an honourable trait, crowdfunding discourses reinforce the stigma that many beneficiaries experience when seeking financial assistance for oft dire medical reasons.
Open Access
Tell Dem Wagwan Fanon: On [Colonial] Violence and Prison Labour in Canada
(2024-11-07) Batelaan, Krystal Alisha; Abdel-Shehid, Gamal
In this dissertation, I draw on Frantz Fanon’s concepts of cultural imposition and collective catharsis to examine how the colonized subject, like the incarcerated Black worker, undergoes a double process of dehumanization wherein they are perceived as both an invisible and hypervisible subject. I argue that the colonized subject is invisible insofar as they are subjected to various forms of dehumanization such as physiological and psychological abuse, lack of access to resources, and neglect. However, they are also perceived as hypervisible because they are viewed as existing in excess as hypersexual, hyper deviant, and hyper criminal creatures and therefore deserving of the treatment they endure. Similarly, the incarcerated worker is viewed as invisible and hypervisible because they are viewed as unskilled and subhuman beings undeserving of adequate pay and protections but are also perceived as best suited to work in poor conditions doing less skilled, undervalued, low-paying work. By tracing how this relationship between race, racialization and labour is underpinned by whiteness both historically and in a contemporary sense, I demonstrate how the use of prison labour within a Canadian multicultural context must necessarily be read through a normalizing white gaze, under the guise of public safety and rehabilitation; here the prison functions as a disciplinary site wherein Black and racialized prisoners are constructed as inferior beings in need of heightened control through labour. In doing so, I argue that the use of prison labour in Canadian prisons is a form of colonial violence that reproduces inferior and superior colonial identities.
Open Access
Towards a Decolonial Caribbean Reparations Movement
(2024-07-18) Eugene, Chevy Robin Junior; Kempadoo, Kamala
This dissertation seeks to establish a decolonial framework for Caribbean reparations that is located in the Black radical tradition. It critically examines the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) reparations campaign and proposes an alternative approach that embodies, explores, and revolves around everyday people—not the ruling elites—as the nucleus of decolonization processes that engage critically with a global and capitalist economic system. I argue that reparatory justice must take place on different levels—that is, internally (the liberation of the formerly enslaved and colonized body) and externally (society’s socioeconomic and political elements). To support this argument, I put Frantz Fanon’s (concept of a “new humanity” and Sylvia Wynter’s notion of “genres of man” in conversation with Robin Kelley’s nine theses of decolonization and Walter Rodney’s decolonial praxis of “groundings.” I propose the theory of Rastafari livity as a cartography to articulate the possibilities of internal and external liberation, which can inform the reparations campaign. Moreover, to illustrate the significance of arts and culture in creating transformative praxes, I explore how Rastafari as a social movement impacted Jamaican society from the 1960s to the 1970s; the project underlines the centrality of reggae in that process by examining the music of Bob Marley. I further extend my argument by addressing the legal framing of the reparations campaign through my application of Third World approaches to international law as a decolonial method. To engage civil society in the discourse of reparations, I argue for the movement to have a robust youth-led component since young people make up more than 50% of the Caribbean population and are the primary producers of contemporary culture in the region.
Open Access
From Palliative Practice to Transformative Praxis: A Black Feminist Psychology Framework on Black Canadians’ Mental Healthcare Service Delivery
(2024-07-18) Sraha-Yeboah, Michelle; Teo, Thomas
My dissertation proposes a Black Feminist Psychology Framework (BFP) to reframe how we examine Black Canadians’ mental healthcare service delivery. BFP offers a theoretical mode of inquiry to interrogate broader structural forces —political economies, hegemonic discourses, cultural patterns, and a larger pool of social relations— that interrelate to shape Black communities’ relationship to the mental health field. BFP aims to expand understandings of service use disparities for Black Canadians and create more culturally responsive mental healthcare. My framework is ontologically grounded in a constructivist paradigm, with a Black feminist and critical psychology ideological axiology. Applying BFP to my central research question: “What is transformative mental healthcare for Black Canadians in the afterlife of slavery?,” I look at the intersections of colonialism, neoliberalism and theism. I specifically examine colonial epistemologies in psychology, neoliberal mental health discourses and the socio-cultural values of religion and spirituality (R/S) structuring Black Canadians’ mental healthcare service delivery. Employing diverse qualitative research methods, including historical tracing, reflexive thematic analysis, and thematic literary analysis of novels, my findings offer strategies for strengthening service delivery and advancing a socially just mental health praxis. The interview data with parish ministers and psychotherapists helped me to identify the role of neoliberal discourses in mental healthcare service provision, and the policy’s attempts to circumvent societal interventions for systemic change. Additionally, my findings from the interviews define the contours of a holistic mental healthcare strategy that is inclusive of R/S perspectives and committed to developing individual and community-level mental health responses. Examining my study participants’ reflections against fictional reimaginings of mental healthcare strategies for Black communities, my literary analysis presents a “spiritual praxis of healing.” A spiritual praxis of healing transcends the limitations of neoliberal logics and biomedicine in mental healthcare and offers a discursive map for Black mental healthcare premised on freedom-making practices and emancipation. My dissertation presents transformative mental healthcare service delivery as encompassing historically attuned, politically engaged and culturally responsive care. It is a promising first step on the path towards stronger mental healthcare for Black Canadians and a confident stride in the long march to freedom.
Open Access
Tracing Black Radical Thought: Colonialism, Race, Class, Women and Gender in the Life and Works of C.L.R. James and Aime Cesaire
(2024-07-18) Gregg, Runako Kamau; Kempadoo, Kamala
This dissertation aims to illuminate the contours of the Black radical tradition, namely its anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist principles, through an examination of the lives and works of C.L.R. James and Aimé Césaire. There are four main goals here: (1) to introduce the trajectory and nuances of the Black radical tradition by way of the contributions of these two contemporaries, (2) to explore the varying expressions of these ideas through the span of several decades of the lives of James and Césaire, (3) to understand the portrayal of gender in some of their most important creative work, and (4) to think through the role that women played in their philosophical development and conception of revolutionary subjecthood. To meet these objectives, I first interrogate the early life influences of the philosophers in the respective colonies they were born into, including their educational and familial backgrounds, then delve into their engagements with Marxism and left-wing thought more broadly, before considering how gender is presented in their creative writings, and finally how women factor in their emergence and projections of radicalism. The method of comparative evaluation undertaken in this study lends itself to different pathways to apprehend some of James’ and Césaire’s most significant works. It thereby broaches ground for further research into these figures, while at the same time teasing out threads of the Black radical tradition that ultimately help to validate its utility as an analytical tool within the spectrum of humanist discourse. Moreover, the dissertation shows through the social and political thought of James and Césaire, two twentieth century thinkers from the Caribbean, lies a critical, internationalist, anti-oppressive framework aligned towards the betterment of humanity.
Open Access
Memory Restoration: Working through Histories in the North American Chinese Diaspora
(2024-03-16) Lu, Jun; Britzman, Deborah P.
From the perspective of psychoanalytic theory, this dissertation attempts to clarify the way and possibility of working through difficult histories in the Chinese diaspora in North America. Considering the discrete nature, fragmentation, mobility, and prevalence of individual and familial units within the diaspora, psychoanalysis provides an advantageous framework for investigating and addressing historical experiences and their aftermath. I examine the contributions of three prominent psychoanalytic theorists, Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and Donald Winnicott, in order to explore the ways in which their respective theories provide insights into the questions of: what one is working through, what one is working through to, and where one may locate the experiences of working through. Specifically, based on Winnicott’s concepts of ‘use of object’ and ‘transitional space,’ I argue that the use of cultural production, such as fiction, should be considered an integral part of the process of working through histories for the Chinese diaspora. I present three case studies that illustrate the utilization of cultural products from the Chinese diaspora as a means to comprehend their ongoing struggle between the processes of remembrance and forgetting. In my analysis, I consider not only the textual material itself, but also the factors pertaining to the authorship and reception of the text. These factors include situations of diaspora, traumatic experiences, the act of bearing witness, modes of learning, and the diligent endeavours of working through.
Open Access
Expropriating Ireland: Land Theft, Property Relations, and Ireland's Colonial Regime
(2023-12-08) Beirne, James Michael; Jenkins, William M.
Colonialism is perhaps the most significant social force in Irish history, but its long duration and the great scope of its impacts make it difficult to address comprehensively. This dissertation makes a step in this direction through a historical materialist framework, incorporating insights from political Marxism, settler colonial studies, and Gramscian historicism. The introduction situates present-day Ireland in the context of its colonisation and stresses the importance of a historical materialist approach unbounded by disciplinary considerations. Two theoretical chapters then introduce two important concepts which help delineate the essential contours of a colonial social totality over the longue durée. In the first chapter, colonial property relations are developed from the concept of social property relations advanced by scholars such as Robert Brenner, Ellen Meiksins Wood, and George Comninel and by engagement with Maïa Pal’s similar ‘colonial social property relations’. Ultimately, colonial property relations differ from social property relations in that rather than being part of the internal development of a single society, they are imposed by one society upon another. This theme is further developed in the second chapter, which—through a synthetic criticism of settler colonial property drawing on the work of Robert Nichols, Patrick Wolfe, and Brenna Bhandar—introduces the concept of the colonial regime. Drawing on the work of Esteve Morera and Eamonn Slater and Terrence McDonough’s interpretation of Marx’s writings on Ireland, which centres an early formulation of the concept of colonial regime, this is presented as a loose extension of Gramsci’s ‘integral state’ that is suited for historicist analysis of a precapitalist society that is not enveloped by a single state, but by a suprastate social structure. Then follows an extensive historical chapter which, beginning with a discussion of the nature of Gaelic class society before the arrival of the English, traces the development of colonial property relations and the colonial regime over the centuries, primarily through engagement with the historical and geographic literature. Following a preliminary discussion of the breakdown of English domination, the conclusion suggests that Ireland’s political economy is nevertheless still determined by the colonial system and advances a call for further, radical Irish theory and historiography.
Open Access
Capitalism's Safety Net: News Media and The Far-Right
(2023-12-08) Milonas, Panagiotis Peter; Agathangelou,Anna M.
Mass media significantly impacts public opinion and societal norms, but it is important to recognize that news coverage has contributed to the growth of far-right beliefs in various countries. This coverage has made conservative, nationalist, and authoritarian ideas more acceptable to the public and increased support for specific political figures. It is crucial to examine whether the capitalist media encourages the development of far-right beliefs and, if so, how. To investigate the relationship between the dominant ideology and news organizations’ role and influence in society, I use a political economy approach to analyze the power dynamics between politics, media, and economics. My research reveals how news organizations can influence other beliefs, such as anti-socialism, racism, sexism, and political apathy. I explain how liberalism and post-fascism aim to maintain and promote capitalist social structures, often working together to achieve this goal. Through my analytical framework, I show how the capitalist media uses the “safety net” as an ideological tool to support far-right groups and undermine radical left-wing political parties and movements during capitalist crises. This makes the “safety net” an institutional mechanism with significant power and resources to reinforce conservative beliefs. My project goes beyond analyzing commercial media and offers a critique of the capitalist mode of production.
Open Access
The Dialectic of the Unhappy Consciousness in J.M. Coetzee's Fiction
(2023-12-08) Shahinfard, Farzad; McNally, David
This study provides a dialectical alternative to poststructuralist and postmodernist readings of J. M. Coetzee’s fiction, on one hand, and Levinasian interpretations of his works, on the other. Drawing on Hegel and Adorno, I explore the subject position of the Unhappy Consciousness in three of Coetzee’s novels: Foe, Age of Iron, and Elizabeth Costello. Specifically, I argue that the women characters in these novels can be understood through the lens of the Unhappy Consciousness, that is, the “dual” consciousness of mastery and slavery. As such, they are obsessed with questions of freedom (mastery and slavery), forgiveness, love, salvation, and evil, among others. Women who bear the wounds of history, I believe, occupy the ideal subject position as mediators through which we can relate to the suffering of the other, including the animal others, without assimilating the other’s difference. This study attempts to understand the nature of this relation with the other without sacrificing “nonidentity” to the language of mastery. Susan Barton in Foe is a white woman whose voice has been silenced by white men and the literary canon. She locates herself as the master to Friday and the slave to Cruso, who is replaced by Foe later in the novel. Mrs. Curren in Age of Iron, likewise, is an ailing white woman situated in late-apartheid South Africa and as such she occupies the position of mastery with regards to the black population and a position of slavery with regards to men in general. Elizabeth Costello is both animal and human and as such mediates our relation with what she calls our “slave populations,” i.e., animals (104). As I show, all three novels can be read as adhering to but at the same time writing back to and revising the Hegelian Unhappy Consciousness. Drawing on Adorno, I regard the primacy of the bodily and the somatic, i.e. physical suffering, to be central to the dialectic of the Unhappy Consciousness in these novels. Ultimately, animals and nonhuman others appear as figures of “nonidentity” crawling through the surface of Coetzee’s fiction, plaguing the consciousness of his works and their breeding ground, i.e. culture.
Open Access
"I Ran From It And Still Was In It": Meditations On Melancholy And Race...In The Meantime
(2023-08-04) Amponsah, Evelyn; Agathangelou, Anna M.
This project engages with the question of black liberation. My project asks two key questions: in the absence of liberation, what can or does exist? And will liberation ever arrive? I answered these questions by tracing the figured opposition of Afro-pessimism and Black Optimism. I argue that while many see these approaches or experimental analytics in an oppositional way, it is important to focus on the interregnum of these two critical dispositions if we want to understand the possibilities for a world otherwise. Remaining in the interregnum can allow us to trace how and in what ways the presuppositions of Euro-American constructions of modernity implode. In modernity, Blackness has always been a site of untimely meditation manifesting itself in different and inventive ways. I argue that our current frameworks informed and shaped by white supremacy limit our imagining a future without Blackness, without whiteness and without race, because modern ego formation relies on these very enslaving structures. Beyond just imagining, toward making real, my project asks: what do we do in ‘the meantime’ as we invent (a new now/present and therefore future)? What is rendered central in the meantime, this site of transition and suspension, is a not a linear movement. Rather, the meantime as a method and a device allows a reading of these two radical dispositions about Blackness that discloses the indissoluble relationship between the ontological nothing and Blackness as its sociopolitical allotrope in the logics of melancholia as the liminal end of the world. Instead, staying with and in “the meantime”, I show how collapsing this imagined opposition between Afro-pessimism and Black Optimism (as responses to the anti-blackness and violence against the slave) challenges the melancholic structuration of antiblackness and its contingent utilitarian concepts such as the ego that comes in the desire for a mother and homeland, as expressed through the ‘return’ to Africa for Black people, and the need and desire for a Black other, as expressed through the figure of the slave, for white people and white supremacy. I thereby arrive at a conversation that nuances race, melancholy and notions of liberation and conclude with reminders of the importance of love to and for revolution
Open Access
The Ethics of Interpretation: Interpreting the Paradoxical Singularity of Spinoza's Ontological Argument
(2023-08-04) Nusbaum, Jordan Robert Johnstone; El Khachab, Walid
In this dissertation, I interpret Spinoza’s ontological argument to mean that the partiality of a part (mode) cannot be conceived except within the context of a whole (substance) in which it participates. Yet, insofar as a modified part (in-another) has a true idea of its own modified partiality, then that idea, and whatever follows from it, must be as irreducibly whole (in-itself) as the substantial whole in which it participates. This constitutes what I describe as the paradox of singularity in Spinoza’s thought because it establishes an ontology in which singular things are singularized or differentiated through an intersection of causes that must be conceived either in-themselves, in-another, or both at once. Given Spinoza’s (in)famous concept of absolutely infinite substance, the role and function of individuality and individuation in his philosophy has been a popular subject of dispute in the 20th century secondary literature. Some authors have sought to portray Spinoza as a champion of an untethered individualism, whereas others have emphasized the collectivistic bonds that bind individuals together in cooperative endeavors. Most productively, recent scholars have presented Spinoza as a thinker of what they call transindividuality. Spinoza, however, never used the term transindividuality in his writings, but he did employ two interrelated concepts of singularity (res singulares) which I thus argue should be described instead as paradoxical singularity. Many of the proponents of Spinoza’s transindividualism, or what I call paradoxical singularity, have overlooked the way in which his views on individuality and collectivity follows from the paradoxical logic with which Spinoza claims to know of the necessary existence of God. For this reason, few have understood how or why Spinoza’s ontological argument facilitates the non-ancillary adequacy between religion and philosophy as equivalent expressions of this immanent certainty. I therefore demonstrate how Spinoza’s ontological argument offers a paradoxical logic with which to identify, relate, and interpret universality and particularity. I argue that Spinoza’s ontological argument for the necessary existence of God constitutes a theory of action, way of being, or an ethos in which philosophy and religion are functionally identical. Yet, given the paradox of singularity that it involves, participation in this ethos presupposes a power of interpretation from which and for which individuals of a compatible nature strive to persevere in their being together.
Open Access
Manual Labour and Industrial Schooling for Indigenous Youth in Upper Canada, 1821-1863, and the Democratic Symbolic
(2023-08-04) Dawson, Dana Gayell; Singer, Brian C. J.
This dissertation explores why residential schooling went on to become a federal system despite early and acknowledged failures. Efforts to understand the provenance and aftermath of the system must address how the schools were intimately related to Canada’s colonial past and liberal democratic present. In this dissertation, the history of the residential school system for Indigenous children in Canada is situated within the context of pre-confederation democratization. Democratization is understood within the framework outlined by Claude Lefort as a sociocultural phenomenon characterized by a shift in symbolic representations of the locus of power away from an external, identifiable source toward the sovereign power of the individuals constituting a collectivity. I focus on how Crown administrators, missionaries and philanthropists articulated the desirability of manual labour and industrial boarding schools for Indigenous children and how those discourses reflected and propagated an emerging democratic symbolic. To maintain their unity, social systems have historically required symbolic representations of the source of legitimacy of concepts, relations of power, norms and behaviors. If for British colonizers, that source had in previous regimes represented something external to the collective that authorized claims to knowledge and was understood as the basis of law, within the democratic symbolic emergent in nineteenth century Western Europe and North America, that source dissipates in its distribution throughout the collectivity. In letters, reports and policy documents exploring and describing the form and function of manual labour and industrial boarding schools for Indigenous children written between 1821 and 1863, I identify the turn inward in seeking foundational legitimizing precepts in the evangelical ideal of salvation through personal transformation, in conceptualizations of self-perfection via pursuit of one’s individual interests and in ideas of a universalized society constructed around shared natural sympathies or mutual protection of self-interest. The work of manual labour and industrial boarding schools as they were imagined in this period was to generate a subject that would find the principle of order within their own person and cast out, preferably of their own volition, that which signified chaos and disorder.
Open Access
The Univocity of Attention: ADHD and the Case for a Renewed Self-Advocacy
(2023-03-28) Brown, Andrew Ivan; Martin, Aryn
This dissertation uses multi-sited ethnography and socio-philosophical analysis to answer the following questions: What is the current state of ADHD’s onto-epistemological status in contemporary discourse? Is an equivalent to critical autism studies possible for ADHD? Specifically, is it possible to refigure ADHD’s ontology as an affirmative difference rather than a deficit? Drawing from my own experiences living with ADHD, as well as anecdotal and ethnographic accounts from my engagement with ADHD self-advocacy communities, I put various critical social scientific theories “to the test,” including Hacking’s looping effects, structuralist-functionalist’s medicalization and social control, Foucault’s and Rose’s theories of subjectification and governmentality, Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming, the fold and related antipsychiatry approaches (e.g., in mad studies literature), and historical materialist theories of the pathologies of late-stage capitalism. My findings indicate that there is something specific about ADHD’s symptoms that pushes back against the often-totalizing nature of these critical theories. I also draw from science and technology studies to conduct an ethnographic study of an ADHD clinic in Japan, to explore how this specificity of ADHD “travels” in cross-cultural contexts without being reduced to biology or culture. The results of my research indicate that the ontological legitimacy of ADHD (what qualifies it as existing, and what it means for it to exist) in contemporary discourse has little to do with its purported neurobiological or genetic underpinnings. Instead, popular ontological beliefs appear to “swing” between two poles of what I call the “dialectic of medicalization”: in one direction, a belief in the ontological primacy of identity (a disease entity, human kind, brain type, medical label, and so on); in the other direction, a belief in the ontological primacy of individual variation (neurobiological diversity, “human distress,” statistically-associated symptoms, genetic correlates, and so on). I show how this dialectic keeps ADHD in conceptual purgatory, helps to explain the history and current state of ADHD discourse, and contributes to ADHD misrecognition and harm. Borrowing from Deleuze’s Difference & Repetition (1994), I call for a renewed ADHD self-advocacy that breaks free from this dialectic by reformulating ontologies of ADHD in terms of its “difference in itself.” My dissertation arrives at a position compatible with critical disability studies and critical autism studies, though in a way that speaks to the specificity of ADHD’s affirmative differences rather than reducing them to the generality of neurodiversity.
Open Access
The Esoteric, the Islamicate, and 20th Century World Literature
(2023-03-28) Amoui Kalareh, Kurosh; Boon, Marcus B.
By exploring the intersections of the esoteric and the islamicate in a series of 20th century literary works from disparate global locations, this dissertation maps out a constellation of countercultural world literature as a model for further advancing the study of literature and esotericism in a planetary context. Chapters are focused on literary works of Iranian Sādeq Hedāyat (1903-1951), Argentine Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), and the cut-up collaborations of American William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) and British-Canadian Brion Gysin (1916-1986). Using the statement 'writing is magic and labour,' I argue that these four authors yearned to attain ‘magic’ in their creative writing, while each had their own distinct definition and understanding of what this ‘magic’ would be. These definitions and understandings have been largely shaped by each author’s particular encounters with esoteric and islamicate discourses; they are also products of their ‘labour’—practices and strategies of writing and research affected by the social and political power dynamics of the fields of global cultural production and circulation. Hedāyat’s conception of magic, formed through encounters with European, Islamic, and Zoroastrian esoteric discourses, chiefly refers to practices and texts associated with the ancient magus (Zoroastrian priestly class) that through centuries of religious conflict have transfigured into something distant and incomprehensible. This magic becomes the subject of extensive folklore research for Hedāyat, and is further used and invoked in his works of fiction. For Borges, magic refers to the unexplainable quality of the aesthetic events that flees rational justification. His explorations in pantheism that expand to a range of esoteric currents such as Kabbalah and Gnosticism, find in the islamicate a culture that has grappled with questions on the nature of divinity and on writing being sacred and magical. In the cut-up collaborations of Burroughs-Gysin, the magic of writing is in the randomness of the process as well as the speech act of language, while its labour is primarily dependent on using scissors instead of conventional instruments of writing. Inspired by the islamicate milieu of post-war Tangier, Burroughs-Gysin opened up new possibilities for writing and for human-machine collaborations that are still influencing the electronic literature of the 21st century.
Open Access
The Open City: A Grammatology of Migrant-Rights Movements and the Logic of Sovereignty
(2023-03-28) Correia, Tyler; Hadj-Moussa, Ratiba
In the following work I apply a grammatological method of analysis to the concomitant objects of a logic of sovereignty and migrant-rights politics. Drawing on the analytical tools of genealogy, etymology and pragmatics outlined by Jacques Derrida, I argue that a portable grammar of emplaced possibility generated by migrant-rights movements situated in cities (sanctuary politics in Toronto, Canada, the sans-papier in Paris, and Sheffield UK’s “Cities of Sanctuary” movement) give rise to novel and significant changes in political discourse, generating articulations of a democracy of strangers, common right, solidarity beyond citizenship, and an unprecedented notion of freedom. Using this unorthodox method, I find that a history of Western logocentrism is constituted by an economy of translations not exclusive to its privileged subject or territorial boundary—especially involving circuits of meaning and tracing encounters with pre-Hellenic and Arabic cultures. In turn, the traditio or ‘official tradition’ of an interiorized ‘West’ passed down from Greece to Rome to the vernacular present is the product of a logic of sovereignty through which the repetition of questions that already imply internally homogeneous community against their ‘exteriors’ also generate assumptions around the author and authority of that community from Plato onward. From this vantage point, an international system of nation-states is understood to compulsively give rise to emergent technologies of border enforcement and extra-territorialization, detention, deportation and encampment. In departure from this logic, and signaling the possibilia of radically new institutional frameworks, attention to migrant-rights movements supports a distinct grammar of cosmopolitan democracy not yet captured by scholars, including a research project uncovering genealogies of cities as already plural and interdependent, etymologies of sanctuary, hospitality and civic refuge, and prefiguring institutions of welcome within a globalized world (in particular, parliaments of unrepresented subjects, universities as everyday critical sites of public engagement, and technological networks of vigilant anticipation of the arrival of newcomers). The amalgam of these theoretical and practical elements I refer to as the open city.
Open Access
No sovereign remedy: distress, madness, and mental health care in Guyana
(2022-12-14) Persaud, Savitri; Kempadoo, Kamala
This dissertation is an ethnographic examination of how mental distress is read and understood in Guyana. Through semi-structured qualitative interviews, site observations, media analysis, and document analysis (primary, secondary, tertiary, and grey literature), this research investigates (i) competing and complementary discourses and etiologies of distress; (ii) diverse care pathways and practices utilized by Guyanese to address and ease distress; (iii) and the histories, legacy of empire, and socio-politico-economic factors that inform and spring from this exploration. This research commenced in response to deaths and incidents of violence against women and girls who were labelled “mad”, “mentally ill”, and “demon possessed” in Guyanese news reports. These cases signalled the polyvalent, intersectional, and fluid ways in which Guyanese make sense of and respond to mental distress; thereby prompting research questions on belief systems, modalities of care, and the social relations that are produced, organized, and practiced as Guyanese attend to mental distress on their own terms. Interviews were conducted in Guyana with 37 helping practitioners, inclusive of medical doctors, nurses, social service agents, civil society/NGO actors, government officials at Guyana’s Ministry of Health, and religious/spiritual practitioners belonging to various faiths. Observations were carried out at the country’s National Psychiatric Hospital – informally known as the “Madhouse”. Participants emphasized how mental distress is colloquially and primarily perceived through the stigmatized and meaning-centred language of “madness”. They reported that the general public seldom uses the clinical terms “mental illness”/“mental disorder”, which reference the dominant, Western biomedical model of psychiatry. Instead, participants revealed how mental distress is expressed through an array of perceived explanatory models: biomedical; socio-economic/structural; (inter)personal; and supernatural. A major point of consensus among all 37 participants is how perceived supernatural causality is viewed as an intelligible landscape for understanding distress among the public; therefore, there is a propensity for religious/spiritual practitioners to act as first responders. Per participant accounts, Guyanese appear to embrace plurality and refuse either/or models of care. Consequently, these findings present crucial implications for theory, research, policy, and practice aimed at addressing and reducing mental distress experienced by Guyanese and fostering safe, comprehensive, responsive, and accountable public health systems.
Open Access
THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL POLITICS OF LISTENING TO BLACK CANADA(S)
(2022-12-14) Mohammed, Ola; Sanders, Leslie; Kempadoo, Kamala
This dissertation, Social and Cultural Politics of Listening to Black Canada(s) develops the concept, Black Nowheres, and its two registers—now here and know here—to understand how the pervasive conditions of anti-Blackness structure the world and can be registered in everyday sound and sonic practices. I employ a range of unsettled listening practices to sonically think and grapple with the dynamics of Black being and Blackness in Canada—particularly how Black people are treated by the Canadian Nation State—given the Nation’s complex relationship to Blackness and Black people. This dissertation also registers how, in spite of the violence that establishes Black nowheres, Black people assert generative sonic practices that insist on knowing Black life on different terms. This dissertation is thematically organized by key tropes that are persistent in both Black Studies and Sound Studies: Noise, Voice, and Soundscape. While these tropes thematically organize the chapters/tracks of the dissertation, I engage in practices of thinking about—as well as thinking with and through—Black sonic practices to register the nuances of Black sociality in Canada. As such, each chapter registers the nuanced dynamics of what I name Black nowheres to understand how Black life “is constituted through vulnerability to the overwhelming force of anti-blackness and white supremacy, and yet not capitulating to only [sic] be known by these same forces […]” (Campt, 2017, p. 23). In shifting the focus from fixed readings of sounds and sonic practices of Black people and Blackness in Canada to listening to what sounds, and sonic practices of Black people and Blackness in Canada, do, this dissertation shifts our relation from one of total mastery and legibility of Black Canada(s) to insisting we unfold and reveal the intricacies of Black being and Blackness in Canada without limit.
Open Access
Epistemologies of Imperial Feminism(s): Violence, Colonization, and Sexual (Re)Inscriptions of Empire.
(2022-12-14) Fraser, Faye Marie; Agathangelou, Anna M.
This doctoral thesis project brings together Indigenous theory and post-colonial feminism under a decolonial framework to highlight the significance of feminist moral epistemologies in establishing global hierarchical systems. I argue that when situated within the sexual matrices of coloniality, feminist moral regulation knowledge production in Canada institutionalizes hierarchical social ordering through the de-mediation of non-secular agency and sacred Indigenous self-consciousness. This dissertation warns feminist moral regulation scholars of the contamination of feminist knowledge produced about the “sexual Other” that remains colonized within the methodological grids of the epistemic structures of secular-coloniality. It highlights how a focus on epistemology allows us to understand the role of feminism’s contingent investments in imperial knowledge systems and the effects this has for structuring neocolonial governmentality and settler colonial domination, in the service of sexual empire. In it, I employ deconstruction and genealogical analytics to reveal how structures of empire are intertwined with discourses of sex and colonial law to trace how such intertwinements shape the production of subjectivities, liberal state-making projects, and colonial enterprises under the promise of “sexual progress” and political freedom. This framework allows me to explore the co-production of knowledge systems within neocolonial orders by focusing on philosophical debates about human rights, gender and racial (in)security, liberal secularism, transnational imperial feminist power. Central to the argument that I pursue in this dissertation is that in the wake of neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism, feminist knowledge about sex work and morality is not mediated by a singular site of annunciation via moral regulation theory. I argue, instead, that moral regulation feminist theorizations of sexual morality are also conditioned by the epistemic and methodological project of imperial feminist praxis. Therefore, this dissertation investigates the epistemological dimensions of moral regulation feminist knowledge production and excavates the modalities of power that drive this discipline and explores the epistemological regions from which it speaks.
Open Access
The Hegelian-Marxian Machinery of History: Cedric J. Robinson, Unilinearity and the Dialectic Project of Liberation
(2022-08-08) Khan, Salmaan Abdul Hamid; Abdel-Shehid, Gamal
Through his life’s work Cedric J. Robinson had developed a historiographic and theoretical critique of Marxism that exposed it as reductive, Eurocentric, and built upon idealistic positions that did not reflect the concrete conditions of reality itself. However, his critical intervention has been largely ignored and where it has been addressed, it was dismissed as having engaged in a misreading or reductive engagement with Marxism which is otherwise signified as a much more dynamic and reflexive philosophy. The basic intention of this dissertation then has been to defend one aspect of Robinson’s critique of Marxism – his characterization of it as Eurocentric– through both drawing on Robinson’s work itself and through supporting his conclusions by way of my own intervention into debates concerning Marx’s Eurocentricity and the limitations that thus spring from this characterization. This supportive aspect has been carried out through two sections: 1.) through a contextualization of Marxian philosophy in its appropriation of the Eurocentric Hegelian philosophical and historical system, and 2.) through critical engagements with contemporary literature that seeks to disprove the claim that Marxism is in fact Eurocentric. The combined sections of this dissertation go beyond the intended defense of Robinson’s criticisms of Marxian philosophy and carry implications for past and ongoing debates concerning the efficacy of Marxism as a theory of liberation for those people and populations that fall outside of its otherwise restrictive parameters. This dissertation encourages the reader to conclude with the sense that: ‘Robinson was indeed right. Marxism really is inherently antagonistic to both an anti-racist and anti-colonial politics. And I would like to read more of what he had to say’.