Browsing by Subject "subjectivity"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Bildung beyond the borders: racial ambiguity and subjectivity in three post-apartheid bildungsromane
    (2019) Gamedze, Londiwe Hannah; Ouma, Christopher; Mkhize, Khwezi
    This dissertation examines the subject formation of racially ambiguous protagonists in K Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents, (2001), Yewande Omotoso’s Bom Boy (2011) and Zoe Wicomb’s Playing in the Light (2006), three Bildungsromane set in post-apartheid Cape Town—the mother city—whose violent, racist histories of colonial encounters, slavery and apartheid have led to a strong social sense of racial group belonging and racial exclusion. It is between and among these strictly policed racial groups that these novels’ protagonists seek belonging and a place in society from which to act and speak. Although different aspects of racial ambiguity are foregrounded in these novels—namely phenotypical, cultural and political—these protagonists are all socially marginalised and they must form their identities and subjectivities at the intersections of social trauma and personal trauma brought about and catalyzed by the racist history and current socio-cultural formations in South Africa. Across the two socioscapes of society and family, this trauma is manifest as a gap in language—there is no affirming or cogent racial subject position for these figures from which to speak—and at the level of the body, where circulations of feeling produce the racially ambiguous body as abject or non-existent. As a sub-genre, the post-colonial Bildungsroman has been widely appraised as reconfiguring the thematic, structural and narrative traditions of its classical European counterpart, and my dissertation argues that these novels support this understanding. I also claim that they trace their racially ambiguous protagonists’ subject formation not from an initial subject position of self-centered, willful childhood innocence and ignorance but from a state of non-subjectivity into existence itself—proposing that the trajectories of the novels trace an ontological rather than ideological shift.
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    Blindness, rehabilitation and identity: a critical investigation of discourses of rehabilitation in South African non-profit organisations for visually impaired persons
    (2021) Botha, Michelle; Watermeyer, Brian
    This study explores the role of rehabilitation in shaping the subjectivity of blind persons. It considers what engaging with rehabilitation services might communicate to people with visual impairments about their status, their value and their place in the world. Rather than being concerned with the practical aspects of rehabilitation, it explores how rehabilitative practices operate at the symbolic level, and interrogates the meanings about blindness which are produced within relationships where help is given and received. Drawing on Foucauldian concepts, this research traces the interplay between discourse, power and knowledge in rehabilitation services. The research design includes two phases. Through analysing the website copy of eight organisations located across South Africa, Phase One identified discourses employed by organisations as they represent themselves in the public realm. In Phase Two, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight service providers and eighteen service users across four organisations operating in the Western Cape province of South Africa. This phase identified the discourses framing rehabilitative activities and relationships. Visually impaired participants described sight loss as a significant trauma – as dislocation from society and self – revealing that service users might be particularly vulnerable to the shaping influence of rehabilitation. Data analysis found, firstly, that the discourses which frame rehabilitation services position visually impaired service users as passive recipients in relation to the work of service providers and the gifts of the public. This positioning objectifies service users and may signal to them that they are neither valued as stakeholders nor recognised as autonomous adults, while also requiring that they demonstrate gratitude towards service providers and the public. Secondly, rehabilitation is constructed as a linear journey with strictly defined outcomes. This ‘journey discourse' relies on polarised fantasies about blindness involving, on the one hand, dependency, dislocation and struggle and, on the other, independence, integration and coping. Visually impaired service users are required to demonstrate evidence of the latter while the former shadowy figure of pre-intervention blindness must be defended against. This discourse prohibits nuance and expressions of ongoing struggle, underpinning an imperative to cope found within organisations. Amid limiting discursive practices in rehabilitation, a key finding is that visually impaired service users are involved in complex negotiations of self and place. Investigating the discourses which frame and support rehabilitative practices sheds light on investments in promoting particular ways of being for visually impaired people, prompting us to consider what service providers, service users and, indeed, society as a whole might be colluding with. This work offers a novel perspective on blindness rehabilitation in South Africa as it explores an interplay between essential practical interventions found in rehabilitation and the influences on identity which those who experience sight loss undergo as they move into a new life with visual impairment.
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    A Neuropsychoanalytical approach to the hard problem of consciousness
    (World Scientific Publishing, 2014-06-02) Solms, Mark
    A neuropsychoanalytical approach to the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness revolves around the distinction between the subject and objects of consciousness. In contrast to the mainstream of cognitive science, neuropsychoanalysis prioritises the subject. The subject of consciousness is the indispensable page upon which its objects are inscribed. This has implications for our conception of the mental. The subjective being of consciousness is not registered in the classical exteroceptive modalities; it is not a cognitive representation, not a memory trace. Cognitive representations are ‘mental solids,’ embedded within subjective consciousness, and their tangible and visible (etc.) properties are projected onto reality. It is important to recognise that mental solids (e.g. the body-as-object) are no more real than the subjective being they are represented in (the body-as-subject). Moreover, pure subjectivity is not without content or quality. This aspect of consciousness is conventionally described quantitatively as the level of consciousness, ‘wakefulness’. But it feels like something to be awake. The primary modality of this aspect of consciousness is affect. Some implications of this frame of reference are discussed here, in broad brush strokes. This is an electronic version of an article published as Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, Volume 13, Issue 2, 2014, pp. 173-185. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0219635214400032, © World Scientific Publishing Company, http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/jin.
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    Teachers' beliefs: understanding the thinking of secondary mathematics teachers as a starting point for improved professional development
    (2015) Muller, Sara Louise; Paxton, Moragh
    This thesis explores the beliefs of mathematics teachers working in a rural school in South Africa. This is premised on the argument that understanding the beliefs of teachers is a necessary, even if insufficient, prerequisite to designing effective teacher development programmes. I postulate that take-up rates of new content and teaching methods are low due to unmanaged cognitive conflict with pre-existing beliefs about the nature of teaching. A broad review of the literature on beliefs as a concept is conducted to establish theoretical grounding for the study of beliefs as an abstract object of analysis (Green, 1971; Nespor, 1987; Pajares, 1992). I particularly refer to Ernest's (1989) models of mathematics epistemology, and Adler's (2001) dilemmas of teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms. Multiple studies of mathematics teachers' beliefs are drawn upon to relate beliefs to classroom practice. Qualitative data on two mathematics teachers working in a rural school in the Eastern Cape was gathered over the period of a month, using ethnographic methods as outlined by Thompson (1992) for gathering evidence of beliefs. Primary data, which consisted of pre-interviews, multiple lesson observations and stimulated-recall post-interviews, was analysed for evidence of teacher beliefs. Secondary data, in the form of a researcher journal and socio-economic information about the school, was also gathered to provide rich context data in which to situate the teachers' work. Particular attention was paid to teacher beliefs about teaching and learning, mathematics and language. Further evidence for beliefs was then obtained through close examination of an observation extract using classroom discourse analysis. The main finding of this thesis was that not only does a school's context provide logistical constraints to curriculum implementation and pedagogical change, but that the worldviews of teachers affect their interpretation of the curriculum (Chapman, 2002). Significantly, a relationship between the mathematics epistemology a teacher holds and their ability to admit language as a critical pedagogical factor is suggested. I conclude that detailed understanding of what teachers believe may provide a productive approach for teacher development programmes that aim to effect change.
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    What is a Mind Week 1 - Four defining properties of the mind
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms outlines four properties of the mind: subjectivity, consciousness, intentionality, and agency. He briefly explores issues and questions related to these properties and states that he will unpack these properties in more detail in subsequent videos. This is video 3 in Week 1 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
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    What is a Mind Week 2 - Empathising with other minds
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms explains how absolute certaintly is not a requirement in everyday life and even in some aspects of science; rather, a systematic common sense approach is often used to test whether something has subjectivity or not. He uses the example of pain to illustrate this idea. This is video 3 in Week 2 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
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    What is a Mind Week 2 - Studying the mind
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms discusses the subjective aspect of the mind and the problem of other minds, the difficulty in studying and observing the subjective experience of minds. He also explores the different ways the discipline of psychology has attempted to study the mind. This is video 1 in Week 2 of the What is a Mind MOOC.