Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item Navigating in the synthetic void: a hardboiled investigation(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2022) Pomarico, Thomas John; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Rollin BeamishSociety is in the midst of a rapid and drastic shift of ontological perception. Technological advancements in connectivity have altered the rhythm and scale of life due to media saturation, social media, and surveillance. The success of these viral technologies has many obvious benefits; however, they also harbor malicious tendencies when left unchecked. Prescience visions of dystopia by authors George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and David Foster Wallace, once seemingly outlandish, have now become apparent. Shosana Zuboff's 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism' published in 2018 would have read as science fiction 25 years ago. As a temporary panacea to the pace of technological engagement, I offer the creative process as a way to alter duration. Using 1940s and 1950s film noir as a metaphor for the environment and challenges of the modern artist. Through this examination a code of conduct emerges to navigate the disruptive pitfalls of media addiction. Construction of the art object involves a multistep conceptual and physical practice guiding behavior away from excessive technological encroachment. My research paper aims to elucidate this process and its potential benefits to an outside observer.Item Infinite Jest, postmodernism, and irony: a guide to happiness in our contemporary age(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2016) Ruhsenberger, Alexander Charles; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert BennettI examine David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, looking at the ways in which it speaks to our current cultural moment. I posit that Wallace, in the novel, is able to use his story to comment on the ground-clearing nature of irony, technological abstraction, and postpostmodernism, and suggest that the post-postmodern future makes individuals catatonic. I also argue that Wallace predicted many of the ironic features of post-postmodernism because he lived and wrote in a generation that came after postmodernism. Wallace identifies TV as quintessentially post-postmodern, where meaning is neutralized through a Fredric Jameson's idea of pastiche--a kind of irony that only seeks to reference itself. The opening scene of Infinite Jest shows a young man unable to speak to adults, and unable to extoll his virtues. Hal, the main character in the scene, loses his ability to speak. And if readers take Hal's metaphorical catatonia a step farther, they will see a Hal representative of a millennial generation, also unable to speak. Hal is a post-postmodern child, buried by a culture of irony and Jameson's pastiche and depthlessness, where diatribes on metaphysical aboutness are more important than the meaning of things themselves. Wallace defines this problem, in the novel, as a central obsession and avoidance of the cultural feeling of "anhedonia," the radical abstracting of things that were once full of meaning of affective content. Soren Kierkegaard also defines this problem as "infinite absolute negativity," where individuals can become purely ironic and absent from society, gaining a kind of perverse negative freedom. On the other hand, the novel, I argue, not only posits the tyranny of this newfound perverse freedom in Western culture, but also laments the backlash of overt sincerity that is equally oppressive, represented by the AA parts of the novel. In end, I argue Wallace's novel laments the fact that we are losing something essential human when it comes to making our own choices about what to believe in, in our contemporary age.Item This wind has dialects : rethinking the textual landscape of nature(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2003) Schaberg, Christopher StrattonItem Post modern anti-reductionism(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1978) De Meij, Diana BuckleyI believe that the particular forms art takes are the products of individual sensibilities in various times and places. I do not believe that art progresses, only that it changes. Consequently, I don't concern myself with any ideas about what I should be doing, but only with making something that will excite me and give me pleasure, feeling that if I can keep the thing alive for myself, the work will both find and deserve a larger audience. I do this by expanding the painting's significance through purposeful ambiguity, making references to subjects people care about (people, places, sex, objects, etc.), overloading content to confuse preconceptions, by using art historical techniques and themes, and occasional borrowing from the masters and conventions from the past and present. Finally, I seek to reconcile both form and content in an aesthetically 'complete' but slightly absurd way. ThusIy, the psychological tension is set up. My work is my work. It contains no moral lessons nor is it the expression of a specific artistic creed. I do not try to be either tasteful or tasteless, but rather attempt to make art that alters existence, however slightly, instead of being an already overly familiar and redundant backdrop to it.Item Aspects of Individualism in Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Medieval Texts(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2008) Ainsworth, Breeman Neal, III; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Gwendolyn A. MorganMany scholars have noted the rise of the individual in medieval Europe. In spite of this claim however, many continue to maintain that there is a fundamental difference between the medieval, or pre-modern, and modern eras; in terms of the individual, this generates scholarship that posits the medieval individual as nothing more than a member of a group, not in fact an individual in modern terms. Nevertheless, the shifting dialectic concerning individualism reveals a similarity between medieval and contemporary conceptions of the individual. Although the modernist interpretation that the individual supersedes the group and erases historical, political, and religious subjection remains common, the postmodern individual focuses on a distrust of narratives that clarify existence. Similarly, the high and late Middle Ages manifest a strong suspicion of both individualism and communal hegemony. Despite the argument that medieval man was imbedded in the community and, therefore, distinguishable from modern man (the praiseworthy individual), a postmodern perspective emerges when one considers the contradictions and problematics of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century texts. This convergence centres around the idea that the medieval individual combined a both sense of self and a sense of being subject, indicated by the term subjectivity. Thus, by tracing this subjectivity in specific texts, the rise of a problematic individualism elucidates the similarities between contemporary and medieval individuation.Item Interdisciplinary dialog through documentary film(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2012) Webbink, Katherine Elizabeth; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Lucia Ricciardelli.Documentary filmmaking and experimental psychology face similar uncertainties in attempting to accurately characterize their subjects, but their methods for addressing these uncertainties often differ dramatically. Where experimental psychologists generally ascribe to scientific realism, searching for the "clearest" explication of a subject by employing scientific methods, documentary filmmakers follow any number of personal interpretations of what might best characterize an individual or social story. This philosophical contrast between filmmakers and psychologists parallels the clash between postmodernists and scientific realists. The "Science Wars" of the 1990s were a series of miscommunications between these two schools of philosophy, and there remains to be reconciliation, or at least clear dialog, between proponents of the two views. This thesis compares experimental methods in documentary film and in psychology, and proposes the exploration of why the two fields parallel as well as differ from each other in their methods of accommodating uncertainty. I propose that such an exploration of contrasts among experimental methodologies in film and psychology can offer an alternate route to dialog where verbal dialog has previously failed, as between postmodernists and scientific realists.Item Postmodernism, Native American literature and issues of sovereignty(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2009) Gorelova, Olena; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Matthew HermanCriticism of Native American literature is barely two centuries old, while criticism of Western literature boasts a history that is quite a bit longer. The questions on how to read and interpret tribal narrative and modern American Indian fiction are still urgent topics that trigger numerous debates among literary scholars. What theories to employ and what approaches to use to dispel misinterpretations of the literature are still matters open to suggestion. Postmodernism, the new world trend, has influenced all spheres of life, not excluding literature. Although it does seem to better account for American Indian voices as it shifts attention to local narratives and re-evaluation of history, the issue of whether it is applicable and favorable to Native American literature and its cause is a debatable one. Postmodern theory claims to liberate the suppressed voices including those of Native Americans, but at the same time presents the danger of limiting Native American literature to another set of frames while denying it its purpose, i.e. achievement of the establishment of Native American national literature. Many American Indian scholars insist that American Indian literature should not be interpreted using mainstream approaches, such as postmodernism, since they have already done enough damage, but implementing American Indian philosophies instead, such as nationalism. It also seems premature to apply postmodern theory since it deconstructs history and identity, which are still to be constructed in Native American literature. Tribal literature and tribal realities are closely connected and, therefore, the fight for Native American literature and how to interpret it appears to be a part of a bigger fight, the one for sovereignty, both national and intellectual. The "post" of postmodernism, as well as the "post" of post-colonialism, might simply not be present for Native American literature yet and, therefore, theories offered by nationalism can at the given moment be more promising to American Indian literature and its purposes.Item Appropriate disruptions(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2011) Hoffman, Lorie Ann; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Gesine JanzenArt is a vehicle for me to better understand the many feminist movements, and to clear and navigate a path through this body of social thought. Making art is my way of negotiating the feminist thought and theories that I was born into. We all come into culture mid-stream, and I have come of age during a time when shelves of books have been written about women and gender roles, but I as an individual need to find my own way of wading through all these complex, and sometimes contradictory thoughts, and deciding what they mean to me. What is relevant to me? What is not? My opinions are fluid, and sometimes my thoughts about a subject have a great degree of variation. Sometimes I contradict myself. We are all complex beings capable of holding conflicting beliefs about the world around us. The question I'm exploring is a question of who am I as an individual navigating a world of thought that I didn't know was already in place. Women today cannot, and should not, be thrown into categories. Am I third wave, am I forth wave? What does it matter? I'm a complex individual made up of contradictory ideas, and so are the other women I know. We don't fit into neat little categories. I become enraged when I hear the media ask if feminism is dead. Of course it's not, we're just not as easy to pin-hole. That's how we know that feminism is working, when women can no longer be seen as a faceless-sub-class, but instead as individuals who have legitimate disagreements on the details. The stories of everyday lives, the struggles and triumphs, is the focus of my feminism. This is where women are powerful, not in statistics or facts, but in the individual truth of our lives. Every story contains its own truths, and has common ground with the others. One of the most significant ways we connect to, and empathize with, others is through shared and common narratives.