Date of Award

2013

First Advisor

Rebecca Fiske

Second Advisor

Nance Yanoshak

Abstract

My thesis will explore the relationship between language, history, and temporality and how these fields converge to construct a sense of subject and Being. I will primarily focus on the construction of possible ontologies within the confines of post-modern thought, while also addressing the symptoms of Being in the post-modern world. My hope is to be able to construct a epistemology of Being that lies in accordance with post-modern axioms.

This analysis will rely upon a couple of crucial questions and central axioms. First that the relationship between Being, time, and space e.g. the event is an equation for the production of the subject, or allows for the subject to come into an encounter with the Lacanian Real. Second, that any serious study of ontology must be post phenomenological, because of events such as the Holocaust and Hiroshima. The way in which these events change history and our understanding of Being must also change our methodology, in which one pursues the development of an axiomatic knowledge of ontology.

Following from these central axioms and questions there are two points that are the beginning of my questioning of ontology. First, that Being as void must be overcome as it is expressed by Alain Badiou. Secondly that purposeness is crucial to a post-modern ontology as an act that allows the subject to subvert the ontological crisis of living at the end times.

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