3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Consciousness embodied: language and the imagination in the communal world of William Blake(2014-08-26) Pierce, RobynThis dissertation examines the philosophical and spiritual beliefs that underpin William Blake’s account of the imagination, his objections to empiricism and his understanding of poetic language. It begins by considering these beliefs in relation to the idealist principles of George Berkeley as a means of illustrating Blake’s own objections to the empiricism of John Locke. The philosophies of Locke and Berkeley were popular in Blake’s society and their philosophical positions were well known to him. Blake and Berkeley are aligned against Locke’s belief in an objective world composed of matter, and his theory of abstract ideas. Both reject Locke’s principles by affirming the primacy of the perceiving subject. However, Blake disagrees with Berkeley’s theologically traditional understanding of God. He views perception as an act of artistic creation and believes that spiritual divinity is contained within and is intrinsic to man’s human form. This account of human perception as the creative act of an immanent divinity is further elucidated through a comparison with the twentieth-century existential phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In the Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Merleau-Ponty examines human experience as the functioning of an embodied consciousness in a shared life-world. While Merleau-Ponty does not make any reference to a spiritual deity, his understanding of experience offers a link between Berkeley’s criticisms of Locke and Blake’s own objections to empiricism. Through a comparative examination of Blake and Merleau-Ponty, the imagination is revealed to be the creative or formative consciousness that proceeds from the integrated mind-body complex of the “Divine Body” or “human form divine”. This embodied existence locates the perceiving self in a dynamic physical landscape that is shared with other embodied consciousnesses. It is this communal or intersubjective interaction between self and other that constitutes the experienced world. Merleau-Ponty’s account of the chiasm and his notion of flesh, discussed in The Visible and the Invisible, are applied to Blake in order to elucidate his belief in poetic vision and the constitutive power of language. The form and function of language are compared with that of the body, because both bring the individual experience of a perceiving subject into being in the world and facilitate the reciprocal exchange between the self and other. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that Blake characterises the body and language as the living media of the imagination, which facilitate a creative exchange between a perceiving self and a shared life-world.Item Physical abilities of community-dwelling adults more than six months post stroke: a cross sectional survey(2010-06-25T09:28:52Z) Dearle, Luschka AnneBackground and purpose of the study The length of stay for patients with stroke in some South African government hospitals has been shown to be inadequate and there is little information on the physical impairments and functional abilities of this population once they return to the community. An assessment was done of the strength, range of movement and the presence of pain experienced by patients with stroke in the Daveyton community and the relationship between these impairments and the functional abilities of these patients was established. Research methods and procedures employed This was a quantitative study using a descriptive cross sectional study design. Thirty-four conveniently sampled patients with stroke were assessed in their Daveyton homes. The functional measures used were the Modified rivermead mobility index (MRMI) and Barthel index (BI). The strength was assessed using a hand-held dynamometer, range of movement (RoM) with a standard universal goniometer and pain with the Eleven faces pain scale. The significance of the study was set at 0.05 and the relationships between impairments and functional abilities were expressed using the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. Results Significant differences were found between the strength, as well as the RoM of the affected and unaffected sides (p < 0.05). The muscles most affected by were: Biceps, Gastrocnemius and Tibialis Anterior. The smallest strength difference was found in Gluteus maximus. The ranges of movement most affected were: shoulder flexion and elbow extension. The smallest difference was found in knee extension. Eighty-five percent of the sample attained scores indicating that they were independently mobile (measured by the MRMI), and 82% were independent in activities of daily living (measured by the BI). There were good correlations between the patients’ strength impairments and their functional abilities (r = 0.54 to 0.79) and mobility (r = 0.51 to 0.76). Functional abilities and mobility had moderate to good relationships with active range of movement of shoulder flexion, lateral shoulder rotation and dorsiflexion. The percentage of patients experiencing pain was 73%, but pain displayed no relationship with functional ability (r = 0.14) and mobility (r = 0.15). Conclusion Most people living with stroke in the Daveyton community are functionally independent despite the high prevalence of pain. Stroke results in significant strength and active range of movement deficits on the affected side. Most strength impairments correlated well with the functional ability and mobility of this sample, but active range of movement impairments that influenced functional measures were mainly shoulder and ankle movements.Item The multiple formations of identity in selected texts by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams(2009-09-18T11:56:26Z) Malan, MorneABSTRACT This project compares and contrasts the ways in which selected texts by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams render their fictional figures as modern subjects engaged in the complex processes of identity-formation and transformation. These processes are deeply rooted within the context of the American South. The interrelatedness of identity and language is explored by investigating how these texts dramatize selfhood not as an essential or homogenous state, but as a perpetual process of self-fashioning and play amid multiple positionings. The central hypothesis is that identity manifests itself necessarily and continuously as a textual discourse in and through language, and that self-fashioning gives rise to ethical questions, because identity involves not only the subject’s relation to the self, but also his or her relationships with others in closely interwoven personal, familial and communal-cultural bonds. This ethical dimension underscores the relational aspects of selfhood, that is, the notion that the individual is always situated inextricably within the social, and that the fashioning of the self is thus inconceivable without a consideration of the other. The following pairs of texts are compared: As I Lay Dying and The Glass Menagerie; The Sound and the Fury and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof; Light in August and A Streetcar Named Desire.Item Strategies for sustainable rural development in Mozambique: a case study of the Chimani Transfrontier Conservation Area Project(2008-04-14T10:47:39Z) Lopes, Paulo JoseThis study examines the process and implementation of a conservation project in Chimanimani locality, a remote rural area located in Sussundenga district in the central province of Manica. The Chimanimani Transfrontier Conservation Area Project, as the Project became known, was one of the conservation area projects established in three provinces of Mozambique (Maputo, Gaza and Manica1) in the years following the civil conflict. In essence the Chimanimani Project was framed to enhance environmental sustainability of the targeted areas and contribute to poverty reduction through sustainable use of local natural resources. Accordingly, it was seen as a way of improving the overall quality of life of the targeted communities. The study analyses the Project efforts of utilizing the synergies between conservation and community development in rural areas where income-earning opportunities are limited. The research has focused on two of the five Chimanimani communities (Nhaedzi and Moribane) and brings to the fore evidences of the factors that have affected either positively or negatively the success of the Project.Item Schizophrenia relapse in a community mental health setting(2008-03-12T12:24:43Z) Kazadi, Nyembue Jean-BoscoABSTRACT AIM: The aim of this study was to determine, if any, the factors associated with relapse with a view to provide guidelines for prevention, early identification and management of relapse in a community setting. METHOD: The study is a retrospective record review of the patients attending seven randomly selected Community Mental Health Clinics in Southern Gauteng during the period January 1995 to June 2005. Two hundred and seventeen (217) patients aged 18 years with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were included in the study. Patients were excluded if the diagnosis of schizophrenia was made in the preceding six months of the study. Demographic and clinical variables including age, gender, marital status, source of income, highest level of education, non compliance, presence of substance abuse, co-morbid psychiatric condition, the presence and number of relapses and stressful life events were recorded on a data schedule. RESULTS: Two hundred and seventeen patients records were analysed: 61.8% have had at least one relapse. The only factors that provided a significant predictive factor for relapse included non compliance due side-effects, non compliance due to lack of insight, and the presence of depressive symptoms. 64.2% of the study population were non compliers and 27.1% have had depressive features. Demographic variables were not associated with relapse. CONCLUSION: These findings imply that interventions aimed at reducing relapse in schizophrenia should include improving medication compliance and early detection and treatment of depression.Item COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP THROUGH AN ARTIST DRIVEN,COLLABORATIVE PROJECT BETWEEN LEARNERS FROM THE RIDGE SCHOOL AND SALVAZIONE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL(2006-03-23) Schulz, Kathrin MarionA Community Partnership Art Event, resulting from curating and facilitating an educational collaboration was held on the 23 March 2004, ten years into South Africa’s democracy. Through a Masters in Fine Arts coursework entitled “Creating, Curating and Critiquing” offered at the University of Witwatersrand, I attempted to test the boundaries of the Arts and Culture Learning Area and explore alternatives to the current definition of “outreach”. The grade six learners from The Ridge School, an independent boys’ preparatory school and Salvazione Christian School, an assisted government school, were brought together over a period of ten weeks during regular school art lessons. Through the guidance and expertise of various artists, workshops were cocoordinated with the collaborative ideas of the learners coming to the fore. The process and dialogue established between learners, artists and educators was intended to shift my own parameters of teaching primary school art. Focusing on people rather than the final products points to a readiness to view knowledge not as a commodity owned b the expert teacher, but rather as something which can be constructed and developed with the learners. Originally the collaboration was intended as a celebration of the opening of new premises for Salvazione Christian School. The public art happening was held in a tent next to the informal settlement where a large majority of the children from Salvazione Christian School live. 3 Rather than what might be described as a modernist approach to art education, where the focus seems to be on the artist and artwork, the focus was on linking art to social interaction, and it was through the discovery of a form of hybridity that a number of differences between the two communities were challenged and exposed. This resulted in an approach that seems similar to the manner in which the Indian writer, Salman Rushdie writes of hybridity: “Hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs.” (Coombes, 2000:39) Through this hybridity tensions were created and explored rather than a ‘rainbow’ or melting pot created, where differences are glossed over as in a multicultural approach. The primary research methodology was participant observation in which directly observed data was analyzed and interpreted. Data was gathered from the interactions in the workshops, setting up the exhibition and the art event. As intended, a link between art and ‘outreach’ was established. In order for this link to change into a community partnership, it must be seen as part of a much longer process. The process as a whole did become a different kind of primary school art space, preparing the way for possible positive transformation of the visual arts in the arts and culture learning area at primary school level.