title: Queering the Real: Antisociality and the impossible nothing of queer

authors: Jackson, Shaynah

subjects: Queer theory

abstract: This project charts a logic of queer antisociality along literary, cinematic, and theoretical works. Reading across a collection of textual case studies from Gertrude Stein, Herman Melville, and Samuel Beckett, as well as films from Derek Jarman and David Cronenberg, this thesis thinks through antisociality, employing it as a critical approach to reconcile moments of textual disorientation as queer encounter. The ambition of this thesis is not to designate certain works as queer texts, or to suggest a unifying queer thread across them; it is the very nature of queer as resistant to coherence and continuity that such a task could only ever fail. Rather, reading through antisociality offers a way to think queerness beyond a rubric of sexual difference as what frustrates or works against established forms of knowledge and trace modes of queer negation along inconsistent lines as aporetic junctures, opacity, and incoherence.

This approach is developed in conversation with Lee Edelman’s Bad Education where he conceptualises queer aligned to the incomprehensibility of the Lacanian Real – as being outside of identity markers or systems of recognition. Queer as such does not locate an ontology or a sexuality, but rather resists determinate meaning and troubles categorisation; queer is that which disturbs coherence. To think queerness then, Edelman suggests, is to think beyond the structural limits of language. Following this invocation to think queerly beyond structures of knowledge, this project contemplates its application and details what it might look like to do so. Each chapter then illustrates forms of queer negation that resist the controls immanent in language, and articulates antisociality as a way of thinking, and indeed a way of reading, attuned to semiological abstractions and improper grammar as queer methods of resistance.

Since queer cannot be secured within language, this thesis works to reframe incoherence as queer encounter that changes shape across whatever given literary or visual landscapes. Antisociality then operates as a conceptual lens to locate queer not as content but as form: as structural idiosyncrasies that frustrate comprehension and unsettle conventional logic. Writing this thesis and working across different texts and mediums then allowed for a mapping of the different ways that queer is discursively constructed while simultaneously conceptualising modes of resistance that work against these constructions.

text: Queering the Real: Antisociality and the impossible nothing of queer This project charts a logic of queer antisociality along literary, cinematic, and theoretical works. Reading across a collection of textual case studies from Gertrude Stein, Herman Melville, and Samuel Beckett, as well as films from Derek Jarman and David Cronenberg, this thesis thinks through antisociality, employing it as a critical approach to reconcile moments of textual disorientation as queer encounter. The ambition of this thesis is not to designate certain works as queer texts, or to suggest a unifying queer thread across them; it is the very nature of queer as resistant to coherence and continuity that such a task could only ever fail. Rather, reading through antisociality offers a way to think queerness beyond a rubric of sexual difference as what frustrates or works against established forms of knowledge and trace modes of queer negation along inconsistent lines as aporetic junctures, opacity, and incoherence.

This approach is developed in conversation with Lee Edelman’s Bad Education where he conceptualises queer aligned to the incomprehensibility of the Lacanian Real – as being outside of identity markers or systems of recognition. Queer as such does not locate an ontology or a sexuality, but rather resists determinate meaning and troubles categorisation; queer is that which disturbs coherence. To think queerness then, Edelman suggests, is to think beyond the structural limits of language. Following this invocation to think queerly beyond structures of knowledge, this project contemplates its application and details what it might look like to do so. Each chapter then illustrates forms of queer negation that resist the controls immanent in language, and articulates antisociality as a way of thinking, and indeed a way of reading, attuned to semiological abstractions and improper grammar as queer methods of resistance.

Since queer cannot be secured within language, this thesis works to reframe incoherence as queer encounter that changes shape across whatever given literary or visual landscapes. Antisociality then operates as a conceptual lens to locate queer not as content but as form: as structural idiosyncrasies that frustrate comprehension and unsettle conventional logic. Writing this thesis and working across different texts and mediums then allowed for a mapping of the different ways that queer is discursively constructed while simultaneously conceptualising modes of resistance that work against these constructions.

year: 2025

title: Work-family responsibilities and support for women academics in Pakistan

authors: Imran, Romana

abstract: Globally women have a long history of negotiating between public and private life.  While each individual woman undertakes such negotiation, all women’s lives are already shaped by historical, political, religious and cultural forces.  This study focused on contemporary academic women in Pakistan and their experiences of negotiation between professional and family responsibilities – in an Islamic nation, shaped by an imperial history. In particular it investigated both the possibilities and limitations of family and institutional support as women worked to fulfil both work and family responsibilities.  
This qualitative study employed semi-structured interviews, with individuals from three groups:  women academics, husbands of women academics, and heads of department of two Pakistani universities. The data from these interviews were then read alongside selected theory, to produce accounts of the visible and invisible discourses shaping the positions available to women as they navigate family and career responsibilities.  The study’s findings show that patriarchal traditions that position men as breadwinners and women as homemakers are disturbed when women take up career opportunities in academia, at the same time as patriarchal gender practices rob women of opportunities they have earned, as in examples of a woman giving up a job offer in favour of her husband, or giving an academic husband financial support for publication. As a further example of contesting discourses, the study identifies that academic women are expected to be productive on the terms of  globalised neo-liberal education at the same time as a traditional school curriculum and teaching practices position educated women - parhi likihi- as responsible for the basics of their children’s learning within the home.  Academic women are caught in the tension between the expectations of globalised tertiary education and the reality of the limited material resources in universities in a developing country.  The analysis of women academics’ accounts of family support includes few but significant examples of disturbing and resisting patriarchal gender practices, in ways that the thesis argues contribute to a “democracy to come”.   However, for the most part, the narratives of support include women academics’ husbands’ limited contributions and stories of women academics’ struggles, compromises and sacrifices of their own career progression for their husbands’ careers.  The thesis argues that identifying the possibilities of questioning and undoing patriarchal gender practices and producing alternative discursive practices might open up possibilities for gender justice within family and academic institutions.

text: Work-family responsibilities and support for women academics in Pakistan Globally women have a long history of negotiating between public and private life.  While each individual woman undertakes such negotiation, all women’s lives are already shaped by historical, political, religious and cultural forces.  This study focused on contemporary academic women in Pakistan and their experiences of negotiation between professional and family responsibilities – in an Islamic nation, shaped by an imperial history. In particular it investigated both the possibilities and limitations of family and institutional support as women worked to fulfil both work and family responsibilities.  
This qualitative study employed semi-structured interviews, with individuals from three groups:  women academics, husbands of women academics, and heads of department of two Pakistani universities. The data from these interviews were then read alongside selected theory, to produce accounts of the visible and invisible discourses shaping the positions available to women as they navigate family and career responsibilities.  The study’s findings show that patriarchal traditions that position men as breadwinners and women as homemakers are disturbed when women take up career opportunities in academia, at the same time as patriarchal gender practices rob women of opportunities they have earned, as in examples of a woman giving up a job offer in favour of her husband, or giving an academic husband financial support for publication. As a further example of contesting discourses, the study identifies that academic women are expected to be productive on the terms of  globalised neo-liberal education at the same time as a traditional school curriculum and teaching practices position educated women - parhi likihi- as responsible for the basics of their children’s learning within the home.  Academic women are caught in the tension between the expectations of globalised tertiary education and the reality of the limited material resources in universities in a developing country.  The analysis of women academics’ accounts of family support includes few but significant examples of disturbing and resisting patriarchal gender practices, in ways that the thesis argues contribute to a “democracy to come”.   However, for the most part, the narratives of support include women academics’ husbands’ limited contributions and stories of women academics’ struggles, compromises and sacrifices of their own career progression for their husbands’ careers.  The thesis argues that identifying the possibilities of questioning and undoing patriarchal gender practices and producing alternative discursive practices might open up possibilities for gender justice within family and academic institutions.

year: 2023

title: Incorporating indigenous values in corporate social responsibility reports

authors: Schneider, Annika Barbara Sabine

subjects: corporate social responsibility

abstract: Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to show how a major state-owned enterprise in New Zealand uses its annual report to promote the image of an organisation concerned with the local community including Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, Māori values and their relationship with the environment.
Design/methodology/approach – This longitudinal single case study of Mighty River Power Limited spans the period 2000 to 2009. It involves detailed examination of the narrative disclosures contained in the annual reports, including photographs, over the period of the study to determine whether Mighty River Power used the annual report to present a favourable image to the organisation’s stakeholders. Indigenous partnerships between the organisation and Māori trusts were also investigated to determine how these contributed to the corporate identity promoted in the annual reports.
Findings – The analysis found that annual report was used to promote the image of an organisation upholding the Māori value of kaitiakitanga as part of its social responsibility to the local community and environment. Māori partnerships and community environmental group sponsorship were featured extensively in the images and narratives, with specific reference to indigenous values.
Originality/value – This paper builds upon previous literature in the field of corporate social responsibility in annual reports and extends it to the state-owned enterprise sector in New Zealand, focusing specifically on the relationship between the entity and the indigenous community in which it operates.

text: Incorporating indigenous values in corporate social responsibility reports Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to show how a major state-owned enterprise in New Zealand uses its annual report to promote the image of an organisation concerned with the local community including Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, Māori values and their relationship with the environment.
Design/methodology/approach – This longitudinal single case study of Mighty River Power Limited spans the period 2000 to 2009. It involves detailed examination of the narrative disclosures contained in the annual reports, including photographs, over the period of the study to determine whether Mighty River Power used the annual report to present a favourable image to the organisation’s stakeholders. Indigenous partnerships between the organisation and Māori trusts were also investigated to determine how these contributed to the corporate identity promoted in the annual reports.
Findings – The analysis found that annual report was used to promote the image of an organisation upholding the Māori value of kaitiakitanga as part of its social responsibility to the local community and environment. Māori partnerships and community environmental group sponsorship were featured extensively in the images and narratives, with specific reference to indigenous values.
Originality/value – This paper builds upon previous literature in the field of corporate social responsibility in annual reports and extends it to the state-owned enterprise sector in New Zealand, focusing specifically on the relationship between the entity and the indigenous community in which it operates.

year: 2012