Sample Research Proposal on A Epistemological and Ontological Approach

New Historicism is a school of thought insisting on the main importance of historical context to the interpretation of texts of all kinds (Collingwood, 1994). It has a great influence upon many disciplines of thought, recently experiencing a lively renewal in contemporary literary criticism (Copeland, 1991). The most prominent late 20th-century critical fashions, post structuralism and postmodernism, have ended up being understood through the images of history they imply (Hutcheon, 1988). Yet this historical turn rejoins a well-worn tradition of historicism. At present, historicism is tempted to present itself as 'new', the latest way forward for literary theory (Kristeva, 1980). That alone might be a good reason for a book on it. In addition, though, to briefing students on the current state of the critical art, a book on historicism should identify an underlying pattern of historical explanation recurring at different times in different forms (Levenson, 1984). While human beings have generally tried to understand themselves historically, they have not always done so as historicists (Newman, 1985). Historicism emerges in reaction to the practice of deducing from first principles truths about how people are obliged to organize themselves socially and politically (Attridge and Ferrar, 1984). The natural laws governing human behavior at all times are formulated, and cultures evaluated by the degree to which they approximate to this ideal pattern. Historicists oppose this tradition, which, primarily associated with the Enlightenment, stretches, in different versions, from the 17th-century natural-law theorists to the sophistications of Kant and Hegel (Bruns, 1992). They argue instead that human nature is too various for such legislation to be universally applicable. They therefore have to evolve a model for apprehending social and cultural diversity different from the scientific, law-governed paradigm of the Enlightenment (Eagleton, 1990). Romantic aesthetics that sense of a human richness unmeasured by scientific calculation and best equated with a natural grandeur similarly exceeding computation immediately offers itself for this purpose. There is a perception about ideology, a society's unconscious tailoring of criteria of objectivity to fit its own interests - comes into play, because historicists, especially nowadays, frequently define themselves as critics who refuse to take the past on its own terms, regarding the economy with which it regulated the possible meanings of different genres as the ideological constraint to be broken (Forrester, 1990). The deregulation of original economies of meaning which historicists claim to achieve characterizes the transition from modernity to post modernity (Jenkins, 1995). Modernity's typical insistence on the 'new' is overridden by post modernity's refusal to accept the fixed sense of the past against which modernity asserted its novelty (Brennan, 1993).   According to Michel Foucault, hermeneutics looks directly opposed to the hermeneutics of suspicion, as Paul Ricoeur calls it, by which tradition and historical explanation are revalued, transformed and generally opened up to a more sophisticated critical practice, one taking its bearings from Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Foucault appears fascinated by history, but only, it appears, in order to prove that there is no intellectually respectable continuity between past concerns and their modern transformations (Greenblatt and Dunn, 1992 and Fukuyama, 1992). Dialectic between the two is a deception. The only kind of history on Nietzsche's list for which Foucault has any time is 'critical' history, eventually dismissed by Nietzsche as too destructive of those illusions we need for effective action and life (Littlejohn, 1992). Foucault, in his essay 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History', reshapes the early Nietzsche of the Untimely Meditations from the perspective of his later writings, much as Lacan does with Freud, in order to engineer 'the sacrifice of the subject of knowledge (Eagleton, 1985). Again, a subject/object science is the target, but it is attacked here in order to show the illusoriness of both subject and object except as the effects of a will to power transcending both (Ellman and Feidelson,1995). In his detection of 'other unities', Foucault looks committed to a more genuinely historical recovery of the past than before (Ferry and Renaut, 1990). This traditional ambition, though, is complicated for him by the shape, highly problematic for historiography, in which he thinks the past should appear. Foucault seeks the rules identifying both the emergence and the dispersal of past objects (Fokkema, 1985). The objects themselves the staple of historical salvage, after all, whether empirical or intellectual, their connections, organizing concepts and recurrent themes are secondary to the process of discursive formation (Porter, 1988). Yet, in Foucault's slightly circular argument, a discursive formation only certainly exists when it can produce objective effects (Eco, 1986). History returns, though, when his description of the 'law of emergence' of such objects aims to be sophisticated enough to account for the contradictory variety of things which define any historical moment in the writings and disciplines of the past (Adorno, 1986). Foucault, then, states that he has defined a 'discursive formation', and thus historically located an 'episteme', when he 'can show that it may give birth simultaneously or successively to mutually exclusive objects, without having to modify itself' (Acheson, 1992). This also seems to hold true for science. Foucault's immediate examples are from the histories of medicine, psychology, economics and grammar. In 'What is an Author?', Cuvier and Saussure are as much founders of biology and linguistics because they make possible systems diametrically opposed to their own (Barthes, 1977). Contradictory positions do not disqualify these disciplines but historicize them. Nor are contradictions evidence of an ideology to be seen through or a repression to be psychoanalysed (Armstrong, 1987). There is not, in Foucault's view, a unified truth, which people may disguise from themselves and keep unconscious; and so the interpreter's task is not to unearth this bedrock lying beneath its contradictory manifestations. Instead, Foucauldian archaeology takes cross-sections of the contradictory significance existing at any one time. The mapping of historical strata exposes the discursive formation whose tolerance of these contradictions keeps itself in power. In Hegel's phenomenology and Marx's dialectical materialism, contradiction is the motor-force of change. In Foucault it is the sign of an established discursive formation. Foucault, like his near-contemporary Marxist teacher Althusser, thinks that the power belying our sense of being autonomous individuals resides precisely in that sense, policing us through our ideas of emancipation, throughout moments of imaginary resistance, expressed in the contradictory fullness of what is said, not in truths unsaid of which our words are the distortion (Buttler, 1984). Foucault's influence on contemporary critical theory and practice has been immense, evident not only in the writings of actual devotees but also through its gaining of a general terminological currency, comparable to the widespread literacy in psychoanalytical idioms. Like Freudian and Lacanian language too, Foucault's key terms have been taken out of context, but in a manner of which he might have approved, to provide the means for the assimilation of postmodernity to popular philosophical and critical understanding. Most students know that Foucault appears to be a structuralist but is in fact highly critical of all totalizing thinking (Eagleton, 1985, 60). This dialectic engenders once more the 'funny' postmodern logic Samuel Weber saw to be the consequence of Lacanian critique (Kristeva, 1980). Derrida rejoices in the double-takes that his complex historicist scenario throws up. In the book of the postcard, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, the postman of historical truth conveys past writers' dictation to their successors, but not in the overweening, presumptuous manner resented by Marx and Nietzsche. The past only gets the message it so originally rewords from a present it is now empowered to bypass as it speaks to the future. Historical difference becomes différance, Derrida's famous coinage for a meaningful relation indefinitely deferred, like the photographic negative to be developed after twenty-five centuries (Newman, 1985). The past, a good Nietzschean, overcomes its own monumentality and tyranny 'so that', as John Forrester comments on Lacan's report to the Rome Congress, 'the future becomes an open question, instead of being specified by the fixity of the past' (Hens and Innes, 2000). The originally therapeutic model of psychoanalysis is replaced by an ideal of emancipated interpretation, converging on the undistorted communication with the past desired by Benjamin and Habermas. But we need the therapeutic historicism arising out of this parallel to give the open air of history any outline or substance. Otherwise our conclusion will be as tentative and equivocal as those we drew from Foucault's oeuvre. According to Derrida, Plato dictates a past for Socrates to write down. The supposed amanuensis of Socrates' spoken dialogues has in fact got his master to write them. But Socrates' trick is to send this writing, like a postcard, to Derrida. He leapfrogs Plato, confounding Plato's simple desire for mastery, and offers instead a subtle contribution to hermeneutical dialectics only intelligible much later on (Copeland, 1991). Yet the significance of the postcard is also to decipher a present and open it up for future meanings. Present new historicism distinguishes itself by its heightened consciousness of criticism's institutional past, and of how its methodological changes might have served particular cultural interests. Alteration of the American academic population as a result of a European flight from Nazi persecution can be matched by recent recruitment to higher education institutions of many more women and members of ethnic minorities (Forrester, 1990). Each constituency has wrought its changes in critical practice, suggesting an underlying historicism which any critical theory endeavoring to understand itself is obliged to uncover. This is always a double-edged affair, as the critical establishment's accommodation of the new interests soon becomes the background against which new arrivals define themselves. Hence the concession that historical difference might incorporate cultural difference, and the view that old historicism might do enough by widening its agenda somewhat, is met by arguments for a distinctiveness of postcolonial or feminist theory necessitating yet another 'new' historicism (Jenkins, 1995). Like Foucault,Derrida,Deleuze, Guattari,Bhabha assume a material human base responsible for differences in culture, characterized rather than invalidated by this power to produce diversity. They assume that to understand our difference from the past is by definition to understand how this difference is significant. This study will explore the concepts of Power, Knowledge , Identity, Self and Suffering in Samuel Beckett's pentalogy of novels, Molloy,Malone Dies,The Unnamable,Murphy and Watt  by using the concepts of New Historicism and Post Structuralism.   Statement of the Problem             Studying new historicism and post structuralism requires the trend on the classifications and associations of some literary criticisms and commentaries on the topic. The research will proceed by considering the following problems: 1.      The issues under the new historicism and its many defining themes and ideas from Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Bhabha, Habermas and Heidegger. 2.      Post-structuralism not as an alternative philosophy, as a rigorously critical method for deconstructing metaphysics. 3.      Different issues in the society in Samuel Beckett's pentalogy of novels. 4.      Definitions of Knowledge, identity, self and suffering in Samuel Beckett's pentalogy of novels. Definition of Key Terms Hermeneutics- is considered to be the science of interpreting Scripture. Secular hermeneutics retains the idea of relating the individual work to a larger purpose into whose pattern it meaningfully fits. Understood hermeneutically, a text's meaning is limited by the value accorded its discourse within the culture of its first audience. Nevertheless, between that past reception and our present attempts to understand it, the text will in all likelihood have generated many more interpretations. New Historicism- is a critical movement insisting on the prime importance of historical context to the interpretation of texts of all kinds. Post-structuralism- the readers are the most powerful and the authority in interpreting the literary texts they are reading Epistemology- Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. This branch of philosophy studies the origins of knowledge. Ontology- Ontological issues revolve around the nature of the phenomenon we are seeking to understand. In the case of interpersonal communication, we are seeking to understand the nature of the human being and human relations.   Delimitation of the Study             Since the study is about the pentalogy novels of Samuel Beckett, using New Historicism and Post- Structuralism. The study will be limited to the works of Samuel Beckett and the related studies published in the history of American literature. The study will also be limited to the premises of New Historicism and Post-structuralism. The reference materials and data will be used in this study are desktop and published materials that are relevant in the study and will be utilizing epistemological and ontological approach. Method, Design and Approach   There are many competing epistemological and ontological positions of new historicism and post structuralism in the field of social sciences research. According to the positivists, values are subjective with moral dimensions attached to it, whereas facts are more valuable data because they can be verified so to enhance generalizations (Colin, 2002)  On the other hand, interpretavists, give emphasis on the holistic form of analysis and explanation, rather than just charting surface patterns or trends and correlations. Interpretavism have a more genuine interests to understand the social world that people produced, and believe that is the meanings embedded in language that constitute to the social reality               Since this research is about the Power, Knowledge , Identity, Self and Suffering in Samuel Beckett's pentalogy of novels The interpretavist model allows the understanding of any unique features adhering to human conditions, its capacities of self-reflection and choice (May, 2001). This employed qualitative research because it is broadly interpretivist in nature that concern with how the social world is produced, interpreted and understood (Robson, 2002).  Therefore, many qualitative researchers commits to explore events of the social world through the eyes of the people that they study because they believe that the social world must be interpreted from the perspective of the people being studied (Bryman,  2001).  As summarized by Bryman:   "the epistemology underlying qualitative research as the face-to-face interaction is the fullest condition of participating in the mind of another human being; and one must participate in the mind of another human being to acquire social knowledge" (Bryman 2001:277).     This study also employs qualitative research method, since this research intends to find and build theories that would explain the relationship of one variable with another variable through qualitative elements in research. These qualitative elements does not have standard measures, rather they are behaviour, attitudes, opinions, and beliefs. The secondary sources of data will come from published articles from social science journals, theses and related studies on learning. Acquiring secondary data are more convenient to use because they are already condensed and organized. Moreover, analysis and interpretation are done more easily.   Review of Related Literature   There are numerous studies that provided criticisms to Samuel Beckett's pentalogy of novels (Wall, 2002). In the most present criticism, resisted the belief that the novel possesses any single origin, though it progresses toward any final destination, however,  Yet if the pragmatic heritage does not represent the only point of departure for the novel, its sole and essential source, it positively stands as one of the genre's shaping influences (Beplate, 2005). The influence takes on special significance, not only because Descartes was crucial to Beckett's intellectual development but also because the basic situation in the Discourse--a man alone in a room, Derrida studied the language used in Samuel Beckett's Unammable. The problem of language first raised upon the cultural scene and critics and Beckett's novel, betrays a loose vocabulary, the temptation of a cheap seduction, the passive yielding to fashion, and the consciousness of the avant- garde. Derrida arrived at a conclusion that there is a new cultural juncture in Beckett's novel (Barker, 1996). Because the word unammable, was overuse and misuse and have so debased value that it threatens to lose all significance, to become a word that comprehends everything and means nothing. In other words, "name" the postmodern, but we must name it as in some sense "unnamable (Beckett, 1976). Beckett's perspective, these writers revolutionized literature when they attacked the objectivity and scientism of the realist novel, but their own turn "within," toward "subjectivity" and "consciousness," meant that they were not so much leaving behind the philosophy of the subject as breathing new life into it (Bitter, 1984 and Cantor, 1984). This is not to say, however, that Beckett believed he was, in some final sense, "overcoming" modernism. Beckett's conception of his undertaking, his postmodernism, recognized that an absolute break with the past, a complete suppression of what had gone before, was itself the product of a teleological or modern form of thinking (Coe, 1970 and Eslin, 1995) According to another critic, Samuel Beckett's novels are full of images. The novel Watt and Macmann become patients in a mental hospital; Molloy and Malone endure what appears to be an institutional confinement; even Worm, surrounded by a "committee" that files reports, suffers under a clinical gaze of sorts (Gontarski, 1985). If standing behind Beckett's fiction is all the accumulated weight and tradition of the Enlightenment--extending from Descartes's empiricism to Balzac's scientism--then rising before it, beckoning to it, is the Enlightenment's mad inversion, the dark netherworld of insanity, where all the carefully articulated structures of the ratio collapse into chaos and unmeaning (Hesla, 1991). It is in the space that lies between these poles, the space that separates Reason from Unreason, the cogito from madness, that Beckett stages his first novel, Murphy. The novels of Beckett have become our most enduring symbol of literary mimesis, the epitome not of reproduction but of duplication, a simulacrum of the world in which representation corresponds at every point to the thing represented (Hill, 1990). Consciousness functions as a "glassy essence," a window of perception that fixes in its luminous gaze all the shifting shapes and forms of reality. This process of speculation is complicated, however, when the subject and object of consciousness become one and the same, when reflection turns to self-reflection. Tentative Outline Chapter 1 of the research introduces the entire study by offering the reader a basic understanding of the concepts covered by the research topic and the context in which the study will proceed. Chapter 2 provides for a review of the books, articles and researches related to the subject of the research as theoretical and practical foundations for the research. The theories and concepts in the literature review becomes the basis for identifying and understanding the health and safety issues and responses to these issues of the construction industry in Singapore. Chapter 3 explores the methodological guide for the conduct of the study particularly the data to be gathered, the data gathering method, data analysis approaches, and ethical concerns such as credibility and reliability of the research. Chapter 4 contains data presentation and analysis directed towards answering the problems identified in the research. Chapter 5 contains the conclusions and recommendations of the researcher based on the data presented and analyzed.