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In 2008 the South African government commissioned a Report on the art industry, and today it stands as one of the only available accounts of its kind. Using a Foucaultian analysis, I established that this Report produces a discourse on gender and race in the South African art world in which race and gender function only as quantitative and statistical categories in relation to an economic model for the art industry. This discourse results in the construction of four figures, which I have termed ‘avatars’, namely the white male, the white female, the black male and the black female. These figures also represent a hierarchy of professional and financial success with the ‘white man’ at the top and the ‘black woman’ at the bottom of this scale. Despite this, no remedy was recommended for the gendered-race imbalance clearly revealed in the Report. Gender was thus folded out of sight. To counter this, I have used the Constructivist Grounded Theory Method to create an oral archive through which to explore articulations of the lived experience and self-understanding of the situation of artist-women, both ‘black’ and ‘white’, and some men in the South African art world. My large oral archive has been coded to reveal important findings, which I have situated in terms of the struggle for democracy in South Africa. Drawing on both Jacques Rancière and Hannah Arendt’s thinking for theories of political transformation and Arendt’s valuation of storytelling and the political, in particular, my thesis proposes a methodology and key findings that shift from the 'what' created in the Report – avatars conceptualised according to gender and racial categories – to the 'who' – agents who speak back to the struggle for democratization in the South African art world. My research thus seeks to reveal the complex entwining of gender and race in interviewees’ experience. I argue that an analysis that attends to the question of gender is necessary to fully understand the status quo and texture of lived experience of the South African art world, as it remains an invisible and unanalysed dimension as it is lived and understood in terms of artists’ strategies of resistance and transformation. more...

The requirement for satellites to have a mitigation or deorbiting strategy has been brought about by the ever increasing amount of debris in Earth orbit. Studies have been used to formulate space debris mitigation guidelines, and adherence to these guidelines would theoretically lead to a sustainable environment for future satellite launches and operations. Deployable sail designs that have traditionally been studied and used for solar sails are increasingly being considered for de-orbit applications. Such sail designs benefit from a low mass and large surface area to achieve efficient thrust. A sail has the potential to be used for drag augmentation, to reduce the time until re-entry, or as an actual solar sail – to deorbit from higher orbits. A number of concerns for sail-based deorbiting are addressed in this thesis. One of these concerns is the ability of a sail to mitigate the risk of a collision. By investigating both the area-time-product (ATP) and collision probability it is shown that a gossamer sail used for deorbiting will lead to a reduction in overall collision risk. The extent to which the risk is reduced is investigated and the contributing factors assessed. Another concern is that of attitude stability of a host satellite and deorbit sail. One of the biggest benefits of drag augmentation is the fact that it can achieve the deorbiting goal with an inactive host satellite. There is thus no need for active control, communications or power after deployment. But a simple 2D sail will lose efficiency as a deorbiting device if it is not optimally oriented. It was found in this research that it is possible for a host satellite with attached sail to maintain a stable attitude under passive conditions in a drag deorbiting mode. Finally, in order to fully prove the benefit of sail-based deorbiting it is shown that in certain scenarios this alternative might be more efficient at reducing collision risk, weighs less, and has less operational requirements than other alternatives such as electrodynamic tethers and conventional propulsion. This thesis aims to cover the fundamental concerns of a sail-based deorbiting device at mission level by firstly addressing the mission analysis aspects and then applying it to specific scenarios. The theory and methods required to perform mission analysis for a sail-based deorbiting strategy is presented. These methods are then used to demonstrate passive attitude stability for a drag sail, and reduction in collision risk, both in terms of the Area-Time-Product and collision probability. The analysis results are then further applied by identifying scenarios to which the proposed deorbiting device applies, and then performing a meaningful comparison by analysing a number of case studies. The application is made more concrete by comparison with likely contenders – traditional propulsion, electrodynamic tethers and an inflatable sphere. more...

Scholarship has tended to focus on Polanyi's critique of objectivism that led to his philosophical contributions, predominantly in epistemology what Polanyi calls personal knowledge; however, Polanyi's critique is equally tied to his ontology¾which can be similarly referenced as personal existence. There is need to explore and critique Polanyi's structured ontology, particularly as it applies to cybernetics and human persons. Polanyi did not provide a fully developed ontology, but the philosophical pieces are evident as he critiqued objectivism. By appealing to the broad corpus of Polanyi's published and unpublished works, his ontology is pieced together. What emerges is an ontological structure connecting epistemology and ontology, built on dual control between a world of particulars, subject to natural shaping-and composites, subject to artificial shaping, as defined by boundary conditions and operational principles. Reasoning from artificial shaping, Polanyi proposed an ontology from purpose in which persons both create meaningful composites and decipher them, with examples in language and machines. Polanyi understood that his proposed example of machines has the potential to undermine his philosophy, particularly within cybernetics, such as machine learning. As addressed; however, it also provides the opportunity to decipher a human ontology as a biological machine. It is contended that an appreciation for Polanyi's moral and duty-bound concern is largely missing from Polanyian scholarship-a concern that underpins his critique of objectivism and ultimately grounds his ontological conclusions of what defines humanity's ontological purpose. Applying Polanyi's structured ontology to human persons, a deontic operational principle is encountered that requires top-down support. In critiquing objectivism, Polanyi advanced a more ontologically balanced philosophy that values both pure and applied science but, given the irreducibility of boundary conditions and operational principles, requires greater existential top-down priority upon composites and in personal existence particularly. It is argued that theism can provide the top-down structure necessary to support Polanyi's ontology, without it collapsing into objectivism. more...

This thesis is a comparative exploration of the good life from the perspectives of Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas.By sketching a broadly characterized Aristotelian view of the good life and noting the common structure that their accounts share with their ancient philosophical forebear, we can identify certain important features lacking in Aristotle, but accounted for in either Maimonides or Aquinas or both and which do philosophical work throughout their respective projects. These features serve to distinctly illuminate and enhance the common Maimonidean and Thomistic accounts on the nature and extent of the good life.The comparative approach reveals significant differences in each more sharply than if considered in isolation. Comparatively, Aristotle's approach may be characterized as informational, Maimonides' as instructional, and Aquinas' as pneumatic-relational. Significantly, the role of faith as a virtue in both Maimonides and Aquinas makes a substantive difference over Aristotle's in theoretical and practical ways, and can be used to exploit their accounts of the human Fall, moral perfection, and ultimate human perfection-the knowledge of God.The medieval positions initially face similar problems marking Aristotle's account, making the good life seem virtually elusive as both are challenged sometimes in more acute ways than is Aristotle's account. The way in which each responds to similar problems helps to further elucidate their respective positions on faith, the knowledge of God, and the good life. However, we discover that Aquinas' account displays certain advantages over Maimonides' account which seems to suffer from a form of what we might call "spiritual autism" when compared to Aquinas' model of spiritually formative moral epistemology. This helps to illuminate implications for future research in theology, virtue theory, philosophy, and social cognition. more...