Information and communication technologies on the Internet induced a new relationship between power and society in China. They imposed the Party-State to evolve in order to prevent the network to become a real tool, able to federate the opposition. This challenge urges the Chinese Communist Party to change this technological threat into a crucial asset, to keep the country in its power. By proposing a new governance, where citizens are invited to participate in political life online, the Party got through to seduce a great number of social groups existing on the web. This 2. 0 propaganda falls within the scope of the ideotainment described by Lagerkvist, where narration control evolves on more ludic and informative modes. In the same way, state domination is continuously reinforced by colossal means of technical and human control, intended to delete any trace of contestation from digital agora and its collective memory. The second point of this study analyses internet users' reactions in the cyber public space, where appropriation modes and rhetoric are instrumented as stakes in Power towards the leaders. The political regime characterized by its online communication is based on Claude Lefort's theory, concerning adhesion politic with the Party-One against the Other. This post-totalitarian sloughing, made through a pragmatically and hegemonic communication policy according to Gramsci's definition, lets the Party's elite stay in power and have succeeded to, as Lampedusa says, make everything change to make nothing change. Annexes supply numerous practical and illustrated informations on the history and the functioning of the Internet in China. ; Les NTIC ont induit de nouveaux rapports entre le pouvoir et la société chinoise. Ils ont obligé l'Etat-parti à évoluer afin d'éviter que le réseau ne se pose en un véritable outil fédérateur de l'opposition. Ce défi posé, le PCC a fait progressivement de cette menace technologique un atout décisif dans sa pérennisation au pouvoir. En proposant une nouvelle gouvernance, où la participation des citoyens à la vie politique devient un gage de stabilité sociale, le Parti est parvenu à séduire un grand nombre de groupes sociaux présents sur la toile. Cette propagande 2. 0 s'inscrit notamment sous la forme de l'ideotainment décrit par Lagerkvist, où le contrôle de la narration évolue sur un mode plus informatif et ludique. Parallèlement, la domination étatique se trouve sans cesse renforcée par la mise en place de moyens de contrôle techniques et humains colossaux, destinés à effacer toute trace de contestation de l'agora numérique et de sa mémoire collective. Le deuxième volet de l'étude analyse les réactions des internautes dans cet espace public en ligne, où la rhétorique de leurs discours se trouve instrumentalisée en tant qu'enjeu de pouvoir vis-à-vis des dirigeants. L'analyse de la communication en ligne du Parti est la dernière piste qui s'appuie sur les théories de Lefort, au sujet de la politique d'adhésion du Peuple-un contre l'Autre. C'est par cette mue post-totalitaire, constituée au travers d'une politique de communication pragmatique et hégémoniste selon la définition gramscienne, que les élites du Parti ont maintenu leur pouvoir et ont réussi, selon la formule de Lampedusa, a tout changer pour que rien ne change.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans fashioned new orientations for themselves through storytelling on all scales, from the most personal to the most official and public. Members of the opposition in the former German Democratic Republic were particularly successful in fashioning an authoritative official version of the East German past. To some extent such narratives, identifying victims and distributing blame, stood in place of legal processes, which were perceived as unsatisfactory. These official narratives, designated by the word Aufarbeitung, were understood to deliver an absolute form of truth, in contrast to deceptive public narrations practised in the GDR. The rhetoric of Aufarbeitung projected an attentive public which would receive the accounts, and an identification of that public with the German nation as a whole, even though the narratives were chiefly concerned with East Germans. These narratives were taken by some to amount to a metaphysically transcendent reality, History, circumscribing the horizons of human action. The moral value lent to this History was the greater because of an explicit contrast drawn between the long denial of a guilty past on the part of West Germans after the Nazi period, and the immediate Aufarbeitung undertaken for the GDR past. ; Tras la caída del Muro de Berlín, los alemanes del este elaboraron para sí mismos nuevas formas de orientación, sirviéndose de relatos construidos a diferentes escalas, desde los más personales hasta los públicos y oficiales. Los miembros de la oposición en la República Demócrata Alemana tuvieron un particular éxito en la construcción de una versión oficial autoritaria del pasado de la Alemania del este. A un cierto nivel, estas narrativas, que identificaban víctimas y repartían culpas, ocuparon el lugar de los procesos judiciales, que eran percibidos como poco satisfactorios. Estas narrativas oficiales, identificadas con la palabra Aufarbeitung, fueron entendidas como una forma absoluta de verdad, en contraste con las engañosas narraciones públicas realizadas en su día en la RDA. Aunque las narrativas estuviesen dirigidas principalmente a los alemanes del este, la retórica de la Aufarbeitung imaginaba un público curioso que, supuestamente, recibiría los informes, y se identificaría con la nación alemana como un todo. Algunos usaron estas narrativas para remontarse a una realidad metafísicamente trascendente, la Historia, que circunscribe los horizontes de la acción humana. El valor moral atribuido a esta Historia era máximo, a causa del contraste explícito que se dibujaba entre la prolongada negación de un pasado culpable, tras la etapa nazi en la Alemania Occidental, y el inmediato Aufarbeitung emprendido sobre el pasado de la RDA.
The present paper aims to point out how a certain narration, based on scientific concepts, shape the rhetoric of identity in Basque community. By the means of molecular biology research, some native geneticists recently attempted to demonstrate the similarity, at the level of genetic heritage, of actual inhabitants of Euskal Herria and some men that dwelled the land in prehistoric times. From the point of view of cultural anthropology, it is interesting to study how this kind of research has been elaborated and incorporated by local population. Indeed, this studies bear important implications at the social and political level, as far as they contribute in reshaping the way in which the community deals with its own past and, consequently, how it decide to act in the future (Palmié 2007: 205-222). In this paper, I will present the results of the fieldwork that I conducted in 2015 in Guipuzkoa. In integrated the traditional field research with diverse research loci, such as websites, blog, social network, DNA consulting dedicated Internet pages. Focusing on the relation between genetic research and identity policies turned out to be particularly important, since molecular biology seems to gain a key symbolical meaning in different social areas and discourses. In Basque Country, where the rhetoric of separation is gaining momentum and the interest in genealogy is today significantly widespread, these scientific findings are indeed able of being integrated in collective memory rephrasing, in new terms, the old notions of "blood", "roots" and "ethnicity". ; Il presente articolo si propone di individuare le modalità attraverso le quali le narrazioni genetiche contribuiscono a plasmare le retoriche identitarie all'interno della comunità etnica basca. Attraverso recenti indagini, condotte nell'ambito della biologia molecolare, diversi genetisti autoctoni hanno provato a dimostrare la somiglianza tra il patrimonio genetico degli attuali abitanti dell'Euskal Herria e quello di alcuni individui che, in epoca preistorica, avrebbero abitato questi territori. L'antropologia culturale ha il compito di individuare i criteri attraverso i quali tali studi vengono colti e rielaborati dalle popolazioni locali. Essi possono avere delle importanti implicazioni sociali e politiche, risultando in grado di riconfigurare il passato di una comunità mnemonica e conseguentemente di influenzare in modo concreto le sue scelte riguardo al futuro (Palmié 2007: 205-222). Attraverso l'indagine etnografica condotta nel 2015, si è cercato di gettare uno sguardo critico su questi racconti genetici facendo ricorso a numerosi "luoghi della ricerca": siti internet, blog, social network, pagine dedicate al DNA consulting, hanno accompagnato una più tradizionale ricerca sul campo in Guipuzkoa. Concentrarsi sulle relazioni intrattenute tra le indagini genomiche e le politiche identitarie, risulta particolarmente importante: la scienza molecolare pare assumere in diversi contesti etnografici una grande valenza simbolica, coinvolgendo vari settori legati all'ambito sociale. Nel contesto basco, dove è in voga una certa retorica della separazione e dove l'interesse per le genealogie risulta oggi estremamente diffuso, queste scoperte scientifiche paiono capaci di fondersi con la memoria collettiva e riproporre, in termini del tutto nuovi, le antiche nozioni di "sangue", "radici" ed "etnia".
AbstractReal Talk: Direct Discourse and the Victorian NovelbyAlexandra Irene DumontDoctor of Philosophy in EnglishUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Kent Puckett, ChairThis dissertation proceeds from the idea that, although it is everywhere present and routinely discussed, we have nevertheless neglected to talk, thoroughly, about "talk" in the Victorian realist novel. It also proceeds from the idea that we have done this because it is precisely what such novels, and Victorian culture more generally, have taught us to do. Talk, I argue, both as a subject and a mode of novelistic representation, is cast as an other to the novel, one that is simultaneously alien to and containable within the realist text. As a verbal activity, talk suggests an orality that is quotidian and amorphous, a flow of words submerged in the social world that elicits it. This formlessness and sociality render talk an ideal figure for the vast, teeming "life" to which the realist novel refers, and whose heterogeneity is as much a model as a vexation for novelistic form. As a textual formation within the novel, I argue, talk as direct discourse functions as a "real fictional object": a place in which the language of the novel shifts from a mode of representation to an object thereof, and consequently becomes at once more and less "real." For authors like Harriet Martineau, George Eliot, and Henry James, such ambiguities provide a means of navigating realism's competing imperatives of extra-textual reference and aesthetic self-sufficiency. Talk's minor quality allows it to animate the novel's rhetoric even as that rhetoric disavows talk as mere chatter, gossip, or report. My focus on talk, then, is a way of getting at a larger and in many ways more elusive subject: Victorian realism and the critical discussions thereof. Though talk as dialect or idiolect has an important place in the critical history of realism, it has not been the defining marker of either the realist mode or the putative formal sophistication of the Victorian novel. I begin my project by considering the primacy accorded by novel theory to free indirect discourse, and suggest that literary criticism's obsession with this form stems in part from the parallels between free indirect discourse itself and the methodology of those who have theorized it. Conversely, I argue, direct discourse has been read as a mere starting point, from which narrative complexity evolves. Yet it is because, not in spite, of this basic or minor quality that talk is fundamental to the realist novel. I examine the function of these minor forms of talk and direct discourse in the didactic stories and political essays of Harriet Martineau, the aphoristic "parables" and omniscient narration of George Eliot, and the "impressionizing" fictions and all-consuming style of Henry James. I trace the ways that Victorian realism casts talk as a foil for its more totalizing forms, arguing that in centering itself around this vanishing, minor object, realism centers itself around an absence. It is not, then, the presence of the world in the text that makes the realist novel possible, but rather the world's absence that makes space for the novelistic real.
'Gewiss sind 'Geschichten', die sich die Menschen erzählen, aktive Konstruktionen der Wirklichkeit. Aber sie sind so wenig beliebig wie die gesellschaftlichen Strukturen, in die sie verwoben sind. Pointierter sogar: Sie machen Strukturen transparenter. Sie eröffnen den methodischen Zugang zur historischen Alltagspraxis der Menschen. Der folgende Beitrag will am Beispiel einer klassischen Methodenkontroverse des 20. Jahrhunderts, der Erklären-Verstehen-Debatte, zeigen, welche Reichweite Erzählungen als 'Laienkonzepte der 'Welt'' (Habermas) für die Rekonstruktion von sozialer Wirklichkeit haben.' (Autorenreferat)
This paper draws on Judith Butler's notions of vulnerability, precarity, and grievability to examine two filmic texts: the Canadian Last Night (Don McKellar, 1998) and the American The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007). Both primary sources feature the apocalypse as their principal narrative and thematic concern –a trope virtually unexplored from the standpoint of the production of vulnerability and the bodily dimensions of political and ethical life. In the present contribution I conduct a close analysis of both films so as to identify and evaluate the significantly contrasting modes of vulnerability produced in these two narrations. I argue that these conflicting worldviews originate from the differentiated episodes of (de)valuation, legitimization, and recognition experienced by and in bodies in the face of the ultimate phenomenon of vulnerability: the apocalypse. My structuring argument is that Last Night complies with the notion of vulnerability as a locus of ethical cohabitation and affective engagement while constructing a heterogeneous sense of Canadianness. The Mist, on the other hand, deploys vulnerability as a discursive mechanism that causes individual and social bodies to be subjected to a range of violence-prone asymmetries and processes of dehumanization, rearticulating key rhetoric and imagery from American cultural history ; Este artículo profundiza en las nociones de Judith Butler sobre vulnerabilidad, precariedad y duelo para examinar dos textos cinematográficos: la canadiense "La última noche" (Don McKellar, 1998) y la americana "La niebla" (Frank Darabont, 2007). Ambas fuentes cuentan con el apocalipsis como su principal narrativa y centro argumental (una temática apenas explorada desde el punto de vista de la vulnerabilidad y las dimensiones corpóreas de una vida política ética). En esta contribución dirijo un análisis exhaustivo de ambas películas, al igual que la identificación y evaluación de las formas significativamente distintas de vulnerabilidad recreadas en estas dos narraciones. Sostengo que estas visiones del mundo conflictivas se originan a raíz de diferentes episodios de devaluación, legitimización, y reconocimiento experimentadas ante el fenómeno definitivo de vulnerabilidad: el apocalipsis. Mi estructura argumental consiste en que "La última noche" cumple con la noción de vulnerabilidad como un lugar de convivencia ética y compromiso afectivo mientras se construye un sentido heterogéneo de ser canadiense. "La niebla", por otro lado, muestra la vulnerabilidad como un mecanismo discursivo que obliga a los individuos a estar sometidos a una serie de asimetrías y procesos de deshumanización propensos a la violencia, rearticulando la retórica e imágenes claves de la historia cultural estadounidense.
From performing art, Euripides' theatre very soon becomes a piece of collection, whose preservation, as for the two other Great tragedians, Aeschylus and Sophocles, is decreed by the Athenian statesman Lycurgus. It also is soon commented, criticized, taught. Through the reception's testimonies, we want to understand which interpretations were given of anEuripidean tragedy, the Orestes, in the Antiquity. In the first chapter, we try to determine how Orestes' figure itself and the equivocal glory of his act – i.e. avenging his father by killing his mother – were perceived in the mythographical and judiciary tradition, and which importance both of them give to the issues which are at stake in Euripides' Orestes. The second chapter investigates which place the drama takes in teaching in Antiquity through school-texts, elementary exercises discovered on papyri, rhetoric handbooks, model exercises (progymnasmata) and declamations. The third and fourth chapters study the most commented extracts : first, the two most famous scenes, the messenger's speech and thediptych of Orestes' illness, which stand out through the treatment of their subject, i. e. the narration of a political assembly and the representation of madness ; then, some selected pieces on generic criteria, lyrical or gnomical. Finally, we investigate in the last chapter the testimonies of « book »'s specialists, of those who have transmitted, published, commented, preserved the Euripides' Orestes. ; De spectacle vivant, le théâtre d'Euripide devient très vite une pièce de collection dont la conservation, comme celle des deux autres grands poètes dramatiques, Eschyle et Sophocle, est décrétée par le législateur athénien Lycurgue. Très vite aussi, il est commenté, critiqué, enseigné. À travers les témoignages de sa réception, on veut comprendre quellesinterprétations antiques étaient proposées d'une tragédie d'Euripide, l'Oreste. On cherche dans le premier chapitre à établir la réception du personnage lui-même et de l'acte qui lui apporte une gloire équivoque – la vengeance du père par le meurtre de la mère – dans la tradition mythographique et judiciaire, et voir quelle part y prennent les questions posées parl'Oreste d'Euripide. Le deuxième chapitre examine la place que la tragédie occupe dans l'enseignement antique par l'étude des textes scolaires, exercices élémentaires découverts sur les papyri, manuels de rhétoriques, exercices types (progymnasmata) et déclamations. Les troisième et quatrième chapitres étudient les extraits les plus commentés : d'abord, les deux scènes les plus célèbres, le récit du messager et le diptyque de la maladie d'Oreste, qui se distinguent par la façon dont est traité leur sujet, le récit d'une assemblée politique et la représentation de la folie ; puis, des morceaux choisis pour leur genre, lyrique ou gnomique. Enfin, on examine dans le dernier chapitre les témoignages des spécialistes du « livre », de ceux qui ont transmis, édité, commenté, conservé l'Oreste d'Euripide.
The article is devoted to the subject of the 1150th anniversary of the Russian Statehood celebrated in September 2012. It was the liberal political commentary writings accompanying the original model of the jubilee celebrated in 1862 that was used as the point of reference of the rhetoric of the celebrations' initiator, the President of Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev. This made the president of Russia refer very often to the "Epoch of the Great Reforms" (the 1860s, and 1870s). The article describes the course of the jubilee celebrations with accompanying information campaign in the public mass media, as well as a failed legislative action to make the symbolic anniversary of the origins of the Russian Statehood a National Day. In the conclusions, the author distances himself from the absolutisation of political causes (customary in the Polish writing blaming of the low political culture of the power elite) of the jubilee's failure. In the author's opinion, the main reason for the fiasco of the analysed enterprise lies in the difficulties to create a coherent historical narration which would combine various political traditions and their fundamental values.The research, making the fundamentals of the text, subscribes to the interdisciplinary studies – flourishing in Poland these days – of collective memory and identity. The research perspective chosen by the author makes it possible to enrich the traditionally understood political history and history of ideas with the most recent achievements of historical anthropology. The purpose of this is to present not only a cultural context of the symbolic dimension of ars regendi (with the problem of legitimization of power at the lead), but also to discover the sources for the durability of symbols as invisible bonds tying the political community. Статья посвящена празднованию 1150-летия российской государственности, которое проходило в Новгороде в сентябре 2012 г. За точку отсчета для риторики инициатора торжества, Президента Российской Федерации Д. Медведева, была избрана либеральная публицистика, сопровождавшая первообраз юбилея в 1862 г. Этот прием был продиктован фактом частого обращения тогдашнего главы России к «эпохе великих реформ» (60-е и 70-е гг. XIX в.). В тексте обсуждается ход юбилея и, посвященное ему, медийное освещение в средствах массовой информации. Была также представлена неудачная законодательная инициатива, предусматривающая признание символической годовщины начала Руси государственным праздником. Заключения текста отмежеваются от абсолютизирования политических причин (традиционное в польской публицистике сваливание вину на низкий уровень политической культуры элиты власти) неудачи юбилея. По мнению автора, главная причина провала, обсуждаемого мероприятия, заключается в трудностях создания связного исторического повествования, контаминирующего разнообразные политические традиции и лежащие у их основ ценности.Исследования, являющиеся методологическим фундаментом текста, вписываются в междисциплинарное изучение памяти и коллективной идентичности, переживающее расцвет в Польше. Принятый исследовательский ракурс позволяет обогатить традиционно понимаемую проблемную политическую историю и историю идей свежайшими достижениями исторической антропологии. Целью такого действия является не только показать культурный контекст символического измерения ars regendi (во главе с проблемой легитимизации власти), но и выявление источников устойчивости символов, как незримых уз, скрепляющих политическое сообщество.
The article is devoted to the subject of the 1150th anniversary of the Russian Statehood celebrated in September 2012. It was the liberal political commentary writings accompanying the original model of the jubilee celebrated in 1862 that was used as the point of reference of the rhetoric of the celebrations' initiator, the President of Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev. This made the president of Russia refer very often to the "Epoch of the Great Reforms" (the 1860s, and 1870s). The article describes the course of the jubilee celebrations with accompanying information campaign in the public mass media, as well as a failed legislative action to make the symbolic anniversary of the origins of the Russian Statehood a National Day. In the conclusions, the author distances himself from the absolutisation of political causes (customary in the Polish writing blaming of the low political culture of the power elite) of the jubilee's failure. In the author's opinion, the main reason for the fiasco of the analysed enterprise lies in the difficulties to create a coherent historical narration which would combine various political traditions and their fundamental values.The research, making the fundamentals of the text, subscribes to the interdisciplinary studies – flourishing in Poland these days – of collective memory and identity. The research perspective chosen by the author makes it possible to enrich the traditionally understood political history and history of ideas with the most recent achievements of historical anthropology. The purpose of this is to present not only a cultural context of the symbolic dimension of ars regendi (with the problem of legitimization of power at the lead), but also to discover the sources for the durability of symbols as invisible bonds tying the political community. Статья посвящена празднованию 1150-летия российской государственности, которое проходило в Новгороде в сентябре 2012 г. За точку отсчета для риторики инициатора торжества, Президента Российской Федерации Д. Медведева, была избрана либеральная публицистика, сопровождавшая первообраз юбилея в 1862 г. Этот прием был продиктован фактом частого обращения тогдашнего главы России к «эпохе великих реформ» (60-е и 70-е гг. XIX в.). В тексте обсуждается ход юбилея и, посвященное ему, медийное освещение в средствах массовой информации. Была также представлена неудачная законодательная инициатива, предусматривающая признание символической годовщины начала Руси государственным праздником. Заключения текста отмежеваются от абсолютизирования политических причин (традиционное в польской публицистике сваливание вину на низкий уровень политической культуры элиты власти) неудачи юбилея. По мнению автора, главная причина провала, обсуждаемого мероприятия, заключается в трудностях создания связного исторического повествования, контаминирующего разнообразные политические традиции и лежащие у их основ ценности.Исследования, являющиеся методологическим фундаментом текста, вписываются в междисциплинарное изучение памяти и коллективной идентичности, переживающее расцвет в Польше. Принятый исследовательский ракурс позволяет обогатить традиционно понимаемую проблемную политическую историю и историю идей свежайшими достижениями исторической антропологии. Целью такого действия является не только показать культурный контекст символического измерения ars regendi (во главе с проблемой легитимизации власти), но и выявление источников устойчивости символов, как незримых уз, скрепляющих политическое сообщество.
Studying the media.Foundations.Culture industry reconsidered /Theodor W. Adorno --Medium is the message /Marshall McLuhan --Encoding/decoding /Stuart Hall --Power of the image /Annette Kuhn --Public sphere /Jurgen Habermas --Masses : the implosion of the social in the media /Jean Baudrillard --Truth and power /Michael Foucalult --Practice of everyday life /Michel de Certeau --Postscript on the societies of control /Gilles Deleuze --Some properties of fields /Pierre Bourdieu --Media in the public sphere.Introduction to Orientalism /Edward Said --Mass culture as woman : modernism's other /Andreas Huyssen --Globalization of communication /John B. Thompson --Introduction to the information age /Maueal Castells --Not only, but also : mixedness and media /Annabelle Sreberny --Representation.Textual structures.Programming as sequence or flow /Raymond Williams --Broadcast TV narration /John Ellis --Role of stereotypes /Richard Dyer --Genre, representation and soap opera /Christine Gledhill --Rhetoric, play, and performance /Roger Silverstone --Database as a symbolic form /Lev Manovich --Politics of representation.Fictions and ideologies : the case of situation comedy /Janet Woollacott --New ethnicities /Stuart Hall --Skin flicks on the racial border : pornography, exploitation, and interracial lust /Linda Williams --Between the blues and the blues dance : some soundscapes of the Black Atlantic /Paul Gilroy --Queering home or domesticating deviance? Interrogating gay domesticity through lifestyle television /Andrew Gorman-Murray --Feminist readings.Survival skills and daydreams /Janice Winship --Reading the slender body /Susan Bordo --Role of soap opera in the development of feminist television scholarship /Charlotte Brunsdon --Postmodernism and popular culture /Angela McRobbie --Playing the game : young girls performing femininity in video game play /Valerie Walkerdine --Audiences.'Effects' debate.On the social effects of television /James D. Halloran --Television audience : a revised perspective /Denis McQuail, Jay G. Blumler and J.R. Brown --Sociology of media power : key issues in audience reception research /Jenny Kitzinger --From bad research to good, a guide for the perplexed /Martin Barker, Julian Petley --Politics of reading.Reading the romance /Janice Radway --Wanted : audiences. On the politics of empirical audience studies /Ien Ang --Oppositional gaze : Black female spectators' /bell hooks --There is something queer here /Alexander Doty --Banal transnationalism : the difference that television makes /Asu Aksoy, Kevin robins --Behind closed doors : video recorders in the home /Ann Gray --Media, meaning, and everyday life /Joke Hermes --What's "home" got to do with it? Contradictory dynamics in the domestication of technology and the dislocation of domesticity /David Morley --No dead air! the iPod and the culture of mobile listening /Michael Bull --'Reality' television.Reality TV and social perversion /Bill Nichols --Rise of reality TV /Annette Hill --Public and private bodies /Sue Thornham --Celebrity, social mobility and the future of reality TV /Anita Biressi, Heather Nunn --Teaching us to fake it : the ritualized norms of television's "reality" games /Nick Couldry --News and documentary.News values and news production /Peter Golding, Philip Elliott --Social production of news /Stuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, Brian Roberts --Politicizing the personal : women's voices in British television documentaries /Myra Macdonald --News media and the globalization of the public sphere /Stig Hjarvard --Bad news from Israel /Greg Philo, Mike Berry --Picturizing science : the science documentary as multimedia spectacle /José van Kijck --Advertising and promotional culture.Advertising : the magic system /Raymond Williams --Advertising, magazine culture, and the "new man" /Sean Nixon --Soft-soaping empire : commodity racism and imperial advertising /Anne McClintock --Promotional condition of contemporary culture /Andrew Wernick --Social communication in advertising /William Leiss, Stephen Kline, Sut Jhally, Jacqueline Botterill --New technologies, new media?Cyberspace and the world we live in /Kevin Robins --Work of being watched : interactive media and the exploitation of self-disclosure /Mark Andrejevic --The MP3 as cultural artifact /Jonathan Sterne --Beyond anonymity, or future directions for internet identity research /Helen Kennedy --Cultural studies and new media /Caroline Bassett.
The Human Rights topic is increasing its relevance in the field of legal studies and in the agenda of inter/transnational actors. The Sociology of Law is deeply engaged in this dialogue, but some of its contributions seem to share a common lack of concern about the dimensions of cultural legitimacy and politics of imagination. Refusing the "simplistic" vision of «legal transplants», the approach in term of regionalization and the genealogical theories (i.e. the so called generations of human rights), the thesis aims to outline a multidisciplinary frame, trying to merge the anthropological and the socio-legal knowledge to shed light on the «anthropologies of human rights». The use of the plural suggests several orders of realities: firstly, it reflects the high fragmentation which characterizes the epistemological and methodological debate of contemporary anthropology, as a disciplinary field. An "internal" multiplication of points of view which becomes even more striking in its interactions whit the HR subject and its own kind of internal dissemination. Secondly (and consequently), it enlightens that the "pluralisation" of human rights discourse could be better understood as a proliferation of world-visions and axiologies. In this second meaning, the summoned «anthropologies» have to be intended in term of theories on human beings, on social reality and social order, shaped by cultural assumptions, taken-for-granted and (shared) symbolical repertoires. Deeply merged within every manifestation of the «humanitarian transnational narration», these world-versions need to be studied as sources of influence and inspiration for legal claims, texts and declarations that build the corpus of international humanitarian law. Lastly, this plurality which stems from the relationship between the macro-narrative of the International Bill of Human Rights and its situated appropriations points out the potentiality of a cultural analysis of the social life of (human) rights in avoiding the dichotomist models (universalism versus relativism, global versus local and so on) in favor of a representation in term of narrative encounters between different conceptions of human dignity, human beings, normative orders and social realities. To grasp this mutual and multilayered overlapping, the first part of the thesis builds an analytical framework destined to be applied, in the second part, to the specific context of the «African system of human rights». This choice was dictated by the peculiarities which seem to distinguish it from others regional systems: amongst these features, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights deserves a special place, considered its aspects of relevant innovation and creativity as well its signs of criticism and its lack of real efficacy. In the first chapter we start from the general liaison between Law and Culture, looking for a «relational paradigm» which rejects determinist or reductionist presentations of this organic link. Adopting a pluralist point of view (centered on the idea of «normative pluralism» preferred to the classical one in term of «legal pluralism»), we borrow some insights from early anthropological researches on «primitive law» and on the co-existence of plural normative orders in colonial settings. The second chapter deals with the concept of «legal culture», trying to discuss a cardinal notion of sociology of law that often pretend to exhaustively grasp the complexity of law/culture nexus. We explore the richness and the pitfalls of influent theorizations about this topic, sorting out three dimensions which seem to require a deeper engagement: the power, the (construction of the) collective identities and the pluralism. In strict dialogue with the studies on «legal consciousness» and «legal socialization», we move towards a textual description of culture. The third chapter sketches a theory of culture in term of cognitive and normative interface between men and the meaningful world they try to create (and to live in). Borrowing from Clifford Geertz the fundamental ideas about the «social traffic of meanings», the textual dimension of cultures and the law as a way of world-making – or better, of imaging the reality –, we keep developing our model in a more comprehensive perspective which dismisses the "literary" constraints entrenched in the idea of «text». The forth chapter deals with some assumptions of the so-called «narrative paradigm», trying to "dissolve" the persisting rigidities of the textual frame into a larger and (more) universal human ability: the narrative competence. We examine the coalescence between narrative attitude and normative attitude, stressing the similarities and the constitutive power of both of them. Starting from narration as a meta-model for the social construction of reality, we move towards the specificities of «legal narration» as expression of the legal construction of social reality. This narrative standpoint can be synthesized as follow: the human skill to produce, to understand and to manipulate tales (and other sources of narrative production) is the key that ensures the transmission and the socializations of cultural meanings, representations and symbols. Trough the narrativization of culture it becomes easier to conceive the narrativization of legal cultures as shared, contested, polyphonic repertories of legal and social ideas. In the fifth chapter we start applying our theoretical framework to the human rights topic. We begin with a preliminary set of issues regrouped under the label of «spatial problematic». It underlines the paradox of the Universalist project, with its claims of cultural independence and planetary applicability on the one hand, and the need of cultural resonance and local relevance on the other. We explore critical contributions about the «globalization talk», which stress some traps of this overriding way of representing social and socio-legal phenomena in the contemporary world. Aiming to reject monodimensional explanations, we merge the «rhetoric of flaws» with the sensibility for «friction events» generated by and trough the encounters between transnational narratives and specific local (and cultural) settings. The concept of «vernacularization» helps us to conceive these interactions/intersections between global flows and punctual frictions. The sixth chapter introduces the main elements of the African context, starting from a sketched portrait of what we define its «radical normative pluralism». In order to cope with the complex reality of the African human rights system, we outline a historical (and political) description of the events that preceded the creation of the Organization for the African Unity, the institutional body which had the main responsibility in the consolidation of the system itself. We also examine various "legal" precedents (the so-called Lagos Law, the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples and so on) which influenced the elaboration of the African Charter with their moral and political authority. Whit the seventh chapter we finally land the heart of our topic: the narrative analysis of the African Charter of Human and Peoples' Rights. After a quick identification of the focal features of the document, we approach the meaningful core of the Charter: the organic/holistic relationship between individual human rights and collective dimension of peoples' (human) rights. We split our investigation in two different but related paths: the individual/people pole and the rights/duties pole, assuming they are two dissimilar strategies to arrange this underlying "cohabitation". We also draw to several pronunciations of the African Commission of human and peoples' rights exploring the potential meanings of people and peoples' rights to clarify the official/institutional position on the subject. Anthropological and sociological studies on the ongoing modifications of collective frames of reference (the family, the ethnic group and other strategies of kinship allegiance) in contemporary Africa are employed to complete our inquiry. In the eighth chapter we (temporary) leave the African Charter in favor of other documents and protocols produced by the African system, strictly related to the «culture variable»: the Pan-African Cultural Manifesto, the Cultural Charter for Africa and the Charter for African Cultural Renaissance. After that, we approach three other texts more engaged on the promotion and protection of human rights for specific categories of people: the African Charter on the rights and welfare of the child, the Protocol to the African Charter on human and peoples' rights on the rights of women in Africa and the African Youth Charter. Our aim is to show how cultural assumptions about the subjects concerned shape or influence the normative prescriptions designed to protect them. The ninth chapter, finally, outlines a general evaluation of our analytical model trough the exploration of its weakness and its points of strength. It shows the hermeneutical advantages provided by the «gius-narrative» key, which enabled us to trace and emphasize the links between myths and foundational narratives of social groups and theirs normative constructions. It also stresses the need for a cultural study of social life of human rights, to (try to) grasp the many faces that the struggle for human rights is showing in its continuous spread around the world.
This dissertation is situated within a field of cultural studies that seeks to develop a broader understanding of the political stakes of twentieth- and twenty-first century debates over who can travel. This line of inquiry responds to the persistent tendency in travel writing over the course of the century to exclude certain subjects in movement from the role of the traveler. The question, "What is travel?" is often treated in both literary texts and criticism as a philosophical or abstract question, stripped of its historical and political implications. I ask, what is the relationship between this effort to restrict the identity of the traveler and France's imperialist history? How and why are non-European subjects denied the status of traveler, and how does the debate over the traveler / tourist binary, which has received more critical attention, relate to the reification of colonial and postcolonial subjects in the role of the "sedentary native"? Taking these questions as a point of departure, this dissertation explores how the theoretical opposition between the dynamic traveler and the passive travelee is constructed, undermined, and directly challenged in texts belonging to a wide variety of genres, from the historical novel to the Oulipian literary exercise to autofiction. The first part of the dissertation considers representations of travel at the "apogee" of the French Empire in the early 1930s. In Chapter One, I analyze how the 1931 Colonial Exposition, in framing a visit to the fair as a voyage around the world, both reifies the identity of the European visitor to the fair (indigenous to the metropole) as a traveler and reinforces the notion that the colonial subjects imported to perform the role of the "natives" at the fair (many of whom had traveled thousands of miles to reach Paris) could never occupy the role of the traveler. Chapter Two moves across genres to André Malraux's adventure novel La voie royale (1930). I show how this modernist text--while continuing to exclude colonial subjects from the role of the traveler--nevertheless challenges the association of Europeans with dynamism and progress so central to the rhetoric of the mission civilisatrice. The second part of the dissertation analyzes texts from the last quarter of the century that reconfigure ideas of travel. In Chapter Three, I demonstrate how Maryse Condé's two-volume historical novel Ségou (1984-85) challenges the myth of African ahistoricity that emerges from both colonial historiographies and certain Negritude discourses through its narration of histories of travel in West Africa and throughout the Diaspora. In contrast to the representation of West African cultural spaces at the Exposition through an essentialized, monolithic architecture, the figure of the city in Ségou is a site of cultural exchange and hybridity. Chapter Four turns to two works published during the mid-1970s: a watershed moment for the history of tourism and immigration in the twentieth century. I juxtapose Georges Perec's Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien (1975)--an account of several days spent sitting in the Place Saint-Sulpice--with Rachid Boudjedra's Topographie idéale pour une agression caractérisée (1975), which narrates an unnamed emigrant's struggle to navigate the subterranean labyrinth of the Paris metro. I explore how Perec's encounters with tourists circulating through the Place Saint-Sulpice can shed light on the ways in which native Parisians respond to the presence of Boudjedra's protagonist in the metropolitan capital. In both texts, interactions between Parisians and travelers to Paris are shaped by the natives' anxiety over the perceived globalization of mobility in the 1970s. In Chapter Five, I examine a pair of texts representing urban itineraries in the French capital at the turn of the century: Bessora's 53 cm (1999) and Patrick Modiano's Dora Bruder (1999). By reimagining Paris as a site of travel, the location of multiple histories and cultures, the texts read in this last chapter fundamentally undermine the oppositions between "here" and "elsewhere," home and abroad, traveler and native, and more broadly speaking, between travel and dwelling, which have defined colonial and neocolonial ideas of travel throughout the twentieth century. Finally, in the Afterword, I suggest how an approach to travel literature structured around close attention to historical context can inform contemporary debates over the disciplinary boundaries of French / Francophone Studies.
The correlation between history and literature, particularly novel, has always been an intriguing issue within the academic studies. The twist of history within a novel or, on the other hand, a variable narration of a historical record provides an explicit proof that both fields are closely interrelated. That is why one of the objectives of this study is the exploration of this interaction between history and literature, particularly novel, through the contemporary literary examples. Another important issue that we deal with in our study is the concept of historical consciousness. Its projection and role of the contemporary American novel in its establishment became another focal point. Besides the historical aspect, the study explores the political issues and power struggles within the contemporary literary texts. The formation, transformation, and reproduction of power, which inevitably exists in every political issue and field, constitute an important part of the dissertation. Analyzing the major characteristics of a political novel, this study links such core issues of government and politics like power relations and ideological apparatuses, that maintain the political structures, to the historical events and the way those are represented within the narrative being discussed. Furthermore, satire, as one of the strongest and effective tools of political criticism, forms another dimension of this dissertation. While satire represents a critical stance and a point of resistance against political and ideological structures, it also appears as an important artistic rhetoric in literature and takes its place in political as well as historical novels. In this context the relations between satire, politics, and American novel are examined in order to disclose their contribution to this particular genre. Subsequently, through the whole structure of the connections between completely different grounds like history, politics and literature this study aims at revealing a multidisciplinary perspective on the literary works of several prolific contemporary American authors. ; Tarih ile edebiyatın en güçlü yazın türü roman olan ilişkisi akademik çalışma ve araştırmalarının daima ilgi alanı içinde yer almıştır. Romanlarda karşılaştığımız tarihsel büküm ya da tarihsel olayların farklı biçimlerde kurguları bu iki alanın yakından ilişkili olduğunu ve birbirlerini besleyerek geliştiğini söylemek mümkündür. Buna bağlı olarak, çalışmamızın amaçlarından bir tanesi edebiyat ile tarih arasındaki ilişkinin roman bağlamındaki gelişimini, benzerlik ve karşıtlıklarını çağdaş dönemdeki yansımalarıyla birlikte ortaya koymaktır. Tezimizin içinde ele aldığımız önemli bir diğer önemli konu ise tarihsel bilinç kavramıdır. ABD ülkeler tarihi açısından kısa bir geçmişe sahip olmakla birlikte siyasi, sosyal, kültürel ve ekonomik alanlarda yaşadığı gelişmeler insanlık tarihinde benzerine az rastlanabilecek dönüşüm ve tecrübeleri içinde barındırmaktadır. ABD'nin sadece bir ülke değil aynı zamanda yeni bir kıta olması, ulus kimliğini olabildiğince eski dünyadan uzak tutma gayreti, bu ülke insanlarının tarihsel bilinç ve referanslarının ülke sınırları içinde kalmasına ve dünyanın diğer bölgelerine uzak kalmasını beraberinde getirmiştir. Buna bağlı olarak, yetişen nesiller kendi kabukları içinde kalarak, "ayrıcalıklı" bir Amerikan tarihi ve kimliği oluşturarak hem dünya hem de bazen kendi tarihsel bilinçlerinden ayrık kaldıklarını söylemek mümkündür. Çalışmamızda tarihsel bilinç kavramının romanlardaki izdüşümü ve bu bilincin oluşumundaki rolü gibi konular incelenmektedir. Tezimiz için seçilmiş olan romanların tarihselliğinin yanı sıra siyasi temaları içermesine dikkat edilmiş ve bu yapıları içinde açık ve gizil olgulara yönelik ideolojik çözümlemeler yapılması amaçlanmıştır. Siyasi olan her konu ve alan içinde kaçınılmaz olarak var olan güç kavramı ve mücadelesi, gücün oluşumu, dönüşümü, yeniden üretilmesi, rızaya bağlı olarak kabul edilmesi gibi kavramlar çalışmanın önemli bir ayağını oluşturmaktadır. Bu bağlamda güç ve siyaset kavramlarının tarihsel süreçteki oluşumu ve gelişimi kuramsal olarak ele alınmış ve tezin özgün kısmı olan roman incelemelerinde siyasi/tarihsel yönlerin ön plana alınarak iktidar, siyaset, güç ilişkileri ve bu ilişkilerin sürekliliğini sağlayan yapıların/mekanizmaların roman anlatısı içinde nasıl işlendiği ortaya konulmaya çalışılmış ve referans olarak alınan gerçek tarihsel olayların romanlardaki temsiller ile karşılaştırarak edebiyat ve tarih çözümlemeleri bir arada yapılmıştır. Güç, siyaset ve edebiyat denildiğinde karşımıza çıkan diğer bir kavram ise siyasi mizah ve özellikle hiciv olmuştur. Hiciv, bir yandan siyasete karşı eleştirel bir duruş ve direniş noktasını temsil ederken, diğer yandan edebiyat içinde önemli bir sanatsal retorik olarak karşımıza çıkmakta ve siyasi romanlarda yerini almaktadır. Bu bağlamda çalışmamız içinde yer alan önemli bir konu olarak hiciv, siyaset ve edebiyat/roman arasındaki ilişkiler tarihsel, kavramsal ve romanlar üzerinden yapılan uygulamalar ile incelemesi yapılmıştır. Bu kavram aynı zamanda siyasetin ve tarihin kaçınılmaz bir parçası olan güç ve güç mücadelelerinin oluşturduğu mekanizmalara karşı bir direnç ve zaman zaman çözümlemelere yönelik bir anahtar olarak katkı sağlamıştır. Sonuç olarak tezimiz, genel çerçevede tarih, siyaset ve edebiyat gibi ayrı disiplinlerin aslında iç içe olduğu, edebiyat okumaları ile tarih ve siyasete ışık tutulabileceği, tarihsel süreçler ile edebi metinlerin birbiriyle son derece yakından ilişkili olduğu, bazen tarihin oluşturamadığı bilinci edebiyatın oluşturabileceği yukarıda değindiğimiz tema ve kavramlar bağlamında disiplinlerarası bir çalışmayı ortaya koymaktadır.
The images of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Union of the Kingdom of Poland in Lithuanian collective memory (end of the 19th c. – 1940)Since the end of the 19th century the Lithuanian national movement created several narrations about national history, which presented a negative evaluation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Union of the Kingdom of Poland. Polonization of Lithuania was highlighted as the most negative consequence of these Unions.All unions formed under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Union of the Kingdom of Poland got negative evaluation in the discourse of Lithuanian nationalism. However, the Union of Lublin was considered to be the greatest harm – it was evaluated as a fatal moment in the Lithuanian history giving rise to the processes of dangerous Lithuanian national ethnic identity loss. The Lithuanian national movement proclaimed cultural and political independence, and declared that the revival of historical ideal of the Unions' national identity was unacceptable for the Lithuanian nation.When discussing the Lithuanians' rights to political independence with the Polish public figures and reacting to ambitions of the Polish political figures to restore Poland with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth national borders of 1772, in the Lithuanian press the image of two Unions (usually, the Union of Lublin) was presented as the symbol underlying the Lithuanian national political and cultural dependence. The image of the Union of Lublin was like an obligatory illustration of the Lithuanian nationalism discourse underlining the negative consequences of the union for the Lithuanian nation. It was the Union of Lublin that became the generalized image of all unions and the symbol of Lithuanian political, ethnic, cultural dependence, the memory location underlying the traumatic memory.The initiatives of the Polish public figures to actualize the memories about the unions caused the Lithuanians' negative response and numerous discussions. A similar situation happened in 1913 when the Polish society mentioned the 500th anniversary of the Herald Union. The celebration of this anniversary was evaluated by Lithuanians as a Polish attempt to revive the political union ideal – as an attempt to make Lithuania a part of Poland. The debates of those times were used by the public figures of the Lithuanian national movement in order to emphasize the orientation of the Lithuanian national movement towards the cultural and political emancipation and underline that the Lithuanians do not accept any idea of state revival reasoned by historical unions.The image of unions in the interwar Lithuania of the 20th century was the most vivid in propagandist discourse during the fights for Lithuanian independence and when trying to restore the historical capital, Vilnius. This image was used as a rhetoric figure of propagandist discourse symbolizing the Lithuanian slavery and a threat of its dependence on Poland. Obrazy unii między Wielkim Księstwem Litewskim a Królestwem Polskim w litewskiej pamięci zbiorowej (koniec XIX w. – 1940 r.)Od końca XIX w. litewski ruch narodowy tworzył narracje historyczne, w których unie między Wielkim Księstwem Litewskim (dalej WKL) a Królestwem Polskim oceniano negatywnie. Za największy negatywny skutek unii uznano polonizację Litwy.W litewskim dyskursie nacjonalistycznym negatywnie oceniono wszystkie unie zawarte między WKL a Królestwem Polskim, jednak jako największe zło traktowano unię lubelską – decydujący punkt w historii Litwy, od którego rozpoczął się groźny proces utraty tożsamości przez naród litewski. Litewski ruch narodowy głosił dążenie do wolności kulturowej i politycznej. Towarzyszyła temu deklaracja, że dla narodu litewskiego nie do przyjęcia jest odrodzenie historycznej unijnej idei państwowości.W toczącej się w prasie litewskiej dyskusji z polskimi działaczami społecznymi o prawach Litwinów do samodzielności politycznej oraz w reakcji na ambicje polskich działaczy społecznych przywrócenia państwowości Polski w granicach Rzeczpospolitej Obojga Narodów z 1772 r., obraz unii (najczęściej lubelskiej) pojawiał się jako symbol zależności politycznej i kulturowej narodu litewskiego. Wizja unii lubelskiej była obowiązkową ilustracją litewskiego dyskursu nacjonalistycznego, świadczącą o negatywnych skutkach unii dla Litwinów. To właśnie unia lubelska stała się uogólnionym obrazem wszystkich unii oraz symbolem niewoli politycznej, narodowej i kulturowej Litwinów, traumatycznym miejscem pamięci.Inicjatywy polskich działaczy, by przywrócić pamięć o uniach, wywoływały negatywną reakcję ze strony Litwinów i rodziły dyskusje. Tak się stało, na przykład, w 1913 r., gdy polskie społeczeństwo obchodziło jubileusz 500. rocznicy unii horodelskiej. Obchody te oceniono jako próbę Polaków ożywienia idei unii politycznej – dążenie do uczynienia z Litwy części Polski. Ówczesne dyskusje działacze litewskiego ruchu narodowego wykorzystali do tego, by podkreślić swoje dążenie do emancypacji kulturowej i politycznej oraz zaznaczenia, że Litwini nie akceptują żadnej idei odrodzenia państwowości, opartej na uniach historycznych.W okresie międzywojennym na Litwie obraz unii najbardziej był dostrzegalny w dyskursie propagandowym w okresie walk o niepodległość Litwy oraz w dążeniu do odzyskania historycznej stolicy Wilna. Obraz ten wykorzystano jako figurę retoryczną dyskursu propagandowego, symbolizującą niewolę Litwy i jej uzależnienie od Polski.
