This essay explores the intertextual qualities in and between Kristian Lundberg’s works Yarden, Mörkret skulle vara som ljuset and Och allt skall vara kärlek. Read as a trilogy, it bears a thematic resemblance to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy; an autofictional depiction of emancipation from alienation by grace. To reach this conclusion, I use Julia Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality and Roland Barthes’ post-structuralist differention of Work and Text together with his notion of the Paper-Author. Through a kaleidoscopic reading of the two trilogies, Dante and Kristian become pilgrims in the word’s true, etymological sense: foreigners, both religious and materialistic. As such, they walk the spiritual and material world making no distinction between the two towards a love whose essential nature is twofold: at once human and divine.

Idag är modet mer kommersialiserat är någonsin och bilder som porträtterar kvinnor i olika sammanhang som kan knytas till mode cirkulerar snabbare än någonsin. Vad är det egentligen för bild av kvinnan som framställs på dessa bilder? Syftet med följande uppsats är att med hjälp av Barthes modell för semiotisk bildanalys ta reda på om svenska ELLE använder sig av några återkommande bild/-er av kvinnan i sina modereportage. Analysen är gjord ur ett genusperspektiv med utgångspunkt från stereotypa könsroller och kvinnans tillskrivna egenskaper. Materialet som analyserats är fyra stycken bildreportage om cirka åtta bilder från svenska ELLE (juni, september, november2010 samt april 2011). Urvalet är gjort mekaniskt och ett bildreportage från varje säsong har valts ut för att komma så nära en representativ bild som möjligt. Barthes modell för semiotisk bildanalys går ut på att analysera bilden i två steg. Första nivån, denotativa nivån är det läsaren ser omedelbart när denna tittar på bilden, det som porträtteras. Konnotationen som då blir andra ordningen av beteckningen beskriver det samspel som sker när tecknet möter användarens uppfattningar, känslor, värderingar och kulturella bakgrund. Analysen som återfinns i uppsatsen är gjort av varje bildserie som helhet men en djupgående analys av varje enskild bild återfinns i bilagorna. Efter att med hjälp av Barthes analysmodell analyserat ELLE’s modereportage har jag kommit fram till att ELLE vid flertalet tillfällen framställer kvinnorna på bilderna utifrån tillskrivna, kvinnliga egenskaper. Dessa egenskaper utgår ifrån hur vi ordnar könens egenskaper efter dualistiska förhållanden, kvinnan tillskrivs de motsatta egenskaperna som mannen har. Egenskaper som återfinns i de analyserade bilderna är; kvinnan som passiv, en del av naturen, betraktad, objekt, kropp, känsla, djur. Detta genom att bland annat porträttera kvinnan i en skog iförd kläder som gör att hon smälter in i naturen samt visa henne som ett djur som skyggt flyr betraktaren. Att framställa henne i situationer då hon passar upp på och blir betraktad av män samt bilder där hennes kropp och dess former är i fokus.

<p>This dissertation examines the pair subject-subjectivity embedded in the problematic of the end of art, as it is figured in exemplary fashion by film and literature. The analysis examines critically the problem of the subject vis-à-vis subjectivity by opening a dialogue that allows the necessary double terms of this discussion to emerge in the first place from the encounter with selected filmic and literary texts: Jacques Rivette's La belle noiseuse and Samuel Beckett's Film, The Unnamable and The Lost Ones. These texts are analyzed on an equal footing with the thought of Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Gianni Vattimo, Giorgio Agamben, and Gilles Deleuze who have written on both subjectivity and art. The study thus proposes a real movement - in terms and through art - that treats the metaphor of anamorphosis on the level of praxis: the image of subjectivity appears on the screen that is the filmic or literary text as the result of a passage in terms. The subject that emerges at the end of the analysis puts in perspective a certain practice of metonymic reading as renewed political potential of subjectivity.</p> / Dissertation

Paul Auster¡¦s The Invention of Solitude is not merely an autobiography, but an attempt to render such a genre to challenge writing itself by trying to write what is of no possibility to be written. In addition, Auster further adds elements of photography in The Invention of Solitude, which on the one hand enhance the genre itself (as an autobiography with photos attached as solid evidences to the written words), and on the other hand, by doing so, the author as a matter of fact deconstructs everything he has been trying to construct. By adding photographs and descriptions of the photographs very consciously, he actually, beyond the ostensible purpose of trying to lend credibility to the autobiographical work, tries to challenge the solidity of such work. Lots of researches have been done on Paul Auster, for whom has already recognized world-widely as an important contemporary American writer, most of them focus on his renowned New York Trilogy (1987),The Music of Chance (1990), or The Brooklyn Follys (2005), while little researches have been done to The Invention of Solitude¡V¡Voften referred to as a memoir of Auster. The book is structured with ¡§Portrait of an Invisible Man¡¨ and ¡§The Book of Memory;¡¨ the former is written right after the sudden death of the author¡¦s father Samuel Auster and the latter is Auster¡¦s own account on matters that later have become his re-occurrent themes throughout his works. I study the utilization of involving photographs in fictional autobiography by looking at the two photographs Paul Auster has reproduced in The Invention of Solitude. Namely, how photography and fiction put together to ¡§renew¡¨ each other (Louvel 31). In chapter one I discuss autobiography and photography, the intertextuality between photographs and texts, and the selection of the two photographs in The Invention of Solitude (including different arrangements of the two photographs in various editions). In chapter two, I mainly focus on Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes¡¦ reading on photographs; I aim to conclude that each of them talks about one particular essence of photography respectively only with different terms¡V¡Vas aura and punctum¡V¡Vthe endeavor is to illustrate and attest to a certain and unique quality of human that can never be portrayed any how and by any means. Auster¡¦s usage of putting together the words and the photos is also a means to pursuit the same untraceable human quality; he testifies the unseen by presenting something to be seen. The Invention of Solitude requires reader to treat it with the way of reading photographs and pictures; a pictorial reading of words is of necessity in tackling the work, just as in Liliane Louvel¡¦s words, to treat ¡§the image as a means to study fiction through the lens of what I call the ¡¥pictorial third¡¦¡¨ (31). In chapter three, I delve into the anxiety and hunger for portrayal, linking which to the act of writing that functions as a healing process for the writer. I then concentrate on the text, demonstrating how this text itself can possibly be decoded with ways analyzing a picture. In its form and way of writing, the composition of The Invention of Solitude is just like the early procedure of long exposure in taking photographs, the distance and aura have both remained through the writing and the given photographs. In addition, the text is far more than simply combination of words, each word has been rendered as if an element of photography; that is, words can be read with multiple layers of meanings that are all linked with photographs. And I would explore this point through the reading of ¡§room¡¨ in the book. Besides, I¡¦ve involved Susan Sontag, Henri Van Lier, John Berger, Edward W. Said and Thierry de Duve in the three chapters, serving to converse with my argument. Chapter four includes the film Smoke as the subject, the film not only contains photographs as a heavy ingredient and one of the major themes; what¡¦s more, the sequence of weighting smoke also best serves as the footnote, penetrating Benjamin, Barthes and Auster.

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Langue et littérature française : Paris 8 : 2008. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. f. 293-320. Index.

From 1972 until 1989, the artist trio General Idea produced FILE Megazine. The first eight issues of FILE, published from 1972 – 1975, are the focus of this thesis. They stand apart from the later issues because their covers hijacked the look and iconic logo of Life magazine. The red rectangle with white block letters attracted the attention of Time Inc. and resulted in a lawsuit. Rather than fight the corporate giant, General Idea changed their logo after the autumn 1975 issue. FILE, like many artists’ magazines, is typically discussed in idealistic language that privileges the subversive or democratic intentions of the publication while neglecting its significance as a device for the promotion of community and collaboration. I argue that General Idea envisioned FILE as a utopian project intended to produce the world they sought to live in. Authors frequently employ FILE as a tool to discuss General Idea’s work, focusing on it as a mirror or archive of a larger project and emphasizing FILE’s humorous, bawdy, and irreverent aspects. In this thesis, I situate FILE in terms of its historical, art historical, and theoretical frameworks. I pay particular attention to General Idea’s early involvement in the mail art network, FILE’s relationship to 1960s and 1970s artists’ magazines and magazine art, the contemporaneous social and political climate in Canada, and General Idea’s investigation and employment of theoretical frameworks culled from Marshall McLuhan’s text The Medium is the Message and Roland Barthes’ book Mythologies. / text

I denna uppsats studeras vilka teman, samt vilka formala och estetiska likheter och skillnader som förekommer i tävlingen Årets Bild, med fokus på vinnarbilderna under åren 2004-2014 i kategorin med samma namn. En innehållsanalys har gjorts på de elva bilderna och även en mer djupgående semiotisk och formal analys på fyra av dessa. Materialet blir belyst utifrån Susan Sontags teorier om att se andras lidande, Greenwood och Smiths undersökning av tävlingen Picture of the Year, samt Roland Barthes teorier om text och bild. Resultatet av studien visar att de teman som främst förekommer inom tävlingen är brott/terrorism och att bilderna nästan uteslutande avbildar en händelse efter att de ägt rum. Resultatet visar att text och bild hör ihop och att bilderna i många fall förlorar sin betydelse utan en beskrivande text. Tolkningen av bilderna är beroende av texter som placerar dem i en kontext. Över lag visar bilderna på lidande av olika slag. Det kan vara långvarigt lidande, framtida lidande eller direkt lidande- som direkt visar på döda eller skadade människor. De bilder som är mest brutala är de bilder som visar på händelser nära eller i Sverige.

This thesis seeks a portable and accessible model for centralising photographs in enquiry. I argue that photographs are potent sites of human value making but are typically relegated to illustrating word-based considerations, while the vast mass of ‘ordinary’ photographs are excluded from even this function. The context in which I develop and test the model is the heroic era of Antarctic exploration, a time and place that is dominated by an entrenched mythology, and where photographs have been assigned a merely pictorial role. In seeking to reactivate these objects and pictures I turn to Elizabeth Edwards’ notion of using photographs to think with, tracing the evolution of this idea through generations of thinking about photography, and emphasising recent writers such as Geoffrey Batchen, Margaret Olin and Joan Schwartz. My work confirms a resonance with Edwards’ thinking but also a need to emphasise photographic materiality and the photographic collective. Further, I demonstrate that this thinking also resonates with the work of Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes, confirming a construction of photographs as generative anchoring points in networks of identification that are both culturalised and subjective. My model for thinking with photographs draws in Kenneth Burke’s pentad of dramatistic analysis, arguing a productive fit with his concern to filter the rhetorical detritus of human behaviour as an entrée to viewing core motivations. The pentad has not previously been used to think with photographs but it is able to be deployed successfully for this purpose by refreshing its operation in line with writers such as Robert Cathcart, James Chesebro and Gregory Clark. For Antarctica, thinking with photographs involves negotiating margins – depicted, physical, temporal and ideological, and in addressing the photographic mass this thesis argues a reactivation of margins as points of insight rather than barriers of exclusion. Recent writers such as Francis Spufford, Stephen Pyne, John Wylie and Kathryn Yusoff have found new ways to construct the performance of Antarctic exploration, and, in this spirit, the thesis enacts Burke’s pentad to think with the photograph collection of ‘second tier’ Antarctic explorer, Ernest Joyce. It shows Antarctic exploration to be also an intensely personal experience, with the power to overhaul mindsets but offering no guarantee that new expectations can be delivered on. In Joyce’s photographs it finds a nexus of contested narratives and contested photographies, and the seeds of a Benjaminian modernity that speak of the personal implications of the dissolution of meta-narratives.

A new class of photographs that relies on digital processes, best exemplified by the works of Gregory Crewdson, Andreas Gursky and Jeff Wall all exhibit a ‘not quite right’ quality that calls into question some of the most closely held truisms of photographic thought. Through novel technological processes combined with the elements of the new photography—new scale, fabulist imagery, and implied narrative—these images challenge the nature of photography as a documentary process and, beyond that, the nature of what we understand to be ‘the real’ that is supposedly documented. A visual analysis of these images through the lens of Roland Barthes’ and Susan Stewart’s scholarship reveals truths about these images and about photography as a medium. What these elements, this ‘lack of rightness’, can tell us about photography and its position as documentary medium can help us better understand the nature of contemporary photography as a truly creative medium rather than a documentation of the real. These artists are engaging in a discourse of artifice, questioning the position of photographs as documents of how it was, revealing that not only is their work not a documentation of the world as it is, but that photography never was.

The aim this thesis is to analyse the narrative structure of the novel, The Portrait of A Lady, with the aim of revealing how meaning is made and to show how certain elements are transferred to the film version and the consequent changes in meaning and emphasis. The structural analysis of The Portrait will chiefly rely on Shlomith Rimmon- Kenan&rsquo / s scheme she draws in her book Narrative Fiction. The functional analysis to show the consequent changes in meaning and emphasis, on the other hand, will rely on Roland Barthes&rsquo / s theory of functions he discusses in his article &ldquo / Structural Analysis of Narratives&rdquo / . In order to explore the narrative structure of The Portrait of A Lady, this thesis will examine story, characterization, time and focalization and demonstrate the techniques Henry James uses in narration. In the functional analysis of the novel, on the other hand, the functions of the units discussed in the story and the characterization will be compared to the functions of the same units that are transferred to the adaptation of the novel to reveal how the meaning and emphasis of the novel changes.