(in English) This dissertation paper deals with the transformation of the relationship letter and image in the Czechsoslovakian art in the 1950s and 1960s, interpreted from the point of view of the cultural and social events not as the history of art, but history of reality representation. The objective of the paper is to create a more complex view of various levels of integration of letter and image in domestic environment, so it approaches the phenomena of letter and image from a specific interpretation point of view based on three main lines. Mapping the phenomena of letter and image in the context of that period in Czechoslovakia, which preceded work structuralizing, was the base of the first interpretation line which bases the core of work on four social "activators", which, in the mind of an artist, activated the need to incarnate letter and image. Since the subject of the paper is the letter as a material manifestation of the language, the second interpretations line follows the purposeful modification of the language structure between the signifiant and signifié, which occurs in visual imaging. The third interpretation line puts the first two into a broader, aesthetic and philosophical context due to which, more complex language structures entering the art of work can be identified. Using...

Women in the Theological Anthropology of the Afrikaans Reformed Tradition This dissertation examines women in the theological anthropology of the Afrikaans Reformed Churches. The study is set out as follows: In Chapter 1, a survey of methodology is presented. The exposition of the question about the theological anthropology is done against a poststructural background. Both structuralism and poststructuralism largely put aside existentialism as an inadequate methodology. Chapter 2 aims to give an overview of the contribution of Michel Foucault. The chapter begins with a discussion of structuralism. This brief overview is then followed by a classification and investigation of the basic aspects of Foucault's approach. The chapter highlights Foucault's rootedness in poststructuralism. Chapter 3 attempts to explain silence of women in the theological anthropology of Dutch Reformed Church. The central aim of Chapter 3 is to demonstrate, against the development of the women ministries and the discourse about the ordination of women, that the Dutch Reformed Church theological anthropology is deeply influenced by the discursive practices developed during 1928-1932. Chapter 4 gives an overview of the developments in the theological anthropology of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, Dutch Reformed Church of Africa and the Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa that took place from 1924 until 2002. Different approaches to the women question developed in the course of time. At the heart of the discourse is the shift in the reading process. The developments in the feminist standpoint theory as such led to this displacement. In Chapter 5 the deconstruction of the theological anthropology are being discussed. Preference is given in this chapter to the concept partnership or transformative relations. In the concluding chapter [Chapter 6], a poststructural feminist discourse is presented. Selected guidelines that the church may wish to take into account in the deconstructing of the theological anthropology are suggested. In the future, the frame of reference to the women question would likely be poststructural. / Systematic Theology and Theological Ethics / D. Th. (Systematic Theology)

This dissertation considers whether photography as a language translates a transient moment into an embodied image. This is considered to be a mimesis of the moment as an aid for memory. By following a dialectic approach I posit a thesis based on the common sense perception of photography which states that photography is an artefactual mimesis aiding memory. After reflecting on Plato’s concept of writing as a pharmakon and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction theory I establish an antithesis which proclaims that a photograph aids memory but also leads to the illusion of remembering past experiences. The synthesis is then presented which resolves the opposing ideas. This component argues that a photograph is a mimetic device that aids memory by presenting embodied fragmented reflections of time which can be used to create new meanings and memories. The dissertation concludes with a discussion that supports and integrates this argument with visual research. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)

This study attempts to offer a reading of Msimang's poetry from the perspective of deconstruction. In this course it is necessary to introduce and elaborate on certain deconstruction strategies. This is mainly effected in the second chapter, where consideration is given to diachronic and synchronic perspectives on deconstruction. However, not all the ramifications of the various radical insights offered by deconstructive approaches into the various fields are explored, only the significant texts by mainly French theorists and their American disciples are investigated. Secondly, this study seeks to show that the Zulu poems under consideration are highly amenable to a deconstruction reading. This thesis examines the various practices to absorb, transform, and integrate deconstruction and to make the theory applicable as a critical method within the African languages critical environment. In the third chapter, I am chiefly concerned with the claim that a text never has a single meaning, but is a crossroads of multiple ambiguous meanings. Explaining the historical context, the interdisciplinary scope, and the philosophical significance of Derrida' s project are explored in the fourth chapter. Language has no determinate centre nor any retrievable origin or truth. Belief in such is no more than nostalgia, says Derrida. What actually exists is a complex network of differences between signifiers, each in some sense carrying the traces of all others. With psychoanalysis in the fourth chapter, the focus is not on the differences between the deconstructive and psychoanalytic critics, but on their shared assumption that works ofliterature are in some sense indeterminate. These properties lead to the sixth chapter, which deals with intertextuality according to Derrida, Barthes and Bloom. The seventh and last chapter is the general conclusion in which main observations are summarized and important aspects highlighted. Finally, this thesis attempts to illustrate why the deconstructive procedure of analysing texts in such a way as to explicate their partial complicity with the theory, makes this deconstructive reading of Msimang' s poetry possible. / African Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

<p>In this paper Mona Hatoums installation Corps étranger is discussed via a post structuralized method based on associative and semiotic comparisons with vanitas, a post-modern self-portrait, and as a representative for modern visual art. The analyze touches upon pornography, science fiction and the quest for scientific conquest in outer and inner space. Theoretical references are Foucault, Freud, Lacan, Barthes, Dolar, Said and Virilio. Hatoum makes the observer a voyageur with the aid of the latest medical technology, endoscope, which gives her the opportunity to make an introvert self-portrait when she films her own throat and rectum. But at the same time she makes the portrait of us all. I interpret this as a fictious science with postcolonial ideas, and the reference to science fiction is close at range. Hatoum takes the role as the other, the woman or the stranger and might flirt with Jülich interpretation of Corps étranger as a sign of the visual cultures colonisation of the human body’s inside, that is a conscious reference to sexuality, ethics and the search for knowledge and power.</p>

Narrative, often considered synonymous with “story,” can be viewed from a structuralist perspective and analyzed independent of any particular content. Breaking narrative into categories of story and discourse, this autonomous structure makes possible a translation of content from one form to another. The various media and form types common in graphic design can serve as both recipient and translator of narratives, converting content into a framework that includes the concept of craftsmanship, aesthetic components and specifications, legibility and composition, and the physical form of the designed object. To examine how this framework functions in practice, I have developed a series of three volumes in which cinematic tropes are represented in book form based on a morphology of traits.

L’objet de ce travail de thèse est d’élucider la dynamique des relations internationales à l’Age classique, depuis les traités de Westphalie (1648) jusqu’à la bataille de Valmy (1792). Les conflits qui marquent les relations internationales à l’Age classique sont régulièrement qualifiés par les historiens militaires de « limités » et d’« indécis ». Or, il faut élucider les raisons et la nature de cette limitation. Cette limitation est double : les guerres de l’Age classique sont d’abord limitées pour des raisons politiques, « l’équilibre des puissances » fonctionnant comme un cadre juridique régulateur ; les guerres sont ensuite limitées pour des raisons militaires, la guerre classique était fondée sur une stratégie d’usure et une tactique de position. Plus importante que la mise au jour de ces limitations, est leur articulation causale. Pour élucider ce problème, nous avons proposé une grille d’analyse que nous avons appelé « quadrangle des relations internationales », et qui permet d’étudier, pour n’importe quelle époque, les dimensions ontologiques, politiques, stratégiques et tactiques, de ces relations. La dimension ontologique questionne la nature des acteurs politiques dans un système politique donné : comment l’Etat territorial souverain s’est-il imposé comme forme d’organisation politique centrale ? La dimension politique analyse ensuite le cadre dans lequel se meuvent les unités du système : comment s’est imposé peu à peu l’équilibre des puissances comme mode de régulation de la politique internationale ? La dimension stratégique explicite le plan des campagnes des chefs d’Etats : comment expliquer que la stratégie des Etats ait été fondée sur la défensive et l’usure ? La dimension tactique enfin, scrute les modes opératoires de cette stratégie : comment procèdent sièges et manœuvres à l’Age classique ? Chacune de ces dimensions s’enchaîne causalement de manière à renouer avec une « histoire globale », allant des strates mentales à la stratégie des acteurs. / This PhD work aims at analyzing the dynamics of international relations from the Westphalia (1648) treaties to the battle of Valmy (1792). Classic conflicts are regularly qualified by military historians as being ‘‘limited’’ and ‘‘indecisive’’, and it is therefore necessary to elucidate the reasons and the nature of such restrictions. Limitations are actually two-fold: classic wars are politically limited, regulated by a legal framework known as “balance of powers”. As a consequence, wars are also militarily limited, often described as being mitigated by a strategy of attrition and tactics of position. More important than the acknowledgment of this limitation, is the way they are linked together. So as to shed light on such dynamics, we’ve built an analytical framework called “quadrangle of international relations’’, allowing to decipher their ontological, political, strategic and tactic dimensions, in any period of time. Ontology questions the nature of the actors in any given political system: how did the territorial sovereign state become the main form of political organization? The political dimension of this model allows analyzing the legal framework in which foreign relations take place: how did balance of powers become the main way of regulating violence between states? Its strategic angle scrutinizes the military plans of state leaders: how could a defensive strategy based on attrition warfare be accounted for? tactical aspects develop the operating instructions designed to support strategy: what did sieges and maneuvers look like in classic wars? Each of these dimensions is causally linked to one another so that we could revive “global history”, from mental layers to the actors’ strategies.

Tourism visits to sites associated to varying degrees with death and dying have for some time inspired academic debate and research into what has come to be popularly described as ‘dark tourism’. Research to date has been based on the mobilisation of various social scientific methodologies to understand issues such as the motivations of visitors to consume dark tourism experiences and visitor interpretations of the various narratives that are part of the consumption experience. This thesis offers an alternative conceptual perspective for carrying out research into museums that represent genocide and occupation by presenting a discourse analysis of five Lithuanian museums which share this overchig theme using Foucault’s concept of ‘discursive formation’ from ‘Archaeology of Knowledge’. A constructivist methodology is therefore applied to locate the rhetorical representations of Lithuanian and Jewish subject positions and to identify the objects of discourse that are produced in five museums that interpret an historical era defined by occupation, the persecution of people and genocide. The discourses and consequent cultural function of these museums is examined and the key finding of the research proposes that they authorise a particular Lithuanian individualism which marginalises the Jewish subject position and its related objects of discourse into abstraction. The thesis suggests that these museums create the possibility to undermine the ontological stability of Holocaust and the Jewish-Lithuanian subject which is produced as an anomalous, ‘non-Lithuanian’ cultural reference point. As with any Foucauldian archaeological research, it cannot be offered as something that is ‘complete’ since it captures only a partial field, or snapshot of knowledge, bound to a specific temporal and spatial context. The discourses that have been identified are perhaps part of a more elusive ‘positivity’ which is salient across a number of cultural and political surfaces which are ripe for a similar analytical approach in future. It is hoped that the study will motivate others to follow a discourse-analytical approach to research in order to further understand the critical role of museums in public culture when it comes to shaping knowledge about ‘inconvenient’ pasts.

[pt] Esta dissertação objetiva problematizar o conceito de poder presente na filosofia de Michel Foucault a fim de mostrar as suas conseqüências para se pensar o político na Teoria de Relações Internacionais (RI). Busca, desse modo, aprofundar o diálogo com as vertentes críticas que contestam os pressupostos do realismo desde a década de 80. Mesmo se tais perspectivas já obtiveram certa visibilidade na área de Teoria das Relações Internacionais, as teorias que seguem o pós-estruturalismo continuam confinadas às margens do pensamento de RI. A presente dissertação busca, portanto, explorar o conceito chave do pensamento de Foucault, o poder, para expor tanto os pressupostos quanto as implicações de sua utilização para se pensar a política global. Por meio da análise do modo com que Foucault trabalha o conceito de poder, conclui-se que o filósofo apaga, em grande medida, as fronteiras normativas entre os conceitos de poder e violência. Como conseqüência dessa indiferenciação conceitual, Foucault concebe o fenômeno político como campo de forças, como acontecimento estratégico ou como a continuação da guerra por outros meios. Pretende-se, por meio deste trabalho, pensar acerca da desejabilidade normativa de tal concepção política e de sua capacidade de prover um modelo capaz de constituir alternativa ao realismo em RI. A dissertação contrapõe, finalmente, a visão do político de Foucault a visões que outras perspectivas críticas, como aquelas inspiradas pelos trabalhos da Escola de Frankfurt, oferecem para se pensar um novo paradigma teórico e prático para a política global. / [en] This dissertation problematizes the concept of power present in Michel Foucault`s philosophy in order to show its consequences for thinking the political in International Relations (IR) Theory. It seeks to deepen the dialogue with the critical perspectives that question the assumptions of realism since the 1980s. Even if such critical perspectives have already obtained some visibility in International Relations Theory, poststructuralist theories remain confined to the margins of IR thought. This dissertation seeks, consequently, to explore the key concept of Foucault`s thought, power, in order to reveal its assumptions as well as its implications for thinking abou global politics. By means of the analysis of the way Foucault constructs his concept of power, we arrive at the conclusion that the philosopher erases the normative borders between the concepts of power and violence. As a consequence of his conceptual indifferentiation, Foucault conceives the political phenomenon as a field of forces, as a strategic event or as a war continued by other means. This work seeks to question the normative desirability of such a conception of the political and about its capacity to provide an alternative model do realism in IR. This dissertation opposes, finally, Foucault`s vision of the political to visions that other critical perspectives, such as those inspired by the works of the Frankfurt School, offer to help us think another theoretical and practical paradigm for global politics.

A Guerra ao Terror é, até hoje, objeto de vasta literatura que busca entender e explicar suas múltiplas dimensões e suas implicações para a política externa norte-americana. Alinhados à crítica pós-moderna/pós-estruturalista das Relações Internacionais e influenciados por autores críticos como David Campbell, Richard Ashley, Robert Walker, William Connolly, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe e Richard Jackson, buscamos problematizar o papel dos discursos na construção social da realidade, das identidades e dos interesses com o objetivo de compreender as condições de possibilidade da Guerra ao Terror no pós-Onze de Setembro. Ao adotarmos uma concepção de política externa como prática social de construção de um sistema de representações e de significados, que reproduz uma identidade nacional sustentada em uma ideologia específica, buscamos identificar como os discursos tentam estabilizar e fixar sentidos para impor e naturalizar estruturas de poder dominantes. Assim, interpretamos que a Guerra ao Terror somente se tornou possível devido à existência de um discurso de americanidade capaz de dar inteligibilidade à realidade após a crise de significados do Onze de Setembro. Trata-se de um discurso de americanos sobre americanos e sobre a América que, por meio de formações imaginárias criadoras de realidades, sujeitos, objetos, ações e relações, regula o que pode ser pensado, dito, compreendido e concebido com base em uma posição específica em um determinado momento histórico. Entendemos que tal discurso exterioriza uma formação discursiva específica de genealogia puritana que acaba reproduzida nas práticas de política externa norte-americana. Pelo emprego de métodos de análise discursiva, demonstraremos como o discurso da Guerra ao Terror reproduz a estrutura de significados, narrativas, mitos e representações dos sermões políticos típicos dos puritanos da América Colonial do século XVII: os jeremíadas. Apesar da afirmação quanto à separação entre Igreja e Estado, entendemos que os Estados Unidos da América, por meio de suas práticas de política externa, constroem sua identidade nacional como ideologicamente puritana. / The War on Terror has been the object of a large literature concerned with the understanding and explaining of its multiple dimensions and implications for U.S. foreign policy. However, most of it has been committed to the dominant theoretical framework of the so-called Neo-Neo Debate, and thus not problematizing key concepts like State, identity, interest, and reality. Inspired by the so-called Third Debate, we revisit the subject of the War on Terror inspired by post-modern/post-structuralist critics such as David Campbell, Robert Walker, William Connolly, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Richard Jackson, among others. Focusing on the role of discourse and power in socially constructing reality, identities, and interests, we attempt to understand the conditions of possibility of the War on Terror in the aftermath of 9/11. We will argue that foreign policy constitutes a system of meanings and representations that (re)produces a national identity based on a specific ideology, in a never-ending attempt to stabilize and fix meanings in order to discursively impose and naturalize dominant structures of power. Therefore, we believe that the War on Terror has only become possible due to the existence of a discourse on Americanness capable of rendering reality once again intelligible after 9/11. It is a discourse of Americans about America and Americans, which, through imaginary formations that create realities, subjects, actions, and relationships, regulate what can be thought, said, understood, and conceived from a specific position in a particular moment in time. We believe that this discourse is made possible by a specific ideological formation of an essentially Puritan matrix which is (re)produced through practices of U.S. foreign policy. By employing methods of discourse analysis, we will show how the discourse on the War on Terror emulates the meanings, narratives, symbols, and representations of the typical Puritan political sermons of the 1600s Colonial America: the jeremiads. Despite claims of separation between State and religion, we believe that the United States of America, through its practices of foreign policy, constructs its national identity as ideologically Puritan.