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This work seeks to answer questions concerning the role France played in shaping the Czechoslovak elite in the first half of the 20th century. The study rests on three basic pillars. The first is a study of the framework in which Franco-Czechoslovak relations developed in the area of culture, cultural and educational policy. The second pillar is the question of France's direct involvement in Czechoslovakia - by means of solid structures created in connection with the establishment of the new state, and with the development of active French cultural policy after 1918. On the one hand, the French Institute in Prague, which, in the period under study, wanted to be more than a mere cultural centre, its ambitions primarily concerning scientific cooperation (language, philosophy, history, law, medicine, economics, chemistry, technical disciplines). On the other hand, the French Real Grammar School in Prague, the example of which gives a very good study of the competitive limits of cooperation between the two countries in the field of secondary education. Despite the growing number of students, this private institution (nationalised in 1937), never stopped addressing a key question: is it a Czechoslovak school teaching in French or a French educational institution operating in Czechoslovakia? The third pillar is...

This thesis explores the intersections of culture, nationalism, and neoliberal globalization through examination of the construction of Mexican identity in Canada after the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. I evaluate how visual art has been used by the governments of Canada and Mexico to negotiate new bilateral relationships in the face of increased North American integration under free trade. My study includes analysis of two Canada-based exhibitions, “Mexican Modern Art, 1900-1950” and “Panoramas: The North American Landscape in Art.” Framing my discussion within the larger history of North American integration, I argue that these two exhibitions are part of a larger exchange in the area of cultural diplomacy between Canada and Mexico, which was especially prominent at the turn of the millennium. These case studies provide a means to assess the manipulation of culture, the creation of a new North American identity, and the management of national/ist narratives within the larger project of neoliberal globalization. Critically situating my study within the current discourse of globalization theory, I contend that artworks in these exhibitions were positioned in a manner to positively reinforce new trade relationships under NAFTA. / Thesis (Master, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2008-08-20 15:05:45.256

C’est durant la première moitié du vingtième siècle, c’est en étant contemporain des deux guerres mondiales, dans une France qui se sécularise, que Georges Bataille (1897 – 1962) construit une pensée – profondément nietzschéenne – scandaleuse. Conceptuellement, le corps n’est pas seulement au centre des préoccupations de Bataille, il se pense maintenant dans sa réalité outrancière : l’érotisme, l’ivresse et la souillure. On assiste à une sacralisation des débauches de toutes sortes. Et c’est ainsi que s’opère la singularité philosophique de Bataille puisque ce qui est sacré ne loge plus, selon lui, dans un sublime céleste, dans une divinité ou, en d’autres mots, dans les hauteurs, mais bien dans son exact contraire, c’est-à-dire dans le bas, dans l’excès, dans l’érotisme et dans le sale. Devant cette inversion de l’ordre du monde, ce qui est sacré, c’est la profanation même. C’est pourquoi, à partir de Mary Douglas, j’ai pu relier deux idées qui paraissent contraires : la souillure et le sacré. Ainsi, étant donné que Bataille est aussi écrivain (Sade fut l’une de ses influences majeures), j’ai pu inclure des récits de l’auteur qui illustrent parfaitement ces deux antinomies. C’est d’ailleurs l’un des traits les plus fondamentaux de son œuvre que j’ai aussi soulevé : toute l’œuvre de Bataille est paradoxale et antinomique. C’est justement à partir de ce même constat que j’aborde la question du mysticisme chez Bataille. Mais comme avec la question du sacré, la conception du mysticisme implique une critique implicite du christianisme (opposition du ciel contre la terre, par exemple). Nécessairement, c’est l’instant et son hasard – l’absence de but – qui ouvrent la voie à l’expérience, alors que l’écriture communique son essence tout en la rendant davantage intelligible. De là provient justement, par le caractère arbitraire de l’expérience, l’idée de chance que Bataille établit en diapason avec Nietzsche. À ce sujet, Nietzsche devient très présent dans le mysticisme bataillien, pensons à la figure du surhumain qu’on peut associer à celle de l’homme souverain ou encore à la volonté de puissance qu’on peut relier à celle de la volonté de chance. Dès lors, Bataille met de l’avant une mystique du jeu, celle-ci étant une mise en jeu radicale de soi-même d’où émerge la chance que Bataille évoque et qui n’est rien d’autre que la possibilité de l’expérience même. Somme toute, force est de constater que la fragilisation mentale et physique du mysticisme bataillien cache également un sacrifice de soi au nom de la jouissance, certes, mais aussi au nom du texte. / It was in the first half of contemporary 20th century when France was well secularized that Georges Bataille (1897 - 1962) constructed a scandalous - deeply Nietzschean - thought. The body is then conceptually not only at the center of Bataille's preoccupations, it now thinks of itself through its scandalous reality: eroticism, exhilarating and dirty. We are witnessing a sacralization of debauchery of all kinds and this is how Bataille's philosophical singularity operates. Indeed, a sacred thing does not exist in the sublime sky, in any deity or, in other words, in the heights, but in its exact opposite wich his the low, the excess, the eroticism and the dirty. This inversion in the order of the world is the desecration itself. This is why, with Mary Douglas, I was able to link two ideas that seemed contradictory to me: the dirty and the sacred. Knowing that Bataille is also a writer (Sade is a major influence), I can include a few stories to perfectly illustrate these two opposites. This is one of the most fundamental characteristics of the work I have mentioned: all of Bataille's works are paradoxical and antinomic. It is precisely from this same observation that I approach the question of mysticism in Bataille works. With the question of the sacred, the conception of mysticism involves an implicit critique of Christianity (opposition of sky and earth, for example). It is the instant and its hazard - the absence of purpose - that opens necessarily the way to experience as writing communicates its essence while making it more intelligible. From there precisely, Bataille developed the idea of chance in agreement with Nietzsche. Nietzsche becomes at the same time very present in the conception of the mysticism of Bataille. We can just think about the figure of the superhuman that we can associate with the sovereign man or even the will of power that we can compare to the will of chance. From then on, Bataille puts forward a mystic game, by placing himself in this radical game, from which the luck evoked by Bataille can emerge and which is nothing else than the possibility of experience itself. Finally, it is clear that the mental and physical fragility that are triggered in Bataille mystical experience also hide a form of self-sacrifice in the name of enjoyment but also in the name of the text.

Veronika Knotková, Prague Municipal Clerks 1900-1950 Abstract This work, based mainly on primary resources, deals with the issues of bureaucracy, i.e. with the elite group of officials/clerks of the legal category of the Prague Municipal Office in the first half of the 20th century. During this relatively long period, Prague reached a position of modern capital of a new state, Czechoslovakia, and one of Central European metropolises. The core of the thesis lays in explaining principles of functioning of the municipal bureaucracy, the development of its position, the course of its career and the factors that influenced them. Attention is paid to the mutual relations within this group and both to their individual and group strategies, with regard to other municipal officials of other than juristic previous university education within the Prague municipal office as well as to the relations of officials and representatives of municipal administration. It shows how the disciplinary rules were applied. Adequate attention is paid to the relationship/interventions of state administration into the self-government sphere.