Since the euphoria of a hard-won independence and the hopes attached to socialist nation-building, Algeria has experienced liberalisation, increasing inequality and civil war. This thesis sets out to explore memories of post-independence nation-building in the 1970s, interrogating the past-present relationship, by asking how Algerians remember their own recent past, and what these memories reveal about contemporary subjectivities. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in the low-income Algiers neighbourhood of Bab el-Oued, the research focuses specifically on memories of politics, urban space and sociability. While the authoritarianism of the period was rejected for its repression of civil liberties, the overwhelming narrative on the period was nostalgic, with the past routinely couched as more positive than the present. Memories of intense social mobility and rising living standards within the context of state-led development, competent urban management and warm neighbourhood relations governed by traditional morality and solidarity were used to critique the present; particularly the retreat of the state from its responsibilities since the 1980s and the fragmented, consumerist society that has emerged from civil conflict since the 1990s. However, social memory also translated a series of principles that demonstrated the continued relevance of the egalitarian claims made by postcolonial nationalism. Popular notions of social justice mapped future aspirations for the Algerian polity. Nostalgia was not only a matter of the past, but of the lost future of material plenty and equality promised by industrial modernisation that once seemed just over the horizon, but is now divorced from present experience. Such memories translated the passing of the dream of mass utopia, even though the modernist principles of equality, justice and progress continued to underpin both daily interactions and the political aspirations of the present.

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This dissertation explains how and why some American artists investigated visual phenomena and heightened perception during the 1960s and 1970s. As an analytical account grounded in the perceptual experience of artworks and in archival research of the claims artists made for their creations, this study is centered around the themes of re-sensitizing one’s body and perceptual faculties, the process of empirical discovery, and the ultimate inability of language to satisfactorily describe sensory phenomena. In Chapter 1, I establish a brief intellectual history of research concerning the sensory faculties from fields in the humanities, including psychology, philosophy, and art history. In Chapter 2, I analyze Judd’s art-critical concept of optical phenomena and consider the art about which he wrote, including his own, on the basis of this tentative classification. In Chapter 3, I evaluate John Chamberlain’s lacquer paintings in terms of the visual phenomena generated by his innovative paint mixtures and application techniques, then consider his provisional separation of intuition and intellect. In Chapter 4, I examine Robert Irwin’s efforts to refine his visual attentiveness and, in the course of doing so, I also test the accompanying artworks he made that demand such unusually acute observation. In Chapter 5, I argue that distinguishing physical, pictorial, and reflected visual phenomena in Larry Bell’s pieces proves to be an exceptional challenge, a problem compounded by the inefficacy of trying to communicate visual discoveries using language. In the Conclusion, I demonstrate that by restoring the role of heightened perception and sensory discovery to the history of art of the 1960s and 1970s, this dissertation helps to preserve the complexity and variety of works made during that time. / text

Ernest “Dutch” Morial’s 1977 grassroots mayoral campaign disrupted the political status quo in New Orleans with his message of citizen participation. Morial’s citizen-driven campaign reached over the constituencies of established Black Political Organizations, capturing an eager audience with his message of political, social, and economic equality. With the help of volunteers and other community organizations, Morial created a grassroots campaign that focused on making city government more inclusive. Unattached to the traditional patronage structure, Mayor Morial empowered the black community, reducing the constraints of their political access. Although his legacy is difficult to discern in New Orleans current political realities, Morial’s first campaign and administrations represent a departure from the political status-quo and the powerful patronage structures critical to their status.

This thesis examines the opposition to civil nuclear energy in France and West Germany during the 1970s, arguing that small-scale interactions among its diverse participants led to broad changes in their personal lives and political environments. Drawing extensively on oral history interviews with former activists as well as police reports, media coverage and protest ephemera, this thesis shows how individuals at the grassroots built up a movement that transcended national (and social) borders. They were able to do so in part because nuclear power was such a multivalent symbol at the time. Residents of towns near planned power stations felt that nuclear technology represented an intervention in their community by state and industry, a potential threat to their health, wealth and way of life. In the decade after 1968, concerns like these coalesced with criticisms of capitalism, the state, militarism and consumer society that were being made by a more politicised constituency. This made the anti-nuclear movement both broad-based and highly fragmented. Activist networks linked people across existing national, political and social boundaries, but the social world of activism was subject to its own divisions (such as between locals and outsiders or between militant and non-violent activists). By analysing both the transnational dimensions and internal divisions of the anti-nuclear movement, this thesis revises the homogenising concepts of social movements that are prevalent in much of the existing sociological and political science literature. At the same time, it situates the anti-nuclear movement historically within the decade of upheaval that was the 1970s, while moving individual activists from the margins to the centre of protest history.

The thesis aims to explore the artistic personality of Hunter S. Thompson, one of the most distinctive cultural figures of post-war America, and his genesis as an author, journalist, and a counterculture idol of the 1960s. The era is now widely regarded as a turning point in contemporary American history as its deep-rooted values and norms were, over the course of a decade, gradually transformed by the young generation of social and political activists toward allegedly a more tolerant and liberal kind of community. Crucial in such an endeavor was the role of the countercultural movement that produced some of the most capable intellectual minds of the time, including Thompson. The paper thus analyzes the role and nature of the alternative culture in America as perceived by one of its most observant participants. Also, the thesis focuses on the author's role in establishing a new genre called New Journalism which can be linked with the era's countercultural efforts as well. In general, Thompson, in his texts, examines various phenomena surrounding the counterculture and provides us with a distinctive portrayal of the era's zeitgeist. However, unlike some of his contemporaries, he also remembers to examine numerous flaws and fallacies existing within contemporary American society, the American Dream...

The left-wing terrorism in Italy in the 1970s and the Red brigades as its most significant symptom resulted in the long-term view from the fight between the partisans and the fascists in the Second World War and from the short-term view from the students' and labourers' protests in the end of 1960s. The Red brigades were founded in 1970 and were composed mainly by students from Trento (Curcio, Cagol), communists from Reggio Emilia (Franceschini, Gallinari) and labourers from Milano (Moretti). They began in the first years of their functioning with agitation in the factories, burning the cars of the high managers and kidnapping. The thesis follows gradual radicalisation of the group and the change of their aims - from this moment on mostly politicians, judges, state magistrates. The transformation of the Red brigades related to the personal changes in the leadership - after Curcio and Franceschini were arrested and Cagol killed, radical Moretti became very influential. The organisation under his leadership started to kill intentionally its victims and the wave of brutal attacks culminated in the spring 1978 in kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. The Red brigades however became strongly socially isolated and several ideological differences among the members of the administration...

Esta dissertação visa investigar o circuito fotográfico paulistano da década de 1970 a partir das matérias publicadas no jornal O Estado de S. Paulo. Esta fonte mostrou-se particularmente propícia para o estudo do intenso processo de transformação pelo qual passou a fotografia no período. O objetivo não é reconstituir os eventos passados descritos nas matérias, mas antes, defender a hipótese de que é possível identificar uma cultura fotográfica paulistana característica da década de 1970 que viria a ter importantes desdobramentos nos anos seguintes. Os textos analisados foram reunidos em quatro núcleos temáticos representativos dos discursos a respeito da fotografia proferidos pelos agentes que atuavam no jornal, a saber: a história da fotografia no Brasil, a identidade da fotografia brasileira, o estabelecimento do mercado fotográfico e a constituição de uma crítica especializada. Tais textos são examinados em sua natureza discursiva, levando-se em conta não apenas os seus conteúdos informativos, mas a forma como foram escritos e a autoridade que detinham os seus autores. Para tanto são considerados os consensos, as tensões e as disputas materializadas nos discursos veiculados nas páginas de um influente veículo da grande imprensa e o modo como chegavam ao público não especializado. O resultado dessa pesquisa contribui para o entendimento de um período em que a fotografia expandiu-se de forma até então inédita no Brasil e que constitui um passado recente ainda pouco estudado. / This dissertation aims to investigate the São Paulo photographic circuit of the 1970s from the articles published in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo. This source proved to be particularly conducive to study of the intense transformation process through which the photograph passed in the period. The objective is not to reconstitute past events described in the stories, but rather to defend the hypothesis that it is possible to identify a photographic culture typical of the 1970s that would have important developments in the following years. The texts analyzed were grouped in four thematic nuclei, representative of the speeches about photography by the agents who worked in the newspaper, namely: the history of photography in Brazil, the identity of Brazilian photography, the establishment of the photographic market and the constitution of a specialized criticism. Such texts are examined in their discursive nature, taking into account not only their informative contents but the way they were written and the authority held by their authors. For this, the consensuses, tensions and disputes materialized in the speeches on the pages of an influential vehicle of the great press and the way in which they were received by the non-specialized public are taken into account. The result of this research contributes to the understanding of a period in which photography has expanded in a way previously unpublished in Brazil and that constitutes a recent past still little investigated.

Este estudo objetivou evidenciar a atuação de Mario Schenberg na organização das Bienais Internacionais de São Paulo enquanto crítico de arte, nas décadas de 1960 e 1970. Foi analisado o envolvimento do crítico na Sala Especial do pintor Alfredo Volpi na VI Bienal (1961), bem como sua participação no júri de seleção da representação brasileira na VIII, IX e X Bienais (1965, 1967 e 1969). Foi examinada, ainda, a participação de Schenberg nas Mesas Redondas promovidas pela Associação Internacional de Críticos de Arte junto às edições de 1969 e 1971 (X e XI Bienais). A investigação tomou por fontes primárias as críticas originais do Centro Mario Schenberg de Documentação da Pesquisa em Arte ECA/USP escritas no período delimitado, bem como os demais livros, artigos e entrevistas do crítico; acrescente-se a esse material as entrevistas realizadas com artistas, curadores e cientistas que conviveram com Mario Schenberg nessas duas décadas. Além disso, foi realizado um levantamento documental no Arquivo Histórico Wanda Svevo, da Fundação Bienal. A presença do crítico no certame se deu, em primeiro lugar, por conta de sua proximidade com os artistas e seu interesse pela arte e, em segundo lugar, por sua capacidade de trazer um novo olhar para com as obras de arte, que poderia agregar a singularidade da figura de Mario Schenberg aos quadros da Bienal. Ao entender que era função do certame promover visibilidade para os novos artistas que começavam a desenvolver seu trabalho e a definir novos caminhos para a arte, o crítico assumiu o papel de facilitador da aceitação de novos artistas e tendências na representação brasileira das Bienais. / This study had the objective of highlighting Mario Schenberg\'s action in the Sao Paulo\'s International Biennial organization while art critic, in the decades of 1960 and 1970. It was analysed the critic\'s involvement in the painter Alfredo Volpi\'s Special Room in the VI Biennial (1961), as well as his participation on the selection jury of the brazilian representation on the VIII, IX and X Biennials (1965, 1967, 1969). It was examined, still, Schenberg\'s participation on the round tables promoted by the International Association of Art Critics on the 1969 and 1971 (X e XI Biennials) editions. The investigation considered by primary sources the original critics of the Mario Schenberg\'s Center of Documentation Research in Art - ECA/USP written in the defined period, as well as the other books, articles and interviews from the critic; add to this material the interviews with artists, curators and scientists who lived with Mario Schenberg in these two decades. In addition to that, a documental survey was carried out in the Wanda Svevo\'s Historical Archive from the Biennials Foundation. The critic\'s presence in the field was due, in first place, by his proximity to the artists and his interest for the art and, in second place, for his capacility of bringing a new view to works of art, which could add the singularity of Mario Schenberg\'s figure to the Biennial\'s work of art. In understanding that it was the fields function to promote visibility to the new artists who were starting to develop their work and define new ways for the art, the critic took upon him the role of facilitator on the acceptance of new artists and tendencies on the brazilian representation of the Biennials.