The reference to the body is a recurring and almost obsessive theme in Annette Messager's work. However, for the first time with Penetration (1993-1994) the artist investigates the inside of the body. / Anatomically descriptive and strangely symbolical the components of this hanging composition make up a huge portrait of the elements with which we are composed. With this thesis, I will demonstrate what is revealed is the body's structure: its content, its secrets, what is on the other side of the physical border and what soaks the flesh, the forces that bring us alive. / In addition, although the composition suggests a three-dimensional anatomical model, I will reveal it remains a distinctly visual and cerebral experience: a conceptualization of the body rather than the body's itself. Penetration stands for a view of ourselves that we know not from any real familiarity but from visual diagrams that have been derived from scientific research and consensus since, its separate elements and colors are taken from medical illustration. / Using artistic and historic examples, I will establish that even though the human body proposed by Messager is based on the anatomical model it is not a flattened representation reduced to an erudite enumeration but rather a three-dimensional model which can be experienced from within. / Messager stages the possibility of a face-to-face with the spectator. Inside Penetration the body recalls the very body materiality, a body where "dead" dangling internal organs "come to life" via the viewers' participation, via their penetration. The relationship of scale is upset and the spectators are invited to penetrate inside the body: to see things from up-close, to feel its elements, to touch its parts. / With Penetration Messager confronts the spectators with an intimate act as she directs them under (or rather) inside somebody's skin and forces them to confront their own sense of embodiment. Messager honours the physical body as our primary means of experiencing the world. I will ascertain that with her specific treatment of the body and without having to rely on modern technology, the artist offers an inquiry into the body as well as questions notions of embodiment. In other words, I will demonstrate Penetration exemplifies a complex set of negotiations between body and space: negotiations between the actual domain of the real body of the viewer and the three-dimensional (virtual) domain of the represented body and represented spaces. / In conclusion, I will propose that via the sense of touch Annette Messager produces a body where there is no escape between objective seeing and subjective feeling and where the human experience is formed and transformed.

No description available.

No description available.

Biography of Annette Torres

Zugl.: Zürich, Univ., Diss., 2006

Zugl.: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 2005

<p>In this master’s thesis, I write about different representations of crime and criminal literature in the German-speaking world of the 19th century, a genre that was mainly attributed to an entertainment function at the time, but which nevertheless, as I shall show, allows insights into social ills and problematic characters in context. Here, there are interesting developments from late Romanticism or Biedermeier to Realism or even to the roots of Expressionism. Guilt and punishment are regarded as primary moments for this genre. In my master’s thesis, I would like to try to show that not enough attention has been paid to this genre by literary studies, but also by law. I will look into the question of where the tension of this genre lies in the aforementioned environment, and I will point out why this was the case and what this literature has lacked in detail.</p> <p>In the first chapter, I start with the beginnings and their historical development, covering a period from the beginning to almost the end of the 19th century and divide its differentiations into phases. My observations are based on Jorg Schönert’s “historical sketch” (ca. 1770 – 1920) (Schönert, “Zur Ausdifferzierung des Genres Kriminalgeschichten“, 97). In addition, I mention various important crime stories that preceded my selection. The selected works are arranged in each of the relevant literary epochs (Romanticism/Biedermeier and Poetic Realism), with which I attempt to highlight their specific characteristics and their detective elements. Due to the moral and psychological embodiment, as well as the social circumstances, the crimes are in some phases of the history of the genres more and in others less emphasized, and I attempt to analyze in each exemplary work by comparing these texts and according to certain criteria.</p> <p>The second chapter deals with theoretical approaches, in particular with hermeneutics or how to “read” facts. I also investigate the literary sociological question of which prototype of perpetrators the authors create in their works and examine them for their psychological features. My text, which is classified in the context of the genre, examines the developments of the crime novel and clarifies the changing criminological aspects, as well as analyzes the positions of different research approaches to the criminal justice system, which can be identified or explored from different angles of these literary examples.</p> <p>The third chapter begins with a brief overview of the six books in question. The main characters are then discussed further, which I have divided into criminals, victims, and accomplices. Because of this centrality in the books, most emphasis is placed on the criminals, with a close look at their motives, the way they plan and carry out the crime, how they endure the investigation, and finally, whether and to what extent they feel remorse for their actions. “<i>Die Judenbuche</i>” is treated separately here because of the much stronger social component and the environment, as well as the open-ended description of the crimes and the perpetrators. Victims and accomplices tend to be marginalized in the books studied here, with women being the only accomplices whose consciences suffer because of their role. Finally, the moral compass and guilt of the perpetrators are examined in relation to their social and material situation, their family, and their religion.</p> The final chapter focuses on the differences between the modern crime stories and their precursors, which have been studied here. I try to define and carefully delineate the main components of a successful and appealing crime story through the lens of several internationally known examples of world literature. There are parallels to the older German authors treated in this thesis, who also have implications for the artistic elements of the books in comparison to simple entertainment. My main focus is on the plot, the length of the books, the investigations and the detectives, and their methods of solving the crime. These German authors tended to write short works, short stories or novellas that allowed little space for complex stories or lengthy novels. They must be unraveled even more powerfully or efficiently by brilliant detectives and very attentive readers due to the brevity of the works. As the texts are structured stringently, the actions are simple and rather uncomplicated. The detectives practically do not exist as a kind of institution, but rather on the periphery. Crimes that are always solved seem to serve both legal and moral justice and ultimately satisfy the expectations of readers. Finally, I discuss the stylistic characteristics of those early crime novels compared to what readers are used to seeing or expecting today.

This dissertation examines the academic debate that surrounds the new field called "Evolutionary Psychology." Evolutionary psychology has emerged as the most popular successor theory to human sociobiology. Its proponents search for evolved psychological mechanisms and emphasize universal features of the human mind. My thesis is that in order to flourish evolutionary psychologists must engage other researchers on equal terms -- something they have not been doing. To show this, I examine the stances of practitioners from three other social science fields whose claims have been shortchanged by evolutionary psychology: Barbara King in biological anthropology, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in empirical linguistics and Annette Karmiloff-Smith in developmental psychology. These researchers are also involved in cognitive science investigations that bear on evolutionary psychology's key claims about the mind and how it works. Evolutionary psychologists make three key claims about the mind. The first (1) is that the mind is massively modular; the second (2) is that this massively modular mind has been shaped by the processes of natural selection over evolutionary time; and the third (3) is that it is adapted to the Pleistocene conditions of our past. Evolutionary psychologists seek to elevate these three claims to the status of meta-theoretical assumptions making them the starting place from which our deliberations about human cognition ought proceed. These claims would constitute the framework for a new paradigm in the ultimate sense. I argue that elevating these claims to such a status is not only premature, but also unwarranted on the available evidence. This result is justified by evidence produced outside evolutionary psychology by those disciplines from which evolutionary psychologists explicitly seek to distance themselves. / Ph. D.

Zugl.: Zürich, Univ., Diss., 2007

Sammanfattning: Vid min granskning av mottagandet av de sex böcker jag har behandlat i denna uppsats kan man se vissa likheter och skillnader hos recensenter och bloggare. Att gestalta könsöverskridande hos flickor verkar överlag vara lättare än när det gäller pojkar och inte alls lika uppmärksammande.  Också könsneutralitet verkar kunna passera som något positivt inom vissa gränser Men det är tydligt att flickpojkarna får mest plats i recensionerna och bloggarna eftersom detta alltid är något som nämns.  Detta gäller dock inte Kivi och monsterhund, som ju introducerade ett nytt begrepp inom barnlitteraturen, hen. Kanske är det så att flickpojken och böcker som använder ordet hen ännu är ett så ovanlig perspektiv att man reagerar mest på det? Stina Nylén som skrev en recension om Kivi och monsterhund i Göteborgs-Posten slår nog huvudet på spiken när hon skriver att författarna aldrig kan göra rätt när de skapar könsöverskridande barnbokskaraktärer. Böckerna fick nämligen kritik från alla håll som jag har visat här ovanför, även om de också hyllades i många fall. Antingen var pojkflickan för flickig eller för pojkig. Och flickpojken tycktes problematisk på grund av han skildrades med både kvinnliga och manliga egenskaper. Ingenting kunde bli helt rätt, inte ens när en av författarna bestämde sig för att använda ett könsneutralt ord – hen. Då blev det lite för mycket, enligt vissa. Men ingen tydlig skillnad visade sig vara mellan åsikterna hos recensenterna och bloggarna. Man kan också se, speciellt i diskussionen om hen-begreppet, att till viss del behandlas barnlitteraturen inte som enbart barnlitteratur utan som ett inlägg i en mycket större genusdebatt som har tagits långt ut från boken Kivi och Monsterhund. Konstruktion av kön och även könsneutralitet var något som ständigt pågick i de allra flesta recensionerna och på de allra flesta bloggarna. Skribenterna var mycket medvetna om vilka egenskaper som tillskrivs flickor och vilka som tillskrivs pojkar. Många skribenter var också mycket medvetna om teorier om kön som konstruktion, men det hindrar inte det faktum att när de pratar om könsöverskridande i berättelserna blir det också en konstruktion i sig eftersom man samtidigt uppmärksammar skillnader mellan det typiskt manliga och det typiskt kvinnliga. När det kommer till könsneutralitet verkar dock varken de professionella läsarna eller amatörkritikerna vara särskilt medvetna om konstruktionen om könsneutralitet. Det är många som ifrågasätter och pratar om konstruktionen om manligt och kvinnligt men vad gäller könsneutralitet verkar skribenterna inte lika medvetna. Men könsneutralitet måste ju vara en konstruktion om man menar att manligt och kvinnligt är det. Eva Heggestad påpekar att i barnböcker som behandlar kön och sexualitet finns det ofta en normalitetsdiskurs som präglar dessa ”queera” barnböckerna. Det vill säga att annorlundaskapet framställs som oproblematiskt på alla sätt. Detta är också fallet vad gäller många av böckerna jag har behandlad i denna uppsats, men också recensionerna av böckerna, båda professionell- och amatörkritik, där de i vissa fall inte heller tar upp den problematiken om annorlundaskapet eller könsöverskridandet. Det råder alltså tystnad även i recensionerna, inte bara själva böckerna.