This dissertation offers an archaeologically and art historically grounded inquiry into the actuality, form, and meaning of human sacrifice from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic period. It opens with a critical, up-to-date review of the corpus of proposed archaeological evidence for human sacrifice in the Minoan, Mycenaean, and Greek civilizations, wherein it is argued that rituals of this kind were rare but nevertheless a historical reality, performed in special or extraordinary circumstances at least until the Late Archaic period. The rarity of human sacrifice in the archaeological record is a direct expression of its exceptional nature; the unmatched potency of sacrificing a human being was necessitated only in the most unusual or extreme situations: to quell the unyielding wrath of the gods or to honor a deceased person who was imagined as possessing superhuman stature. The evidence of individual cases of human sacrifice indicates that the ritual could take a variety of forms, some involving heightened degrees of violence. After arguing for the historicity of human sacrifice, the dissertation shifts to a comprehensive analysis of artistic representations of human sacrifice, with a particular interest in their ritual aspect. These images, it is argued, should be interpreted in several, mutually inclusive ways – not only as metaphors or conceptual foils to sacrificial norms, but also as ritually plausible representations of a phenomenon that seems to have existed at least into the later sixth century BCE. Apart from a small group of Bronze Age seals decorated with motifs possibly associated with human sacrifice, the first secure evidence of human sacrificial representations date to the seventh century BCE and continue through to the end of the Hellenistic period. Like the archaeological cases, the visual sources form a comparatively small corpus. The subject matter is exclusively mythical and almost entirely drawn from myths of Polyxena and Iphigeneia; only rarely do artists explicitly represent the bloody violence of sacrifice. Images of the death blow are almost exclusively produced in the Archaic era – a time during which there is contemporary archaeological evidence for human sacrifices in funereal contexts – and involve only Polyxena. Interestingly, the cessation of material evidence is contemporaneous with a shift in the iconography toward the emotionally pregnant moments leading up to the sacrifice. The roughly 100-year overlap between the archaeological and visual evidence presents the possibility that artists drew upon elements of known instances of human sacrifice, or at the very least the two forms of evidence are indirectly related, in that both are inspired by myth. While human sacrifice does not seem to have persisted into the Classical period and beyond, artists continued, as they had in the Archaic period, to construct ritually plausible images with compositional analogues in other, highly codified iconographies, most notably those of animal sacrifice and the wedding. In this way, even as artists began to explore ever more the conceptual and symbolic dimensions of these sacrificial myths, they continued to invest them with a reality and an immediacy that far outlived the ritual’s practical existence.

Orientador: Leila Maria Ferreira Salles / Resumo: Se o que / quem muda, muda, podemos dizer que o espaço escolar mudou? A questão simples que orientou a construção do trabalho foi reflexo de escutas sobre a escola mudada, escola diferente frente “a escola de outros tempos”. Tais escutas ocorreram em momentos de nossa estada em espaços escolares públicos e privados, originadas pelos mais diversos atores escolares e aparentemente em consenso sobre a escola ser outra ou “mudada”. Frente ao aparente consenso sobre o mudado e a profusão de motivos sobre porquê mudada, buscamos circunscrever o objeto espaço escolar como “objeto” da modernidade, como maquinaria disciplinar deste tempo e assim, atrelado ao projeto civilizatório de seu tempo. Deste ponto tentamos perceber alguns de seus elementos identitários para pensarmos se o espaço escolar de fato mudado e se possível, percebermos também algum sentido sobre a eventual mudança. Após todo processo reflexivo concluímos que este espaço não mudou. Para tanto, com a busca de apoio em Castoriadis e Latour, nosso itinerário não se deu de maneira linear ou conciliativa e assemelhou-se a um processo de coleta e disposição de grãos, com a impressões de autores riscando um quase ensaio a medida que a trazida dos autores, trabalhos e sua disposição em quase decantação visava a tentativa de sustentação de nossos marcadores como uma forma de percepção do objeto espaço escolar. Embora todo bibliográfico, na busca por alguma empiria para sustentação dos marcadores espaço escolar e civilização pro... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: If what / who changes, can we say that the school space has changed? The simple question that guided the construction of the work was a reflection of listening about the changed school, different school compared to “the school of other times”. Such listening occurred at times of our stay in public and private school spaces, originated by the most diverse school actors and apparently in consensus on whether the school was other or “changed”. Faced with the apparent consensus on the changed and the profusion of reasons on why changed, we seek to circumscribe the object school space as "object" of modernity, as disciplinary machinery of this time and thus, linked to the civilizing project of its time. From this point we try to understand some of its identity elements in order to think if the school space is really changed and if possible, we also perceive some sense about the eventual change. After all the reflective process we conclude that this space has not changed. Like this, with the search for support in Castoriadis and Latour, our itinerary was not linear or conciliatory and resembled a process of collecting and disposing of grains, with the authors' impressions scratching a essay compound from the authors, works and their disposition in almost decantation aimed at the attempt to support our markers as a form of perception of the school space object. Though all bibliographic, in the search for some empiricism to support the markers: school space and civilization we promot... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

The emergence of Indochina in the French imagination was articulated in both representational and institutional modes. Representation involves the transmission of colonial ideals through more obtuse means; that is, through literary texts, travelogues, exhibitions, film and advertising. However, these textual sites feed from and invest in a material situation, which was the institutional arm of colonialism. Indochina was institutionally articulated in cartographic maps and surveys, in the new social spaces of cities and towns, in architectural and technological forms, through social technologies of discipline and welfare and in cultural and religious organisations. The aim of this thesis is to analyse, across a number of textual sites, the representation and institutionalisation of Otherness through the politics of space in the French colony of Indochina, Indochine in this sense becomes a spatial discourse. The French constructed a mental and physical space for Indochina by blanketing and suffocating the original cultural landscape, which in fact had to be ignored for this process to occur. What actually became manifest as a result of this projection stemmed from the French imagination. Just as the French manipulated space, language also underwent the same process of reduction. The Vietnamese script was latinised to make it more 'useable' and ‘accessible’. Through christening the union of Indochina; initiating a comprehensive writing reform; and renaming the streets in the colonial cities, the French used language us another tool for 'making transparent'. Furthermore, the colonial powers established a communication and transport network throughout the colony in an attempt to materialise their fictive (artificial) vision of a unified French Indochinese space. The accessibility and design of these different modes of transport reflected the gendered, racial and class divisions inherent in the colonial establishment. At the heart of representing and institutionalising Indochina was the desire to control and contain. This characterised French imperial ordering of space in the city and the rural areas. In rural areas land was divided into small parcels and alienated to individuals or worked into precise grids for the rubber plantation. In urban centres the native quarter was clearly demarcated from the European quarter which functioned as its modern, progressive Other. The rationale behind this segregation was premised on European, nineteenth century discourses of race, class, gender and hygiene. Influenced by Darwinian and neo-Lamarkian theories of race, this biological discourse identified the 'working class', 'women' and 'the native' as not only biologically but also culturally inferior. They were perceived as a potential, degenerative threat to the biological, cultural and industrial development of the nation. In the colonial context, space was thus ordered and domesticated to control the native population. Coextensively, the literature which springs from such a structure will be tainted by the same ideas, and thus the spaces it formulates within the readers mind feed on and reinforce this foundation. Examples of gender and indigenous narratives which contest this imaginative, transparent topography are analysed throughout this thesis. They provide instances of struggle and resistance which undermine the ideal/stereotypical level of architectural and planned space and delineate an alternative insight into colonial spatial and social relations. The fictional accounts of European women and indigenous writers both challenge and reaffirm the fixity of some of these idealised colonial boundaries. In various literary, historical, political, architectural and cinematic discourses Indochina has been und continues to be depicted as a modern city and exotic Utopia. Informed by the mood of nostalgia, exotic images of Indochina have resurfaced in contemporary French culture. France's continued desire to create, control and maintain an Indochinese space in the French public imagination reinforces the multi-layered, interconnected and persistent nature of colonial discourse.

This thesis examines the ways in which cyberpunk science fiction novels and short stories reflect our cultural relation with technology, a series of relationships predicated on the way that corporate control of knowledge industries increased during the 1980s. The document begins by locating the means of corporate control in the increasing de-skilling of knowledge workers, a de-skilling similar to that experienced by craftsworkers in the late 19th century. This process as undertaken by corporations leads to several responses by these workers, making their relationship with technology a complex and ambiguous one - they earn their living using it, but they also find themselves being squeezed out of the core programming tasks that defined the profession in its beginning. This thesis uses theoretical texts by Karl Marx, John Cawelti, and James Beniger to provide a basis for the discussion. This fear of corporate control and the ambiguous relationship with technology that high technology workers experience is reflected in cyberpunk science fiction. In texts by Bruce Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Greg Bear, the subcultural work of expressing these anxieties is done, with Artificial Intelligences becoming fictional characters who seek different means of finding freedom within this controlling environment. Gibson's Necromancer trilogy describes these cultural anxieties most clearly, as its heroes eventually escape to cyberspace with the help of a liberated Artificial Intelligence. Unfortunately, that cyberspace is physically located on the back of a robot that is endlessly tramping through the wastes of New Jersey, and it is dependent upon the life of the battery strapped to the robot's back. The thesis finishes with a discussion of Donna Haraway's review of the impact of this desire to escape into cyberspace. For Haraway, escape is a deadly fantasy, one that continues to relegate those unable to access cyberspace to the increasingly dystopic physical world. Her view is expressed in texts by several female cyberpunk writers, Gwyneth Jones, Melissa Scott, and Pat Cadigan. The cultural anxieties that these writers illustrate demonstrate our culture's increasingly complex relationship with technology, and also illuminate possible means of future subversion. / Graduation date: 2000

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Northern Colorado, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-149). Also available on the Internet.

Imperial Europes relationship with the tropical world was characterized by intrigue and fascination combined with a fear of difference. This combined intrigue and fear developed over time into a set of stereotypes and myths about the tropics, which by the 19th century had solidified into a powerful discourse historian David Arnold calls tropicality. As Europes interaction with the tropical world increased and its need for tropical resources grew, tropicality became a powerful tool for legitimizing European interference in and exploitation of the tropics. Embedded in the language of science and the promise of progress, it reaffirmed European superiority and its necessary role as the bearer of civilization for the tropical world. <p>Perhaps the most powerful characteristic of tropicality was its inherent ambivalence. The Amazon basin has been a particularly important source for the creation and maintenance of these stereotypes about the tropical world. Reinvented by Alexander von Humboldt as an exotic paradise at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Amazon basin continued throughout the century to inspire commentary, exploration, and exploitation from abroad. As contact with the Amazon increased, ideas about the tropics began to change. What once was thought of as a pristine paradise became perceived as sinister, diseased, and savage. By the end of the nineteenth century, the tropical world, its people and nature, was considered to be an obstacle to civilization, and its very ability to become civilized began to be questioned.<p>Rubber, an increasingly important and lucrative imperial resource at the end of the nineteenth century, brought people from around the world to the Amazon basin. This resulted in the creation of a contact zone of different peoples, cultures, and idea, which was important for the moulding and maintenance of tropical stereotypes and myths. This was especially the case in the Putumayo, a border zone between modern day Colombia and Peru, where the brutal treatment of workers and the promise of civilization clashed. Through an exploration of travel diaries, newspapers, parliamentary papers, and other works about the tropics and rubber, this thesis argues that the manner in which rubber and its environment were depicted legitimized its control and exploitation from the outside. Couched in the rhetoric of civilization, tropicality helped justify the exploitation of rubber, the environment in which it grew, and the peoples that lived there.

Imperial Europes relationship with the tropical world was characterized by intrigue and fascination combined with a fear of difference. This combined intrigue and fear developed over time into a set of stereotypes and myths about the tropics, which by the 19th century had solidified into a powerful discourse historian David Arnold calls tropicality. As Europes interaction with the tropical world increased and its need for tropical resources grew, tropicality became a powerful tool for legitimizing European interference in and exploitation of the tropics. Embedded in the language of science and the promise of progress, it reaffirmed European superiority and its necessary role as the bearer of civilization for the tropical world. <p>Perhaps the most powerful characteristic of tropicality was its inherent ambivalence. The Amazon basin has been a particularly important source for the creation and maintenance of these stereotypes about the tropical world. Reinvented by Alexander von Humboldt as an exotic paradise at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Amazon basin continued throughout the century to inspire commentary, exploration, and exploitation from abroad. As contact with the Amazon increased, ideas about the tropics began to change. What once was thought of as a pristine paradise became perceived as sinister, diseased, and savage. By the end of the nineteenth century, the tropical world, its people and nature, was considered to be an obstacle to civilization, and its very ability to become civilized began to be questioned.<p>Rubber, an increasingly important and lucrative imperial resource at the end of the nineteenth century, brought people from around the world to the Amazon basin. This resulted in the creation of a contact zone of different peoples, cultures, and idea, which was important for the moulding and maintenance of tropical stereotypes and myths. This was especially the case in the Putumayo, a border zone between modern day Colombia and Peru, where the brutal treatment of workers and the promise of civilization clashed. Through an exploration of travel diaries, newspapers, parliamentary papers, and other works about the tropics and rubber, this thesis argues that the manner in which rubber and its environment were depicted legitimized its control and exploitation from the outside. Couched in the rhetoric of civilization, tropicality helped justify the exploitation of rubber, the environment in which it grew, and the peoples that lived there.

Univ., Diss.--Regensburg, 1997. / Literaturverz. S. 180 - 191.

Originally pub. as thesis--Universität Giessen, 2005. / Edition scientifique. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris III, 1978. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 770-936) and index.