Entre 1890 et 1910, les prix des concours artistiques officiels vont en Espagne à des toiles qui représentent les souffrances des couches sociales les plus défavorisées de la société de la Restauration. Pauvres et vagabonds, migrants et chômeurs, mendiants et prostituées, ouvriers et paysans précaires sont les figures de proue d’un nouveau répertoire pictural qui déclasse la peinture d’histoire et remporte un succès public et critique considérable. La présente étude a pour ambition de faire l’histoire de cette peinture de la détresse sociale, en cherchant à comprendre les raisons de son triomphe dans les Salons d’un régime peu enclin à considérer la misère comme un scandale, voire même comme une question politique. Ce travail croise pour ce faire deux historiographies : l’histoire de l’art, en participant de la redécouverte d’une production qui, bien que légitime et couverte d’éloges en son temps, n’eut par la suite aucune fortune critique; et l’histoire culturelle, l’enjeu étant de mettre au jour les représentations sociales produites ou véhiculées par cette peinture. L’analyse des regards portés sur ces tableaux permet parallèlement de cerner l’évolution des sensibilités face à la pauvreté, mais aussi d’identifier les croyances et représentations largement partagées en matière de légitimation des inégalités. En faisant dialoguer ces approches, cette recherche vise à proposer un premier travail de synthèse sur ce chapitre absent jusqu’ici de l’histoire culturelle du XIXe siècle espagnol. / Between 1890 and 1910, most prizes awarded in Spain by official art exhibits went to depictions of the hardships faced by the poorest subjects of the Restoration. Destitutes and vagrants, migrants and the unemployed, beggars and prostitutes, day laborers and poor peasants were the icons of a new repertoire of pictorial forms which not only superseded history painting but also proved immensely popular both with critics and the public. This thesis aims to write the history of this art of social destitution, by elucidating how it could triumph in the Salons of a Regime which was certainly not inclined to consider poverty as outrageous or as a legitimate political concern. This task has entailed melding two distinct historiographic traditions together: whereas the methods of art history were used to rediscover this body of work and explain why, shortly after having been officially sanctioned and showered with praise, it could be spurned by critics; those of cultural history were mustered to identify the different social constructs fashioned or promoted by these pieces. Moreover, the study of how these depictions of social destitution were perceived might help to determine how the feelings towards poverty evolved and what shared beliefs and preconceptions were used to legitimize inequality. By bringing these approaches together, this thesis hopes to offer the first synthetic study of a neglected chapter of Spanish, 19th century, cultural history.

Dans une perspective d’histoire culturelle, cette thèse, fondée sur une approche iconologique, se propose de montrer, à partir de l’exemple de la littérature illustrée, que la culture de guerre enfantine allemande n’apparut pas ex nihilo en 1914. Elle avait ses racines dans la culture mémorielle d’avant-guerre. Issu de la peinture historique, un imaginaire héroïque en constituait les fondements. 1914 provoqua une intensification de la culture de guerre. Alors que les éditeurs commercialisèrent des livres patriotiques au moment où la guerre de position était déjà en place, ces ouvrages continuèrent à véhiculer l’image d’une guerre de mouvement. À mesure que les hostilités duraient, des dessins kitsch aux motifs enfantins et des caricatures de l’ennemi permirent de justifier le conflit, stylisé en une guerre défensive. Ces strates ludiques de la culture de guerre enfantine, qui provenaient de l’iconographie politique pour adultes, favorisèrent un élargissement du lectorat, auparavant scolaire, aux jeunes enfants. Les auto-images apologétiques l’emportaient toutefois sur la ridiculisation de l’ennemi. Conjointement aux caricatures, elles renforçaient la communauté nationale et traitaient des liens entre le front et l’arrière, qui devinrent une préoccupation croissante des familles, séparées durablement. Face aux difficultés matérielles, les livres, au ton moralisateur et performatif, cherchèrent à mobiliser matériellement les enfants à l’arrière. Dans ce contexte, des albums furent vendus au profit d’associations patriotiques. D’après les tirages, la littérature patriotique, probablement adressée aux enfants issus des milieux bourgeois, connut un certain succès. / In a cultural history perspective based on the methods of the “visual turn” this thesis deals with the illustrated children’s literature before and during the First World War and shows that the German children’s “war culture” did not appear ex nihilo in 1914. It had its origins in the memorial culture of pre-war time, which glorified the warfare. It relied on a heroic fantasy that came from historical paintings and used emotional reflexes. 1914 provoked an intensification and development of the “war culture”. While publishers put patriotic books on the market when the war of attrition took place, these books continued to convey familiar and reassuring images of a war of movement. As hostilities lasted, kitsch drawings with children’s characters and caricatures of the enemy used to justify the conflict, stylized in a defensive war. These fun strata of the children’s “war culture”, which came from the political iconography for adults, created an expansion of readership: children from the age of three up were concerned as well as school children. However, apologetic self-images were more important than the hatred and jeer of the enemy. Together with caricatures, they reinforced the national community and dealt with the bonds between the soldiers and the home front, which became a growing concern for permanently separated families. Because of deprivations, the books became sanctimonious and aimed at mobilizing children in the home front. In this context, albums were sold to raise funds for patriotic associations. According to the number of books printed, this patriotic literature, probably targeting children from both the middle and upper classes, were a success.

Nel presente lavoro vengono indagati gli aspetti politici della teologia di Friedrich Gogarten durante l’arco temporale della Repubblica di Weimar. La ricerca si propone due obiettivi fondamentali. In primo luogo, in essa si vuole dimostrare la presenza di una discontinuità all’interno della teologia politica di Gogarten, i cui noti esiti conservatori e vicini al nazismo durante gli ultimi anni della repubblica vengono generalmente considerati dalla critica come impliciti nel suo pensiero precedente. Un’analisi dettagliata della produzione di Gogarten, condotta con un’attenzione particolare al contesto storico-culturale, mostrerà che il suo pensiero politico fino al biennio ‘27/’28 presenta, al contrario, elementi critici nei confronti di un pensiero politico autoritario e dell’ideologia delle nuove destre, ai quali si avvicinerà solo successivamente. Il secondo obiettivo è quello di rinvenire le cause di questa evoluzione del suo pensiero. L’ipotesi di questa ricerca è che essa sia maturata sul terreno dei rapporti di Gogarten con la Chiesa Luterana della Turingia, e che le idee conservatrici inizialmente abbracciate dal teologo in questo ambito lo abbiano spinto a sviluppare una visione sempre più reazionaria della politica e della società durante gli ultimi problematici anni della Repubblica di Weimar. / This work examines the political aspects of Friedrich Gogarten’s theology during the time span of the Weimar Republic. The research seeks two fundamental goals. In the first place, it aims at demonstrating the discontinuity within Gogarten’s political theology, whose well-known conservative outcomes, close to Nazism, in the last years of the republic are generally considered by scholarship as implicit in his earlier thought. An in-depth analysis of Gogarten’s production, with particular attention to the socio-cultural context, will rather show that until the two-year period ‘27/’28 his political thought presents critical elements against authoritarian political power and new right-wing ideologies, that he will embrace only later. The second aim is to find the causes of this evolution of his thought. The research hypothesis is that it matured on the ground of Gogarten’s relationship with the Lutheran church of Thuringia. The conservative ideas first embraced by the theologian brought him to develop an increasingly reactionary vision of politics and society during the last problematic years of the Weimar Republic.

Ce travail porte sur les appropriations musicales et discursives du jazz dans le monde musical savant français. Fondé sur la méthode des transferts culturels, il propose une histoire croisée de la musique savante en France, de la diffusion des répertoires de jazz en Europe et de leur perception. La réflexion s’appuie sur un corpus systématique des œuvres savantes influencées le jazz et des textes que lui consacrent compositeurs et critiques. Les unes comme les autres contribuent à différentes tentatives de redéfinition d’une identité française de la musique. Les appropriations du jazz renouvellent également une conception de la musique populaire propre au XIXe siècle. Elles valorisent des sujets auparavant considérés comme triviaux et proposent un son nouveau, tantôt associé au modernisme anglo-saxon, tantôt au primitivisme « nègre ». Enfin, elles participent à la remise au goût du jour d’un classicisme protéiforme. Les aspects qui viennent d’être mentionnés font l’objet d’une périodisation et d’une thématisation. Si les premiers cake-walks des années 1900 sont mis au service d’un exotisme « nègre », les emprunts au jazz relèvent, dix ans plus tard, d’un geste avant-gardiste et nationaliste. À partir du milieu des années 1920, suite aux efforts fructueux de Jean Wiéner pour légitimer le jazz, de nouveaux compositeurs s’y intéressent dans la perspective d’un classicisme désormais plus cosmopolite. Un discours spécialisé émerge. Tout en distinguant différents paradigmes de l’appropriation du jazz, cette étude entend jeter un éclairage nouveau sur la production musicale savante dans la France des années 1900-1930 et sur les rencontres entre différentes traditions musicales. / This thesis deals with the musical and discursive appropriations of jazz in the French musical world. Inspired the approach of cultural transfers and crosses the history of French art music in France and the history of its diffusion and perception in Europe. To do so, it draws upon a corpus of art music pieces influenced by jazz and of texts written by composers and critics. This corpus contribute to different redefinitions of an alleged French musical identity. What is more, appropriations of jazz renew a conception of popular music that goes back to the beginning of the 19th century. They also valorize topics that were considered as trivial and they display a new kind of sound, evoking Anglo-saxon modernism or « negro » primitivism.The different aspects mentionned above are presented in a chronological and thematic fashion. In the 1900s, the first cake-walks contribute to a tradition of « negro » exoticsm. Ten years after, borrowing to jazz has become an avant-gardist gesture, and a response to nationalist motivations. Thanks to Jean Wiéner’s efforts in order to legitimize jazz, a new group of composers and critics take an interest in it. Jazz then becomes a means to assert a more cosmopolitan classicism.This thesis identifies different paradigms of the appropriation of jazz in France. More broadly, it sheds new light on musical creation in the French art music world between 1900-1930, and on musical encounters between different musical traditions.

This thesis examines the development of the soldier in late-Victorian Britain in light of the movement to rehabilitate the public image of the ordinary ranks initiated by the Cardwell-Childers Reforms. Venerated in popular culture, Tommy Atkins became a symbol of British imperial strength and heroism. Socially, however, attitudes to the rank-and-file were defined by a pragmatic realism purged of such sentiments, the likes of which would characterise the British public’s relationship with their army for over thirty years. Scholars of both imperial culture and the Victorian military have identified this dual persona of Tommy Atkins, however, a dedicated study into the true nature of the soldier’s position has yet to be undertaken. The following research will seek to redress this omission. The soldier is approached through the perspective of three key influences which defined his development. The first influence, the politics of the War Office, exposes a progressive series of schemes which, cultivated for over a decade, sought to redefine the soldier through the popularisation of military service and the professionalisation of the military’s public relations strategy and apparatus. A forgotten component of the Cardwell-Childers Reforms, the schemes have not before been scrutinised. Despite the ingenuity of the schemes devised, the social rehabilitation of the soldier failed, primarily, it will be argued, because the government refused to improve his pay. The public’s response to the Cardwell-Childers Reforms and the British perception of the ordinary soldier in the decades following their introduction form the second perspective. Through surveys of the local and London press and mainstream literature, it is demonstrated the soldier, in part as a result of the reforms, underwent a social transition, precipitated by his entering the public consciousness and encouraged by a resulting fascination in the military life. The final perspective presented in this thesis is from within the rank-and-file itself. Through the examination of specialist newspaper, diary and memoir material the direct experiences of the soldiers themselves are explored. Amid the extensive public and political discussion of their nature and status, the soldier also engaged in the debate. The perspective of the rank-and-file provides direct context for the established perspectives of the British public and the War Office, but also highlights how the soldier both supported and opposed the reforms and was acutely aware of the social status he possessed. This thesis will examine the public and political treatment of the soldier in the late-nineteenth century and question how far the conflicting ideas of soldier-hero and soldier-beggar were reconciled.

A museum has to care for the objects in its collection to the best of its ability. The concept collections management emerged in the 1960s, when accountability for collections became a strong incentive for museums to develop modern collections management practices. In the process of establishing accountability (the effective implementation of practices to ensure adherence to collections policies on the accessioning, care and disposal of objects in a museum collection) many museums encountered problems such as the lack of access to detailed information about the objects in collections, a proliferation of accession numbers and inadequate location control. These problems were also encountered at the National Cultural History Museum, Pretoria. This research reveals the way in which the historical, anthropological and archaeological collections at the Transvaal Museum, predecessor of the National Cultural History Museum were managed from 1913 to 1964. This period was chosen for the following reasons: -- J W B Gunning, the director of the Transvaal Museum, was succeeded by H G Breijer in 1913. The year 1913 is thus a clear starting point for research and a new beginning, a watershed, at the Museum. -- The year 1964 marked the inception of an autonomous museum, the National Cultural History and Open-Air Museum, and the discontinuance of responsibility, after a period of 60 years, for the anthropology, archaeology and history collections at the Transvaal Museum. The development of the Transvaal Museum as a natural history and a history museum, is traced. In 1953, for the first time, a trained professional officer was appointed for the history division at the Museum. After 1953 there was an increased awareness (from a professional point of view) that historical, anthropological and archaeological collections require specialized curatorial care. Modern collections management principles, although they were not called by this name, featured effectively in the handling of the historical collection in particular, for the first time in more than 50 years. Aspects such as departmental organization, the staff, expansion of collections, policies, documentation and conservation are investigated. An evaluation of the factors that played a decisive role in collections management practices for the historical, anthropological and archaeological collections shows that a combination of aspects has to be considered in order to understand the practices that were followed and the changes that were made. / Thesis (DPhil (Museology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Historical and Heritage Studies / unrestricted

In 1920s-30s São Paulo, Brazil, leaders of the vanguard artistic movement known as “modernism” began to argue that national identity came not from shared values or even cultural practices but rather by a shared way of thinking, which they variously designated as Brazil’s “racial psychology,” “folkloric unconscious,” and “national psychology.” Building on turn-of-the-century psychological and anthropological theories, the group diagnosed Brazil’s national mind as characterized by “primitivity” and in need of a program of psychological development. The group rose to political power in the 1930s, placing the artists in a position to undertake such a project. The Symphony of State charts this previously unexamined intellectual project and explains why elite leaders believed music to be the most-promising strategy for developing the national mind beyond primitivity. In 1935, they founded the São Paulo Department of Culture and Recreation in order to fund music education, train ethnomusicologists, commission symphonies, and host performances across the city. Until now, historians of twentieth-century Brazil have praised music as a critical site for marginalized groups to sound out political protest. But The Symphony of State shows the reverse has also been true: elite groups used music as a top-down civilizing project designed to naturalize racial hierarchies and justify class difference. The intellectual history portion of the dissertation turns on archival sources, newspaper accounts, personal correspondence, modernist literature, and the period’s scholarly journals. The examination of literary form, discourse analysis, and marginalia lends depth to a carefully-documented study of ideas. Then, The Symphony of State brings to bear an innovative reading of ethnographic field books, vinyl records, and music scores to show that the department’s scholarship and symphonic compositions alike furthered the narrative of a nation jeopardized by primitivity. What is more, the department’s composers employed musical properties such as harmony and dissonance as metaphors to convince listeners that a harmonious society required the maintenance of racial and class hierarchies. In bringing further clarity to the department’s intellectual project, the sections featuring music analysis speak to the value of reading music as an historical text. The dissertation accomplishes multiple goals. It uncovers the theory of national psychology driving the musical institution; examines ethnographic material to further understand racial and regional prejudice in the period; and analyzes concert music commissioned and performed by the municipal department. The examination of the musical institution reveals a moment in Brazilian history in which national identity was constructed atop the notion of a shared psychology and in which modernity was believed to come with the musical tuning of the body politic and the training of its mind.

Emma Hardinge Britten’s life encompassed and reflected many of the challenges and opportunities afforded to women in the Victorian world. This dissertation explores the multi-layered Victorian landscape through the life of an individual in order not only to tell her individual story, but also to gain a more nuanced understanding of how nineteenth-century norms of gender, class, religion, science and politics combined to create opportunities and obstacles for women in Britten’s generation. Britten was an actor, a musician, a writer, a theologian, a political activist, a magazine publisher, a spirit medium, a lecturer, and a Spiritualist missionary. Taking into account her multiple subjectivities, this dissertation relies on historical biography to contextualize Britten’s life in a number of areas, including Modern Spiritualism and political and civic engagement in the second half of the nineteenth century in Britain, the U.S., and Australia. The dissertation is organized thematically in a quasi-chronological manner. Time frames overlap between chapters, as Britten travels from the realm of politics to that of science and to religion. Each chapter reflects this transformation of Britten’s multiple intellectual and spiritual engagements, including performance, religion, politics and science. Emma Hardinge Britten challenged, whether consciously or not, gendered expectations by attaining a presence in a male-dominated public. Even though her life and accomplishments pre-date the New Woman of the fin de siècle, Britten established a successful career and her life creates a foreshadowing of the larger movements to come. She was an extraordinarily politically active woman whose influence reached three continents in her lifetime and beyond.

This study examined technocracy in Haiti in the Cold War era. It showed how Haitian and non-Haitian technicians navigated United States imperialism, Soviet ideology, and postcolonial nationalism to implement bold utopian visions in a country oppressed by poverty and dynastic authoritarianism. Throughout the mid-to-late twentieth century, technicians lavished Haiti with plans to improve the countryside, the city, the workplace, and the home. This study analyzed those plans and investigated the motivations behind them. Based on new evidence discovered in the private correspondence between Haitian, American, and Western European specialists, it questioned the assumption that technocracy was captivated by high-modernist ideology and US hegemony. It exposed how many technicians were inspired by a utopian desire to create a just society—one based not only on technical knowledge but also on humanist principles, such as liberty and equality. Guided by the utopian impulse, technicians occasionally disobeyed policymakers who wished to promote modernization and the capitalist world-economy. In many cases, however, they also upset the Haitian people, who believed technocracy was too exclusive. This study concluded that technicians were empowered by expertise but unable to build the utopias they envisioned because they were constantly at odds with both policymakers at the top and the people whose lives they planned.

The thesis takes the French revue Lignes (1987-present) as its object of study to provide a new account of French intellectual culture over the last twenty-five years. Whilst there are now many studies covering the role of such revues throughout the twentieth-century, the majority of such monographs extend no further than the mid-1980s: the major novelty of this thesis is extending these accounts up until the present moment. It is largely assumed that a reaction against the Marxist and structuralist theories of the 1960s and 1970s led to embrace of liberalism and an intellectual drift to the right in France from the 1980s onwards: whilst largely supporting this account, the thesis attempts to nuance this narrative of the fate of the intellectual left in the following years by showing the persistence of what can be called a politicised 'French theory' in Lignes, and a returning left-wing militancy in recent years. In doing so, it will both reveal under-studied aspects of well-known thinkers, such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, as their thought develops through their participation in a collaborative, periodical publication, and introduce lesser known thinkers who have not received an extended readership in Anglophone spheres. Lignes also argues for the continued persistence and relevance of the thought of a previous generation of thinkers, notably Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Dionys Mascolo, and the thesis concludes by examining the potential role 'French Theory' could still have in France. Furthermore, as revues provide a unique nexus of intellectual, cultural, social and political concerns, the thesis also provides a unique history of France from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the 2007 financial crisis and the Arab Spring. Much of the thesis is concerned with contextualising intellectual debates within a period characterised by the moralisation of discourses, a return of religion, the global installation of neo-liberalism and the eruption of immigration as a controversial European issue. From a relatively theoretical and politically stable position to the left of the Parti socialiste, Lignes therefore provides a privileged vantage point for the mutations in French social and cultural life throughout the period.