published_or_final_version / History / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar o potencial de esclarecimento de dois conjuntos de materiais. O primeiro consiste em uma exposição a respeito do ataque nuclear às cidades de Hiroshima e Nagasaki. Essa exposição é composta por 30 painéis contendo desenhos, fotografias, textos e gráficos. O segundo conjunto de materiais consiste em matérias jornalísticas recentemente publicadas pela mídia impressa a respeito da bomba atômica. Tais matérias, por sua vez, utilizam-se de textos, fotografias e gráficos. A partir de contribuição de autores vinculados à Teoria Crítica da Sociedade, em especial Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer e Herbert Marcuse, os materiais são analisados levando-se em conta as noções de elaboração do passado, racionalidade técnica e indústria cultural. Embora recorram à utilização de elementos semelhantes, procura-se demonstrar que os dois conjuntos de materiais acabam por diferir entre si quanto aos seus limites ou, em outras palavras, quanto ao seu potencial de esclarecimento. Isto porque a influência que recebem da indústria cultural, materializada pela presença de elementos característicos desta última no material analisado, nos parece diversa, preponderando em relação às produções da mídia impressa / This research has the purpose of analyzing the potential of enlightenment in two groups of materials. The first one consists in an exposition about the nuclear attack to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, composed by thirty panels with drawings, photographs, texts and graphics. The second group of materials consists in newspapers news recently published by the printed media referring to the atomic bomb. These news, in its turn, uses texts, photographs and graphics. From the contribution of the authors from Frankfurt School, in special Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, the materials are analyzed taking into account the notions of working through the past, technical rationality and cultural industry. Although they resort to the utilization of similar elements, we try to demonstrate that the two groups of materials turn out to differ among themselves as to their limits or, in other words, as to their potential of enlightenment. This is explained by the diverse influence that they receive from the cultural industry, materialized by the presence of characteristic elements of the later in the analyzed material, which seems to us more prevalent in relation to the printed media productions

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar o potencial de esclarecimento de dois conjuntos de materiais. O primeiro consiste em uma exposição a respeito do ataque nuclear às cidades de Hiroshima e Nagasaki. Essa exposição é composta por 30 painéis contendo desenhos, fotografias, textos e gráficos. O segundo conjunto de materiais consiste em matérias jornalísticas recentemente publicadas pela mídia impressa a respeito da bomba atômica. Tais matérias, por sua vez, utilizam-se de textos, fotografias e gráficos. A partir de contribuição de autores vinculados à Teoria Crítica da Sociedade, em especial Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer e Herbert Marcuse, os materiais são analisados levando-se em conta as noções de elaboração do passado, racionalidade técnica e indústria cultural. Embora recorram à utilização de elementos semelhantes, procura-se demonstrar que os dois conjuntos de materiais acabam por diferir entre si quanto aos seus limites ou, em outras palavras, quanto ao seu potencial de esclarecimento. Isto porque a influência que recebem da indústria cultural, materializada pela presença de elementos característicos desta última no material analisado, nos parece diversa, preponderando em relação às produções da mídia impressa / This research has the purpose of analyzing the potential of enlightenment in two groups of materials. The first one consists in an exposition about the nuclear attack to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, composed by thirty panels with drawings, photographs, texts and graphics. The second group of materials consists in newspapers news recently published by the printed media referring to the atomic bomb. These news, in its turn, uses texts, photographs and graphics. From the contribution of the authors from Frankfurt School, in special Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, the materials are analyzed taking into account the notions of working through the past, technical rationality and cultural industry. Although they resort to the utilization of similar elements, we try to demonstrate that the two groups of materials turn out to differ among themselves as to their limits or, in other words, as to their potential of enlightenment. This is explained by the diverse influence that they receive from the cultural industry, materialized by the presence of characteristic elements of the later in the analyzed material, which seems to us more prevalent in relation to the printed media productions

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, The Divinity School, Aug. 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Spanish monarchs ruled a global empire encompassing millions of colonial subjects for nearly three hundred years. One key factor in the longevity of the Spanish Empire was its skillful integration of elements from an even longer-lasting, centralized Institution--the Catholic Church. Through a focus on San Felipe de Jesús, a Mexico City-born saint, this dissertation analyzes the pious imperialism of the Spanish Empire in the Catholic missions of Japan, the politics of beatification in Rome and local devotions in Mexico City. Funded by Philip II, Spanish missionaries spread across the Atlantic and then to the Pacific. The mission of Spanish Franciscans in Japan including San Felipe exemplified the orthodox and expansionistic tendencies of this movement. The friars’ uncompromising zeal caused them to reject Japanese society and authority, something which led to their executions in 1597. Spanish subjects thrilled to the martyrs’ inspiring story and supported their beatification cause. The Spanish king, too, actively promoted new holy figures in Rome for political and pious reasons. During the seventeenth century, more than half of the new beatified or canonized holy figures came from the Spanish Empire, including the Nagasaki martyrs. As each new saint earned a feast in liturgy, worship in Spanish territories began to disseminate not only Catholic values, but also divine favor toward the Spanish Empire and its monarch. The liturgical schedule of colonial Mexico City shows that Spanish Catholicism projected both Church and Empire across the Atlantic. As the Catholic Church had found, cults to saints formed effective imperial ties because they could also attract and adapt. Civic and religious leaders in Mexico City molded the cult to San Felipe to express municipal pride, to assert the city’s place in the Spanish Empire and to commemorate its contributions to Catholicism. Devotions to saints, then, captured the potentially-divisive power of identity to reinforce Empire and Church. Pious imperialism worked well until Bourbon-era reforms distanced the Spanish monarch from the devotional culture in Mexico City and interrupted the mediating power of saints’ cults. The Spanish Empire was less able to withstand shocks like the political instability of the early nineteenth century. / text

Michal Ulvr Abstract It was the near-end of the Second World War, which defined the popular reception of the Atomic bomb for upcoming decade. In the first year of the nuclear monopoly, the feeling of uncertainty and fear of death in the nuclear war was not yet present in strength. The mood of relative safety dominated the American society till the fall of the monopoly in 1949. Since the first atomic explosion occurred in the USSR, the atmosphere of fear, that never faded back and was latent since August and September 1945, made an exuberant appearance in press and other media. Suddenly, the American government made (after years of neglect) a great effort to calm down the uncertainty of the public. A Federal Civil Defense Administration was established at the end of 1950 and provided more or less useful information, propaganda, material and logistical support for a war with the Soviet Union, which was expected to come sooner or later. Plenty of educational and propaganda pamphlets, books and training films were produced in determination to make it clear, that survival under nuclear attack was possible. And indeed, at that time, there was even a good chance, that keeping some basic survival rules in mind an individual could come out of a nuclear attack relatively unscathed. Administration even tried to...

Die Dissertation setzt sich mit den fotografischen Repräsentationen der Atombombenabwürfe auf Hiroshima und Nagasaki sowie der Havarie des Kernkraftwerks Tschernobyl auseinander. Dabei werden künstlerische, dokumentarische und touristische Bilder analysiert, die sich der jeweiligen Strahlenkatastrophe oftmals erst Jahre nach dem Ereignis annehmen und ikonografische oder medial-materielle Bezüge zu ihr aufweisen. Es zeigen sich zentrale Strategien, atomare Katastrophen, seien sie militärischer oder ziviler Natur, in fotografische Bilder überzuführen. Gerade das eigentliche Unvermögen, die visuell nicht sichtbaren Strahlenemissionen oder die Komplexität der Vorgänge auf atomarer Ebene zu visualisieren, hat sich als prägend erwiesen und bestimmt als Paradigma der Unsichtbarkeit die kulturelle Rezeption der Ereignisse. Es ist dieser Umgang mit den Abstraktionspotentialen der nuklearen Technologie, die im aktuellen Spannungsfeld ökologischer, sozialer und energietechnologischer Bildpolitik ihre Relevanz stets von neuem unter Beweis stellt. / The dissertation project seeks to analyse the photographic positions that deal with the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the accident of the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. This focus includes press photographs of the events as well as artistic, documentary and touristic images that take an approach towards the disasters often years after and hereby form iconographic or material references to the events. The study reveals central strategies for photographic images of atomic catastrophes, be they of military or civil nature. It is the inability to visualize non-visible nuclear rays or the complexity of processes on an atomic level that has turned out to be crucial. This incapacity of making images, a paradigm of invisibility, substantially coins the cultural role of the events. The question of how a society deals with these abstract potentials of nuclear technology has turned out to be always anew of high relevance in regard to ecological, social and technological policies of images.

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