Susan Sontag’s reviews and descriptions of agony images is the keystone of war photography. From On photography(1977) to Regarding the Pain of Others(2003), Sontag wrote about how agony images could affect the majority of people. Media ruled photographs and used them as its own container. Through her book, the passiveness of the audiences was examined. She criticised the way of how people looked at an agony image. According to her, audiences constantly consumed other’s pain if the they are far away. She judged repeating formats and simplified messages from media which numb the sensation of people, the surfeit of similar horrendous images turned an audience into a consumer. “Is a photograph ever “real”? she asked. Firstly, within in my thesis I would like to to examine the relevancy of Sontag theory, her interests in emotion in charge of atrocity and pain. To found out the possible respond of the audience, in respect to war in contemporary art photography. When artists have the chance to turn their camera from those atrocity on sites, what could be the differences in audiences’ reactions from traditional war photojournalist. Moreover, Sontag’s concept “the audience as consumers” will be traced back to its basic elements. To scan the particular words and phrase which Sontag used in her two books. Secondly, use Regarding the Pain of Others(2003) as a starting point of the timeline, then search for the critical thoughts which against or support Sontag’s words during the decade. Furthermore, use different concepts of the agony images to examine the remarkable singular atrocity images and the art works relate to war and atrocity. To explore the change according to the interaction between atrocity and contemporary photography and their audiences. After all, use the dialects between the theories and the war in contemporary art photography to extent the perspective from Regarding the Pain of Others(2003) to get closer to our time — to build the the reference of how to see an agony image.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

Orientador : Profª. Drª. Célia Arns de Miranda / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Humanas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras. Defesa: Curitiba, 31/10/2016 / Inclui referências : f. 165-168 / Resumo: A montagem teatral realizada por Robert Wilson a partir do texto-fonte A dama do mar (1888), de Henrik Ibsen, e de sua reescritura por Susan Sontag (1997) coloca em foco elementos como a voz, a luz, o cenário, a movimentação, a sonoplastia, ou seja, dá ênfase à visualidade e sonoridade. Este estudo analisa os mecanismos utilizados na transposição da obra original para a obra final, passando pela adaptação textual por Sontag, no contexto dos estudos da adaptação. É analisado o processo como a peça é transformada a partir das escolhas de Sontag, como os monólogos de frente para a plateia e a inclusão de textos folclóricos, e da estética de Wilson, que potencializa o substrato simbólico da peça com seu cenário e iluminação repletos de poesia, atuações que simulam o movimento de marionetes, gestual preciso e diálogos e movimentos propositadamente artificiais. Dentre os recursos utilizados para a análise, destaca-se a gravação em DVD do espetáculo apresentado em São Paulo em 2013 e a memória do espetáculo assistido ao vivo pela autora no mesmo ano; a peça de Susan Sontag publicada no Brasil pela editora n-1; entrevistas com atores da montagem, com o tradutor do texto de Sontag e o biógrafo da escritora, entre outras, e críticas sobre o espetáculo publicadas na mídia geral e especializada. A fundamentação teórica é proporcionado pelos estudos de Patrice Pavis, Linda Hutcheon, Robert Stam, Hans-Thies Lehmann, entre outros. Palavras-chave: A dama do mar. Adaptação. Robert Wilson. Henrik Ibsen. Susan Sontag. Teatro contemporâneo. / Abstract: The staging by Robert Wilson using the source text The Lady from the Sea, by Henrik Ibsen (1888), and its rewrite by Susan Sontag (1997) highligths elements such as voice, scenery, sound, lights and movement, which means it emphasizes visuality and sonorical aspects. This study analyzes the mechanisms used in the transposition of the original play to the final work, by means of the textual adaptation by Sontag, in the context of the studies of adaptation. The play is transformed because of Sontag's choices, such as the monologues facing the public and the insertion of folk texts. It is furthermore transformed by Wilson's aesthetics, which empowers the simbolic substrate of the original play with his scenery and lights full of poetry, acting that reminds the movement of puppets, precise gesture and artificial dialogue. Among the resources used for this analysis are the recording of the play presented in São Paulo in 2013 as well as the memory of the live show to wich the author attended in the same year; Susan Sontag's Lady from the Sea, published in Brazil by n-1 editions; interviews with actors from the play, its translator to Portuguese and Sontag's biographer, among others, and critic texts about the staging published in the general and specialized media. The theoretic writings of Patrice Pavis, Linda Hutcheon, Robert Stam and Hans-Thies Lehmann were used, among others. Key-words: Lady from the Sea. Adaptation. Robert Wilson. Henrik Ibsen. Susan Sontag. Contemporary theater.

This dissertation explores the relationship of two of the most prominent women intellectuals of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag. While they are not commonly considered to be related figures – Arendt is mainly recognized as a political thinker, Sontag is an icon of postwar popular culture – it has been anecdotally noted that they lived and worked in the same intellectual environment in postwar New York City, where their paths crossed a few times. However, a comprehensive systematic study of their relationship is missing. Starting from their Benjamin portraits of 1968 and 1978, I argue that Arendt’s and Sontag’s relationship is significant in terms of the German and US American tradition of literary criticism: Both women acted as transatlantic critics invested in cultural transfer between postwar US and Germany, and they employed similar styles of citation and editorial strategies to create and inscribe themselves into an authoritative literary tradition. With Arendt and Sontag, I discuss the critic’s task in terms of citational style and as a matter of taking care of literary traditions beyond national borders. As I demonstrate through comprehensive, in-depth archival analysis and close readings, Arendt and Sontag intervened with their Benjamin portraits in a heated debate about critical methods surrounding the editorial management of Benjamin’s estate and legacy through Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem in late 1960s Germany. Arendt’s portrait made Benjamin’s work available to an English-speaking audience for the first time and Sontag popularized his prominence in the US even further. Both stage Benjamin as a literary figure rather than a philosopher. Stylistically, they employ related strategies of citational mimicry to create an intimate connection between their voices and Benjamin’s, granting even unfamiliar readers access to Benjamin’s complex writing. Through constant dialogue with his work, their affective and affirmative mediation has significant editorial qualities. By preserving and promoting Benjamin as a critic in the US, Arendt and Sontag created a transatlantic tradition of literary criticism in which they inscribed themselves to gain critical authority in singular yet similar ways. Tracing the relationship between the portraits archivally, I argue that their similar citational creation of discursive authority results from Sontag’s comprehensive study of Arendt’s work and is thus an example of critical skill building through stylistic imitation. Rendering the hidden citational traces between the portraits transparent, I show how this line of influence ironically yields a lack of credit to Arendt on Sontag’s part. Like Arendt, Sontag reifies rather than breaks patriarchal citational chains. Illuminating what Arendt calls a “hidden tradition” – consisting in stylistically visible yet inexplicit commonalities – I draw on terminology gained from the current debate on critical method in Western literary studies to argue that the portraits afford a concept of criticism between such polemic poles as “surface” versus “depth” reading, “description” versus “interpretation” or “affirmation” versus “suspicion.” Characterizing this critical nuance with Arendt and Sontag as related critics, my study delineates a genealogy of a transatlantic mode of close reading with hermeneutic roots and a feminist twist.