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<p>Jean-Paul Sartre' s central purpose in writing the Critique of Dialectical Reason was to render intelligible Karl Marx's principle that circumstances make people just as much as people make circumstances. With the intent of complementing Marx's work, Sartre sought to theoretically connect the marxist outline of social process with its constituting parts--individuals. He sought to do this without ascribing to circumstances a superorganic existence, and in terms of the general structure of individual action per se. In place of a super organic being he attributed unintended consequences to all individual action (as well as intended consequences). The actual influence of circumstances upon people he explained by the fact that products bear some trace of the intentions of those who made them. The product becomes a sign, and people construct about them a world of signs.</p> <p>Within this world of signs people tend to become separated as mediations between constructed things. It is in this sense, that is, in explaining how social relations tend to occur indirectly through the products of praxis, that Sartre sought to justify a rejection of organicism by developing his interpretation of Marx's theory of fetishism.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

This dissertation concerns the socio-cultural politics expressed in the performances of Matthew Barney, Steven Cohen, Marina Abramovic, and the ‘Pop’ artist Madonna. The contention is that these artists mirror and dramatize marginalization and seem to reflect a desire to resolve conflicts experienced between social and psychological identities in contemporary society. The premise of this study is that these performers engage in a ‘dialogue’ with viewers as a form of self-preservation and self-healing. The Performance artists’ measure of socio-cultural tensions suggests the merging of mass media entertainment, theatrical devices and other cultural practices such as fetishism and rituals involving altered states of consciousness, props and allusions to shamanism. An ancient modality of healing, such as shamanism, when appropriated by artists, seems to reflect an urgent phenomenological need of the individual within Western society for overcoming feelings of powerlessness as a type of therapeutic practice. The Performance artists’ Othering is acted out as a survival mechanism addressing and questioning the ‘degradation’ imposed on marginalized individuals who challenge the traditional notion of authentic identity and the ‘classic’ body. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)

This dissertation concerns the socio-cultural politics expressed in the performances of Matthew Barney, Steven Cohen, Marina Abramovic, and the ‘Pop’ artist Madonna. The contention is that these artists mirror and dramatize marginalization and seem to reflect a desire to resolve conflicts experienced between social and psychological identities in contemporary society. The premise of this study is that these performers engage in a ‘dialogue’ with viewers as a form of self-preservation and self-healing. The Performance artists’ measure of socio-cultural tensions suggests the merging of mass media entertainment, theatrical devices and other cultural practices such as fetishism and rituals involving altered states of consciousness, props and allusions to shamanism. An ancient modality of healing, such as shamanism, when appropriated by artists, seems to reflect an urgent phenomenological need of the individual within Western society for overcoming feelings of powerlessness as a type of therapeutic practice. The Performance artists’ Othering is acted out as a survival mechanism addressing and questioning the ‘degradation’ imposed on marginalized individuals who challenge the traditional notion of authentic identity and the ‘classic’ body. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)

The Road to Los Angeles, the first novel written by Italian-American author John Fante, is most often recognized as a tale concerned with Italian-American alienation, xenophobia and existence on the periphery of mainstream society. This essay, however, aims to analyze the novel from the viewpoint of fetishism. Fetishism, a motif that constitutes a vast theoretical field in itself, will be analyzed using the lens of Freudian theory and more recent works by critics such as Louise J. Kaplan and Johanna Malt. While fetishism unproblematically can be defined as the misdirection of libidinal energy, and the objectification of a sexual object’s seductive powers, this essay also aims to throw light on the intricate nature and general applicability of fetishism. Fante depicts fetishism as essentially oxymoronic in its presence-absence duality, as instrumental in animating the inanimate and dehumanizing  the sexual object. Fetishism, which in many ways shares an affinity with scopophilia and voyeurism, is essentially semiotic and instrumental in projecting the will onto the external world. Moreover, read through the lens of the inherent death drive, as theorized by Sigmund Freud, manifestations of brutal violence and self-torture are seen as  direct counterparts to fetishism.

The flaneur (“stroller, dawdler, leisurer, idler”) is an aesthetic and historical figure that arose in nineteenth-century Paris as a by-product of metropolitan growth. Walter Benjamin brought the flaneur to the consideration of the twentieth-century philosophical thought by choosing the figure as his conceptual persona. The goal of this work is to answer the question “who is the flaneur?” in an expansive way, tracing this figure’s conceptual life from its origins, through the flaneur’s role in Benjamin’s thought, to its contemporary state of being dispersed into the multitude. Building on the works of Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, Henri Bergson, Georg Simmel, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Patrick Keiller, Julia Kristeva, A. Kiarina Kordela, Paulo Virno, Tiqqun and others, the flaneur serves as a prism to critically viewing contemporary phenomena. The scope of this work encompasses the prevalence of metropolitan life and experience, disintegration of authenticity and exceptionality, rapid production and appropriation of the surplus by Capital, perception of time and duration, commodity fetishism, increasingly general attunements of alienation, anxiety and melancholy. While investigating the realities and conditons of contemporary existence, one can producitvely turn to the flaneur and his contemporary forms revolutionary qualities: potential for resistance and weakness for recuperation. / Flaneur (“vaikštinėtojas, bastūnas, dykinėtojas“) – estetinė ir istorinė figūra, atsiradusi XIX a. Paryžiuje kaip metropolio plėtros šalutinis produktas. Walteris Benjaminas iškėlė flaneur į XX a. filosofinę mintį, pasirinkdamas šią figūrą savo „konceptualiuoju personažu“. Šio darbo tikslas – išplėstai atsakyti į klausimą „kas yra flaneur?“, sekant šios figūros konceptualų kelią nuo kilmės, per jos vaidmenį Benjamino apmąstymuose, iki dabartinės flaneur būklės, kurioje jis yra išskydęs į daugybę kaip pastarosios bruožas. Remiantis W. Benjamino, Charles‘io Baudelaire‘o, Henri Bergsono, Georgo Simmelio, Gilles‘io Deleuze‘o ir Felixo Guattari, Patricko Keillerio, Julios Kristevos, A. Kiarinos Kordelios, Paulo Virno, Tiqqun ir kitų darbais, flaneur pasitarnauja prizme, per kurią kritiškai žvelgiama į šiuolaikinius reiškinius: gyvenimą ir patirtį metropolyje, autentiškumo ir išskirtinumo suirimą, Kapitalo vykdomą intensyvią pertekliaus gamybą ir nusavinimą, laiko ir trukmės suvokimą, prekinį fetišizmą, vis labiau visuotines susvetimėjimo, nerimo ir melancholijos nuotaikas. Tiriant šiuolaikinės egzistencijos realijas, nuolat grįžtama prie flaneur ir jo dabartinių formų revoliucinių ypatybių: būdingo potencialo pasipriešinimui ir silpnybės rekuperacijai.

Student Number : 9406610A - MA(FA) dissertation - School of Fine Art - Faculty of Arts / This thesis is a study of the box constructions of New York artist Joseph Cornell from the early 1930s to the late 1960s, and the influence of his work on that of contemporary American jeweller Thomas Mann, as well as my own artistic production. The key areas of focus are the process of assemblage and the implications of the box format, with the following themes being explored: miniature space and time; preciousness; fetishism and voyeurism. These are followed through into the section on my own work, where the additional subjects of the history of collecting, automata and the stop-frame animation of filmmaker Jan Švankmajer are discussed. The conclusion that I reach is about the potential power residing in found objects, which form the basis of Cornell’s, Mann’s and my own work.

A tese aqui apresentada consiste num esforço para apreender os nexos entre escola e relações sociais capitalistas. Partimos da compreensão do capital não apenas como elemento econômico, mas como relação social que tende, contraditoriamente, a subsumir as diversas esferas da vida social, ao mesmo tempo em que permite e exige a autonomização de cada uma dessas esferas. Nesse sentido, debruçamo-nos sobre a relação entre a generalização da forma escola e da forma mercadoria, à luz de uma tendência - característica da formação social capitalista - de subjetivação das formas e de coisificação dos conteúdos, que corresponde ao conceito de fetichismo do capital. Procuramos desnaturalizar a forma escolar por meio do estudo de seu processo histórico de constituição, com ênfase em alguns momentos específicos, como o da reação estatal às lutas anarquistas do início do século XX, e as subsequentes reformas educacionais dos anos 1920. Analisamos a crescente importância da escola na formação da massa de trabalhadores assalariados, reificados pela condição de vendedores de sua força de trabalho, mas também de sujeitos de direito. Assim, fomos levados a tratar da imbricação entre a forma escolar e o Direito, fundamentado nas relações mercantis, na propriedade privada, e nos processos de expropriação dos trabalhadores como produto da acumulação de capital. Internamente à escola, investigamos a incorporação do tempo abstrato, bem como o desenvolvimento da divisão do trabalho, da didática, e das formas disciplinares, tudo isso em articulação com tendências de racionalização, de desenvolvimento das forças produtivas e da consequente simplificação do trabalho. Donde se explicita a prevalência da forma sobre a formação, como tendência inerente ao modo de educar capitalista. Ademais, tratamos brevemente de algumas distinções entre os processos de escolarização das camadas mais abastadas da população e do grosso da população trabalhadora, fruto da clivagem entre escola pública e privada, também fundamentada em relações de propriedade. Por fim, sem negar a relevância das lutas travadas historicamente com vistas à universalização do direito à educação e por melhores condições de escolarização para a população trabalhadora, enfatizamos os riscos de se limitar as lutas aos marcos institucionais, argumentando que, quando desacompanhadas da construção de experiências educativas autônomas, e portanto desprovidas de um caráter tático, tais lutas conduzem a um esvaziamento dos potenciais revolucionários da organização dos trabalhadores. / The present thesis consists in an effort to apprehend the nexuses between school and capitalist social relations. We start from the understanding of capital not only as an economic element but as a social relation that tends, contradictorily, to subsume the various spheres of social life, at the same time that allows and requires the autonomization of each of these spheres. Accordingly, we focused on the relationship between the generalization of the school form and of the commodity form, in the light of a trend - characteristic of the capitalist social formation of subjectivation of the forms and reification of the contents, which corresponds to the concept of capitals fetishism. We seek to denaturalize the school form through the study of its historical process of constitution, with emphasis on some specific moments, as the state\'s reaction to the anarchist struggles in the early twentieth century, and the subsequent educational reforms of the 1920s. We analyze the growing importance of the school in the formation of the mass of salaried workers, reified by the condition of sellers of its workforce, but also as subjects of law. Thus, we were conducted to address the imbrication between the school form and the Law, based on mercantile relations, on private property, and on the process of expropriation of workers as a product of the accumulation of capital. Internally to school, we investigate the incorporation of abstract time, as well as the development of the division of labor, the didactics, and disciplinary forms, all this in conjunction with trends of rationalization, of development of the productive forces and the resulting work simplification. From that becomes explicit the prevalence of the form over the formation, as a tendency inherent to the capitalist mode of educating. Moreover, we treat briefly of some distinctions between the processes of schooling for wealthier strata of the population and the bulk of the working population, the result of the cleavage between public and private schools, also based upon property relations. Finally, without denying the relevance of the historical struggles aiming the universalization of the right to the education and better schooling conditions for the working population, we emphasize the risks of limiting the struggles to the institutional frameworks, arguing that when unaccompanied of the construction of autonomous educational experiences, and therefore deprived of a tactical character, such struggles lead to an undermining of the revolutionaries potentials of the organization of the workers.

Submitted by Daniella Santos (daniella.santos@ufma.br) on 2017-09-12T14:39:51Z No. of bitstreams: 1 RaimundoEdsonBotelho.pdf: 4270765 bytes, checksum: d6d45a2e47d2aed0e1848465f33bcba9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-12T14:39:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RaimundoEdsonBotelho.pdf: 4270765 bytes, checksum: d6d45a2e47d2aed0e1848465f33bcba9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-20 / CAPES / The sociometabolism of capital has created relations of production in the Maranhão countryside that has been characterized by the reproduction of models of dependent development, materialized in the production of agricultural commodities. These relationships are based on the modernization of agriculture, use of capital and exploitation of the workforce. These relationships are based on the modernization of agriculture, use of capital and exploitation of the workforce. At the same time as these relations of production promote the deterritorialization of peasant agriculture, they transform part of the peasants into temporary salaried workers . Thus, the objective of this study is to analyze the fetishism of proletarianization in ag riculture in a context of deepening of capital in the countryside, on the one hand, with agribusiness policies, based on the production of agricultural commodities, the prevalence of financial capital On productive capital and, on the other hand, the workers' struggle in a conjuncture of the crisis of Marxism, of the institutions of the working class and of social struggles. As a course, in addition to the references of historical materialism and exploration of secondary data, visits were made to the soybean production units alongside representatives of the rural workers' unions of Balsas. Thus, as a conclusion, it was found that the advance of capital with soybean production was not sufficient to create a broad process of proletarianization in agriculture along the lines of that existing with factory workers and the tertiary sector, since the Agricultural activity of soy production is temporary, and rural workers have failed to conquer labor and social security rights like those of the core of the proletaria t. In this way, the overvaluation of agribusiness and rural wage labor, to the detriment of family-based peasant production relations, has resulted in fetishization of proletarianization in agriculture, since, in addition to temporary work, low remuneration, overexploitation, slave labor, rural workers have fragile political organization. This fact, in addition to weakening the struggle, allows the even more significant advance of commodified agriculture and the retreat of familybased peasant agriculture. / O sociometabolismo do capital tem criado relações de produção no campo maranhense que tem se caracterizado pela reprodução dos modelos de desenvolvimento dependente, materializados na produção de commodities agrícolas. Essas relações se baseiam na modernização da agricultura, uso de capital e exploração da força de trabalho. Ao mesmo tempo em que essas relações de produção promovem a desterritorialização da agricultura camponesa, transformam parte dos camponeses em trabalhadores assalariados temporários. Assim sendo, o trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o fetichismo da proletarização na agricultura em uma conjuntura de aprofundamento do capital no campo, de um lado, com as políticas voltadas para o agronegócio, tendo como base a produção de commodities agrícolas, prevalência do capital financeiro sobre o capital produtivo e, de outro, a luta dos trabalhadores em uma conjuntura de crise do marxismo, das instituições da classe trabalhadora e refluxo das lutas sociais. Como percurso, além dos referenciais do materialismo histórico e exploração de dados secundários, realizou-se visitas às unidades de produção de soja ao lado de representantes dos sindicatos de trabalhadores rurais de Balsas. Assim sendo, à guisa de conclusão verificou-se que o avanço do capital com a produção de soja, não foi suficiente para criar um amplo processo de proletarização na agricultura aos moldes daquele existente com os trabalhadores fabris e do setor terciário, uma vez que a atividade agrícola de produção de soja é temporária e os trabalhadores rurais não chegaram a conquistar direitos trabalhistas e previdenciários como aqueles do núcleo central do proletariado. Desse modo, a sobrevalorização do agronegócio e assalariamento rural, em detrimento das relações de produção camponesa de base familiar, resultou no processo de fetichização da proletarização na agricultura, pois, além do trabalho temporário, baixa remuneração, superexploração, trabalho escravo, os trabalhadores rurais possuem organização política frágil. Esse fato, além de fragilizar a luta, permite o avanço ainda mais significativo da agricultura mercantilizada e o recuo da agricultura camponesa de base familiar.

abstract: This dissertation examines the communication of U.S. Corporate executives in quarterly conference calls and in public forums at the World Economic Forum. Using grounded theory, the executive's core conceptual framework is identified and analyzed in the conference calls. Broadly speaking, it was found that an underlying aggressive orientation to the organization conceptualizes the executive as being the source of organizational activity. It places the executive in a causal-force relation to other organizational groups, which at once, inflates the role of the executive and poses a dilemma with respect to executive status and the communicative vitality of the organization. This project of organizational communication is situated within the broader areas of ideology, critical organizational scholarship, and communicative constitution of communication. The set of data consists of communication of executives of U.S. corporations in the S&P500 in 171 conference calls with shareholder agents. Grounded theory is used to identify the executives' conceptual view of the organization as it emerges from the data analysis. The findings from the analysis of the conference call data are presented in relation to two core categories, a causal-driving force and an ultimate objective category, including sub-categories that form an overall conceptual framework. An exploration of executive communication at the World Economic Forum extends these findings by demonstrating how it is transformed and mediated in a public venue in the presence of other stakeholders. One important finding from the study involves the emergence of a rival concept that poses an organizational dilemma for the future of the executive's communicative framework. And lastly, the issue of ideology is applied to the findings. This examination uses the sensitizing concepts of reification and fetishism drawn from the literature on ideology, which is developed into a systematic algorithm. The application of the findings to the model adds new insight into the relation between the executive and organizational communication. The results from this examination reinforce and highlight the conceptual dilemma the executive faces in relation to the organization and its future implications on organizational communication. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication 2019