Die Leitidee der vorliegenden Untersuchung besteht darin, das Phänomen der von Literatur und Kunst bis auf Populärkultur und Tourismus reichenden Inselfaszination mit Blick auf maßgebliche Denkfiguren und Codes des modernen Wissens zu analysieren. Anschließend an eine phänomenologische und strukturelle Ansicht inselhafter Räume wird im ersten Teil der Arbeit deren mythische, literarische und ikonographische Aneignung von der Antike bis in die Neuzeit schematisiert. Über topische Inhalte hinaus wird der Blick dabei auf eine Reihe formaler Eigenschaften gerichtet, die den Deutungsspielraum von Inselvorstellungen definieren. Der zweite Teil der Arbeit ist der Funktion imaginärer und symbolischer Inselbezüge im Zwischenraum der Entdeckung Tahitis und der romantischen Natur- und Kunstphilosophie gewidmet. Er zielt darauf, die Konstruktion eines modernen Wunschraums nachzuzeichnen, der die Insel als "symbolische Landschaft" an den Horizont eines äußersten Wissens und Genießens setzt. Über die Implementierung eines fiktionalen Inselglücks in Konzeptionen von Landschaft, Erleben, globaler Topographie und Geschichte hinaus geht es dabei um Auswirkungen auf ein modernes Verständnis von Natur, Kunst, Verlangen, Schöpfung und Autorschaft. Deren Beobachtung schlägt der Untersuchung schließlich die Brücke zu Rückkopplungen von Modernität, Primitivismus und Inselphantasien in Konzepten der Avantgarde. Der abschließende dritte Teil der Arbeit unternimmt es zu zeigen, daß die um 1900 vehemente Renaissance einer literarischen und künstlerischen Inselfaszination sowie die gleichzeitigen Artikulationen eines unbewußten oder unsagbaren "Anderen" einander als analoge Denkbewegungen korrespondieren. / The leading idea of this study lies in the analysis of the phenomenon of "Island Fascination", which reaches from literature over fine art to popular culture and tourism. This is done by looking at some of the essential concepts and codes of modern knowledge. A phenomenological and structural view of insular spaces is followed by an outline of their mythic, literary and iconographic interpretation from antiquity to modern times in the first part of the work. The look is directed beyond specific topic contents to a series of formal characteristics, which define the latitude of island interpretations. The second part of the work is concerned with the function of imaginary and symbolic island references between the discovery of Tahiti and the Romantic natural and art philosophy. It sketches the conctruction of a modern space of desire, which presents the island as a "symbolic landscape" at the horizon of a sphere of utmost knowledge and enjoyment. The work tackles the implementation of a fictional insular happiness in concepts of landscape, experience, global topography and history; and it deals with the effects of this topic on modern ideas of nature, art, desire, creation and authority. The analysis of such ideas leads to a closer examination of retroactions of modernity, primitivism and insular imaginations in concepts of the avant-garde. The final third part of the work intends to show that the vehement revival of literary and artistic insular fascination about 1900 corresponds to simultaneous articulations of an unconscious or unspeakable "other".

In the years after WWII the Baltic Sea Area developed into an area strongly divided between East and West. Because of the tensions between the blocs, the coastal areas where strongly militarized and prepared for war. The new political situation after 1989 propelled an international military disarmament and closing down of bases, training areas around Europe. Since the Baltic Sea Area was one of the heaviest militarized part of Europe the question of disarmament here is of particularly great economic, social and cultural importance. This study is about the post-military landscape in the Baltic Sea Area with examples from Dejevo on the Estonian island Saaremaa, Dranske on the (East)German island Rügen and Fårösund on the Swedish island Gotland. The aim of this thesis is to shed light on the process where the military landscape of the Cold War is transformed in order to be incorporated in the macro-regional endeavors for unity in the new Europe. I want to analyze the implications that planning visions have on the everyday life of people. A following aim is to shed light on the challenges that urban planning has to face in this transformation. Three research questions frame the study. The first question analyzes the process where the coastal areas of the Baltic Sea after the end of the Cold War are disarmed and transformed, from a landscape of production of military services and objects into a landscape of consumption for recreation and tourism. The second question takes its point of departure in the relation between planning visions and everyday life. The third question concerns the matter of the past and analyzes what aspects of the military landscape are emphasized respectively pushed aside in the transformation into post-military landscape. The study is based on interviews with inhabitants and local planners as well as macro-regional and local planning documents, articles and photographs.

Cette thèse propose un discours théorique sur la médiation fictionnelle, notamment dans les romans de notre corpus. Dans une perspective rhétorique, la recherche consiste à étudier le processus de mise en œuvre de la signification dans les œuvres littéraires. La communication y apparaît non pas comme une donnée stable et simple que l’on pourrait réduire à des manifestations formelles ou encore à des contenus sociohistoriques, mais comme un ensemble d’exigences cohérent qui définissent les termes, sinon les modalités d’une coopération entre l’écrivain et le lecteur. La réflexion s’organise en trois parties.La première partie consiste à identifier la question dont l’énoncé romanesque est la réponse. Elle permet d’arborer, sous forme de thème, les grands axes de l’argumentation narrative, partant les enjeux de la communication dans chaque roman.Dans la seconde partie, il s’agit d’analyser les choix formels de l’énoncé et de montrer sur quels modes et à quelle fin idéologique la contribution du lecteur est sollicitée. En fait, c’est la stratégie discursive qui définit la modalité de communication et caractérise le régime de fonctionnement de la médiation dans une œuvre littéraire.L’idée centrale de la troisième partie consiste à montrer la compétence épistémologique qu’un écrivain confère à l’œuvre littéraire et la capacité du lecteur à l’identifier. Les théories qui deviennent des viviers épistémologiques de la littérature apparaissent comme des réductionnismes et de véritables obstacles au plaisir de lire ou de faire résonner avec justesse la signification d’une œuvre d’art. / This thesis proposes a theorical discourse on the fictional mediation, more particularly in the novels of our corpus. From a rhetorical perspective, the research consists in studying the process of implementation of the signification in the literary works. The communication appears to it not as a stable and simple datum which we could reduce to formal appearances or still to sociohistorical contents, but as a set of coherent requirements wich specify the terms, otherwise the modalities of the argumentative cooperation between the writer and the reader. The thiking is composed of three parts.The first part consists in indentifiying the question of wich the fiction statement is the answer. It allows to raise, in thematic form, the main axes of the narrative line of argument, consequently the issues of the communication in each novel.The second part deals with the analysis of the formal choices of the statement and it shows on which modes and what ideological end the contribution of the reader is requested. In fact, it’s the discursive strategy wich defines the method of communication and characterizes the functioning of mediation in a literary work.The central idea of the third part is to show the epistemological skill that a writer gives to the literary work and the reader’s ability to identify it. The theories wich become epistemological pools appear as reductionisms and as real obstacles to the pleasure to read or to make pertinently resound the significance of a work art.

Representations of female characters in cinema have the effect of othering the female in front of the viewer’s gaze. Women’s characters are constructed along the lines of their gender and race difference. In this paper I focus entirely on the character of the woman domestic worker in four films: Ilo Ilo, The Second Mother, The Maid, and At Home. The paper aims to provide a different reading of this mostly trivialized character and rethink its otherness by pinpointing it in biopolitical labor and homes of biopower, namely of affect and oppression. I am interested in how labor can reconfigure the domestic space to a heterotopia, or what I call a ‘heterooikos’, which is the space occupied by the other. Finally, I will attempt an analysis that reimagines otherness captured by cinema, by locating, in the film text, techniques of resistance as a countersuggestion to techniques of character identification. My aim is to provide a different way to interact with subaltern subjects in film by recognizing otherness as part of an ethical response.

Por convergência teórica, esta tese de dissertação é estruturada em quatro capítulos, retomando a teoria das cinco peles de Hundertwaser. O artista austríaco, filho de mãe judia e pai ariano, realizou em Paris sua primeira exposição no ano de 1954 e desde então, não cessou mais de trabalhar, aglutinando os exercícios de arquiteto, ambientalista, naturista e higienista moral, assim como as atividades de pintor e gravador, todos efetivados nos múltiplos diálogos estabelecidos por cada pele. As cinco peles de Hundertwasser acredita o homem como um ser de camadas, que se desenrolam por uma espiral concêntrica, que parte do eu-profundo para o mundo exterior, operada por osmose, nas cadeias sucessivas dos níveis de consciência do indivíduo. as cinco peles de Hundertwasser são um plano de vida - e mais: uma reflexão profunda do ser e estar sobre a terra, colocado em prática ao longo de sua jornada artística. A abordagem pretende desdobrar tal teoria - o que cada pele me suscita - no corpo fabril da minha produção em relação a de outros artistas e teóricos. A transmissão das cinco peles de Hunderwasser desenvolve-se em situações de alargamento das peles. Uma apropriação que re contextualiza, revela novos posicionamentos no caminhar da arte contemporânea / By theoretical convergence, this thesis dissertation is structured in four chapters, referring to the five skins theory of Hundertwasser. The Austrian artist, son of a Jewish mother and German father, held his first exhibition in Paris in the year 1954 and has not stopped since then, as an architect, environmentalist, naturist and moral hygienist, as well as the activities of painter and engraver, all ralized in the multiple dialogues established for each skin. The five skins of Hundertwasser are: the first skin, the epidermis; the second skin, clothing; the third skin, the home; the fourth skin, our social identity; and finally, th fifth planetary skin. Hundertwasser believe the man is a being of layers, which unrolls as a concentric spiral, that part form the deep-self to the outside world, operated by osmosis, in the successive chains of consciousness levels of the individual. The five skins of Hundertwasser are a life project - and more: a deep reflection of the being and standing on the earth, put into practice along his artistic journey. The approach seeks to unroll such theory - what each particular skin brings me - in the body of my production, relating to other artists and theorists. The transmission of the five skins of Hunderwasser develops as situations that extendes the skins. An appropriation that brings new context, revealing new ways of contemporary art

Cette thèse explore l’espace communicationnel contemporain à partir de la forme installative. L’enjeu est d’envisager comment dans une société médiatisée où l’exposition est devenue la norme du visible, l’installation parvient à créer ou renégocier dans l’espace social des formes de visibilités. Ces reformulations sensibles proviennent du geste scénographique, tout à la fois processus de création et de représentation, à travers lequel peuvent être circonscrites des « scénographies communicationnelles ». L’installation artistique est l’espace archétypal servant à entreprendre cette réflexion. À partir d’un corpus d’installations artistiques contemporaines, nous analysons les processus par lesquels l’installation conduit à une expérience hétérogène de l’espace tendant favoriser l’immersion du visiteur et le renversement des cadres qui servent à intelligibiliser le réel. Ces processus font de l’installation un espace permettant d’expérimenter le sensible à l’aune d’agencements spatiaux qui en redéfinissent le partage. L’installation peut être conçue comme une forme scénographique constitutive de pratiques et de processus communicationnels tendant s’intercaler entre l’expérience esthétique et l’expérimentation sociale de l’espace. La « communication anthropologique du sensible » favorisée par des dispositifs artistiques de toutes sortes, permet justement d’illustrer comment l’installation, devenue une scène sociale, transforme tout à la fois notre perception et nos modes d’êtres communicationnels. Pour saisir et mettre en perspective ces enjeux à cheval entre les disciplines de la communication et de l’esthétique, cette réflexion prend comme point d’appui l’espace muséal. Le musée, espace scénographié et régime d’exposition matérialisé, permet d’observer comment le paradigme communicationnel intervient dans les pratiques culturelles à travers le rôle que joue l’espace, alors conçu comme une « scène ». L’installation d’abord envisagée dans le milieu typique de l’hétérotopie muséale, sera observée au fil de ses déterritorialisations dans l’espace social, mais aussi à travers des processus circulaires et réflexifs qu’elle provoque sur notre regard. Il s’agit finalement de se demander comment l’installation non plus seulement artistique peut faire lieu de support ou de modèle pour analyser l’espace communicationnel contemporain et plus loin, une hypothétique « société de l’installation ». / This thesis explores the contemporary communicational space on the basis of the installation form. The challenge is to consider how installation manages to create or renegotiate forms of visibilities in a media-orientated society in which exhibitions have become the norm of what is visible. These sensitive reformulations result from the scenography movement, defined as a process of creation and representation through which “communicational scenography” may be contained. The artistic installation is the archetypal space that will be used to undertake this reflection. Using a corpus of contemporary art installations, we will analyse the processes by which installation leads to a heterogeneous experience of space, which typically favours the immersion of the visitor and the reversal of frameworks which serve to make the real world intelligible. These processes make installation a space which allows for experimentation with the sensory experience in relation to spatial layouts which redefine its division. Installation may be appreciated as a form of scenography constituting of communicational processes and practices which tend to insert themselves in between the aesthetic experience and the social experiment of space. The “anthropological communication of the sensible”, promoted by all sorts of artistic devices, illustrates precisely the way in which installation, as a social stage, transforms both our perception and methods of communication. To grasp and put into perspective these issues, which criss-cross between the disciplines of communication and aesthetic, this reflection will focus upon space specifically within the museum. The museum, acting as both a set designed space and a stage of materialised exhibition, makes it possible to observe how the communicational paradigm intervenes in cultural practices through the role played by space, here defined as a “scene”. Initially considered in the typical environment of museum heterotopia, installation will be observed over the course of its derritorialisation in social space, but also through circular and reflexive processes that it may have on our perspective. In the end, it is a question of whether installation, a not only an artistic practice, can act as a medium or a template to analyse the contemporary communicational space and, further still, as a hypothetical “society of installation”.

Twentieth-century Indian and Sri Lankan literatures (in English, in particular) have shown a strong tendency towards conceptualising the rural and the village within the dichotomous paradigms of utopia and dystopia. Such representations have consequently cast the village in idealized (pastoral) or in realist (counter-pastoral/dystopic) terms. In Chapters One and Two, I read together Mohandas Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1908) and Leonard Woolf’s The Village in the Jungle (1913) and argue that Gandhi and Woolf can be seen at the head of two important, but discrete, ways of reading the South Asian village vis-à-vis utopian thought, and that at the intersection of these two ways lies a rich terrain for understanding the many forms in which later twentieth-century South Asian writers chose to re-create city-village-nation dialectics. In this light, I examine in Chapter Three the work of Raja Rao (Kanthapura, 1938) and O. V. Vijayan (The Legends of Khasak, 1969) and in Chapter Four the writings of Martin Wickramasinghe (Gamperaliya, 1944) and Punyakante Wijenaike (The Waiting Earth, 1966) as providing a re-visioning of Gandhi’s and Woolf’s ideas of the rural as a site for civic and national transformation. I conclude by examining in Chapter Five Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost (2000) and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005) as emblematic of a recent turn in South Asian fiction centred on the rural where the village embodies a “heterotopic” space that critiques and offers a conceptual alternative to the categorical imperatives of utopia and dystopia. I use Michel Foucault’s notion of the “heterotopia” to re-evaluate the utopian dimension in these novels. Although Foucault himself under-theorized the notion of heterotopia and what he did say connected the idea to urban landscapes and imaginaries, we may yet recuperate from his formulations a “third space” of difference that provides an opportunity to rethink the imperatives of utopia in literature and helps understand the rural in twentieth-century South Asian writing in new ways.

Twentieth-century Indian and Sri Lankan literatures (in English, in particular) have shown a strong tendency towards conceptualising the rural and the village within the dichotomous paradigms of utopia and dystopia. Such representations have consequently cast the village in idealized (pastoral) or in realist (counter-pastoral/dystopic) terms. In Chapters One and Two, I read together Mohandas Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1908) and Leonard Woolf’s The Village in the Jungle (1913) and argue that Gandhi and Woolf can be seen at the head of two important, but discrete, ways of reading the South Asian village vis-à-vis utopian thought, and that at the intersection of these two ways lies a rich terrain for understanding the many forms in which later twentieth-century South Asian writers chose to re-create city-village-nation dialectics. In this light, I examine in Chapter Three the work of Raja Rao (Kanthapura, 1938) and O. V. Vijayan (The Legends of Khasak, 1969) and in Chapter Four the writings of Martin Wickramasinghe (Gamperaliya, 1944) and Punyakante Wijenaike (The Waiting Earth, 1966) as providing a re-visioning of Gandhi’s and Woolf’s ideas of the rural as a site for civic and national transformation. I conclude by examining in Chapter Five Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost (2000) and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005) as emblematic of a recent turn in South Asian fiction centred on the rural where the village embodies a “heterotopic” space that critiques and offers a conceptual alternative to the categorical imperatives of utopia and dystopia. I use Michel Foucault’s notion of the “heterotopia” to re-evaluate the utopian dimension in these novels. Although Foucault himself under-theorized the notion of heterotopia and what he did say connected the idea to urban landscapes and imaginaries, we may yet recuperate from his formulations a “third space” of difference that provides an opportunity to rethink the imperatives of utopia in literature and helps understand the rural in twentieth-century South Asian writing in new ways.

My thesis is a critical essay thematically focused on the fate of the body in the postmodern condition. In this thesis a fundamental question is posed: What happens to the (postmodern) body under the double pressure of postmodern technology and culture? Is the postmodern body altered under the pressure of postmodern technology and culture? How contemporary thought and architecture impact the body will also be examined. This thesis discusses the above questions through several key concepts such as exilic conditions, heterotopias and ‘trans’ states of being. After elaborating on these issues, this thesis attempts to design an architectural project “Hamam Complex” on a unique natural island in the Bosporus strait that separates the Western and Eastern worlds.

My thesis is a critical essay thematically focused on the fate of the body in the postmodern condition. In this thesis a fundamental question is posed: What happens to the (postmodern) body under the double pressure of postmodern technology and culture? Is the postmodern body altered under the pressure of postmodern technology and culture? How contemporary thought and architecture impact the body will also be examined. This thesis discusses the above questions through several key concepts such as exilic conditions, heterotopias and ‘trans’ states of being. After elaborating on these issues, this thesis attempts to design an architectural project “Hamam Complex” on a unique natural island in the Bosporus strait that separates the Western and Eastern worlds.