My dissertation brings a new historical perspective and a theoretical reflection on 1970s French intellectuals’ activism and relationship to power and politics through the history of the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP), a group of activists who decided to make the hermetic border between the societal space and the prisons more porous. The GIP, founded in 1970 by Michel Foucault, Jean-Marie Domenach, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, and including thinkers and writers like Hélène Cixous, Daniel Defert, Gilles Deleuze, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Genet, aimed at providing information on carceral conditions in France and in the United States. These intellectuals interviewed prisoners, family members, guards, and published their findings in pamphlets to spread awareness about the inhumane conditions prisoners were forced to live in. Thanks to the work of Artières, Zancarini-Fournel, Harcourt, Zurn and Dilts's work, the GIP slowly emerges from the shadows. However, very few of the Anglophone articles and books dedicated to the group look at the GIP from a French and European historical and philological perspective, underlining the specificity of this group and activism in French intellectual history. My dissertation thus aspires to highlight and better understand the place of the GIP in contemporary French history, history of French activism, prison history as well as in French intellectual history. As the GIP archives are currently being translated into English, my work reveals the historical intricacies of this group with French contemporary events (such as the events of May '68), and its relationship to other forms of activism in the 1970s: feminist activism, legal activism, psychoanalytic activism and global prison activism. In my dissertation, I argue that these overlapping types of activism displaced the main lines between two conceptions of the intellectual in twentieth-century France: l’intellectuel universel and l’intellectuel spécifique. According to me, the GIP, by rejecting the figure of the universal intellectual yet showing the failure of the specific intellectual, discloses a crisis in the mid-70s French intelligentsia, leading on the one side to a new definition of l’intellectuel engagé. My research on the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP) draws on a three-tiered methodological approach: close textual analysis of primary source material; interpretation of primary texts through theoretical frameworks; and historical contextualization of both primary documents and broader socio-cultural framework through archival research and testimonies. My original and translation constitute a new perspective on the role of intellectuels engagés— particularly philosophers and key figures of the “French Theory” movement. By reflecting on the concept of engaged intellectual from the 1894 Dreyfus affair to the debates about the Nouveaux Philosophes, my project also brings about a fundamental investigation about the genealogy of the intellectuals —particularly philosophers and the so-called “French Theory”— and their roles in French politics.

This dissertation explores the rise of transnational state torture and the efforts of the Left to resist and denounce it in South America in the 1970s. Looking principally to Brazil and Argentina, I ask how torture was understood by the officials who employed it and the revolutionaries who resisted and denounced it at a time when such calibrated violence stood at the heart of political struggle. While torture’s status as a grave violation of human rights is often taken for granted today, I show that in 1970s-era southern South America, many perpetrators and victims alike instead regarded torture as a powerful counterrevolutionary weapon, one capable of generating the raw data on which the region’s sophisticated information-management systems relied. At the same time, both revolutionaries and regime agents recognized such systematic torture as a grave liability for its practitioners. Militants and their allies abroad capitalized on this liability by disseminating testimonies that drew the world’s attention to South American torture chambers. Their efforts helped to consolidate the politics of bodily integrity at the heart of the current global human rights regime, yet they were unable to curb state violence or advance socialism. Drawing on dozens of archival collections from ten countries, I reconstruct the now-forgotten meanings of torture that defined this formative juncture, demonstrating the potential of history to reinvigorate a policy debate centered for too long on the question, “Does torture work?” Instead, I ask readers to consider the work that torture and its denunciation have performed at a critical moment in the past, in order to generate new strategies to counteract it today.

This dissertation considers Jef Geys as an archivist of the cultural shifts of the ’60s and ’70s in Europe amidst the reception of American Pop in Belgium. Between these decades, Geys archived and played back the social and cultural effects of Pop to engage with the newly defined middle class that was constructed to account for and implement changes in both professional and social settings. Geys’s archive was instrumental in his roles as an artist and educator and he used it to reinterpret the implications of Pop. Geys’s consideration of Pop expanded its implications to test Pop’s institutional and social alignments in relation to the question of geography and population.

No description available.

“National security” is one of the most powerful terms in the American vocabulary. It commands wide deference and almost unlimited resources, and what counts as a national security matter determines many of the government’s priorities and responsibilities. It is surprising, therefore, that we know so little about how national security came to be defined in the way Americans have understood it for the last 75 years. The problem is one of perspective. Almost everything written about the history of national security approaches the topic with a present-day understanding of the term’s meaning in mind and uses the term instrumentally to explain something else—most often some aspect of American foreign policy. Most of these works assume that national security refers principally to physical security, that national security policymaking is a foreign policy matter, and that it has always been thus. This dissertation historicizes the term national security. Rather than tracing the present-day conception of national security backwards in time, as has been the norm, it looks forward from the past. This shift in perspective reveals a history of national security that challenges the prevailing assumption that national security has always been a matter of physical security and foreign policy. When Franklin Roosevelt first put national security at the center of American political discourse in the 1930s, he equated it with individual economic security and considered domestic policy the primary domain for national security policymaking. Roosevelt also articulated a broad vision for the government’s national security responsibilities in the final years of his presidency that included economic, social, and physical security to be delivered through a mix of domestic and foreign policy. These findings raise a big question about American political development: why did the United States end up with separate “national security” and “welfare” states rather than the comprehensive national security state Roosevelt envisioned? To answer that question, this dissertation focuses on the interactions between political language, public opinion, and the institutional development of the American state. Combining traditional historical research methods with text mining, network analysis, and data visualization, this dissertation charts the movement of policy areas into and out of the national security frame. Franklin Roosevelt succeeded in placing domestic policy into the national security frame in the mid-1930s, thereby justifying the expansion of the government’s domestic responsibilities. But this success catalyzed the nascent conservative movement, which launched a public persuasion campaign to limit the further expansion of the government’s domestic responsibilities by removing domestic policy from the national security frame. Roosevelt’s subsequent success putting foreign policy into the national security frame at the end of the 1930s created a powerful foreign policy establishment that claimed the mantle of national security exclusively for its work. The exclusion of domestic policy from the purview of national security policymaking was therefore largely an ironic result of Roosevelt’s two successes using the language of security to expand the government’s responsibilities.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a hallmark example of the first, great cautionary sociological and political dystopias of the postwar era. Over the last sixty years, literary critics have thoroughly studied the plot, setting, characters, themes, scenes, subliminal meanings, and overt meanings of this text. However, very few critics have utilized one of the most precious resources available for analysis of Orwell’s creative process – the surviving, but fragmented, stages of early composition. In order to understand the full significance of these pages, it is necessary to illuminate the presubmission history of Nineteen Eighty-Four from the point at which George Orwell began composition to the date of press submission – a span of roughly twenty-nine months, from the summer of 1946 to November 1948, when Orwell’s British publisher, Secker and Warburg, received the typesetting copy. Nineteen Eighty-Four, his final work, is also the sole Orwell novel where manuscript stages are known to survive. The submitted typescript survives in the Orwell Archives at University College in London, and its underlayer reflects the fullest development of Nineteen Eighty-Four under Orwell’s unmediated hand. Although the 1947 manuscript is a conglomeration of hand written pages, typed pages, hand corrected pages, and type corrected pages, it is vital that literary and textual criticism focus on what the manuscript reveals about Orwell’s development of the narrative structure and text.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze how certain elements of panopticism manage to dismantle the notion of privacy in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. By reading the text through a lens of panopticism, a theory introduced by Jeremy Bentham, I give examples on how the surveillance methods used by the Party share similarities with the system of surveillance within a Panoptic prison, but also in what ways that they differ. In the end, it is obvious that the society of Oceania cannot be considered to be a complete Panopticon, although several elements of panopticism are present within the text and that they dismantle the aspect of privacy in the novel.

Fondée en 1926, la première Entente internationale de l’acier (EIA) était impuissante à contrôler le développement de nouvelles capacités de production dans les pays membres. Les groupes sidérurgiques nationaux réunis dans l’EIA se partageaient des quotas de production. Fin 1929, les maîtres de forges sont convaincus que l’EIA ne peut survivre qu’en passant à une réglementation des exportations. Ils lancent l’entreprise des Comptoirs internationaux d’exportation dont la mise en route s’avère aussi difficile que leur fonctionnement ultérieur. Ils échouent après quelques mois seulement (été 1930). En mars 1931, la première EIA cesse de fonctionner. On assiste alors à un déchaînement sans précédant de la concurrence. Les prix s’effondrent. Les dirigeants des firmes sidérurgiques cherchent alors le salut dans une nouvelle entente internationale. Les tractations aboutissent à la création de la seconde EIA (février 1933) qui, à l’opposé de la première, est axée sur un partage des seules exportations. Elle est coiffée d’une demi-douzaine de Comptoirs de vente internationaux qui règlementent les ventes à l’exportation. En même temps, on note une tendance très nette à la protection mutuelle des marchés intérieurs au sein de l’EIA. Le dépouillement d’une documentation abondante et inédite nous a permis d’analyser le dynamisme interne, les effets et les limites de l’EIA au cours des années trente. / The International Steel Cartel (ISC), founded in 1926, was unable to control the development of production capacity in the member countries. The steelmakers, who were gathered in the ISC, shared production quota. At the end of 1929, steel producers were convinced that the ISC could only survive by changing over in order to regulate exports. The steel manufacturers of Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Saar decided to set up provisional international export syndicates for single products. These export syndicates did not achieve their aim. In March 1931, the ISC ceased to operate so that we are witnessing an outburst of the competition. Prices collapsed. The steel managers were seeking salvation in a new international agreement. The negotiations succeeded in the creation of the second ISC (1933), which, contrary to the first one, was centred on sharing of only exports. It was topped by half a dozen international syndicates, which regulated export sales. At the same time, we can see a very clear trend towards the protection of the internal markets within the ISC. The analysis of new archives allows us a better understanding of the internal dynamism, the effects and limits of the cartel during the thirties.

The aim with this essay is to cast a light upon the brainwashing carried out by the totalitarian Party in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, and induce a deeper understanding of its persuasive effect on Winston Smith, the main character. Winston passionately hates the Party and its leader Big Brother who govern the country Oceania in which he lives. However, after having undergone brainwashing that also includes torture, Winston surrenders to the ideology of the Party and at the end of the novel his hatred towards Big Brother has turned to love. In order to understand Winton’s conversion I carry out a close reading of the novel and apply the three rhetorical means of persuasion, ethos, logos and pathos, to the novel and demonstrate when and how these appeals are used on Winston. Against this rhetorical background the analysis shows that the Party’s usage of rhetorical appeals can explain why the brainwashing works successfully in its persuasive aim. This result also demonstrates that these three appeals play a prominent role over a course of several years in the Party’s indoctrination of Winston. Additionally, the presence of rhetoric proves that there is more than Winston being tortured to his conversion. Thus, Winston is not only tortured into repeating the principles of the party, he is also persuaded into actually believing in them and loving Big Brother by the Party’s strategic appeals to ethos, logos and pathos. / Syftet med detta arbete är att belysa hjärntvätten utförd av det totalitära Partiet i George Orwells dystopiska roman, 1984, och bidra till en djupare förståelse för dess övertygande effekt på huvudkaraktären Winston Smith. Han hatar innerligt Partiet och dess ledare Storebror som styr landet Oceanien, i vilket Winston lever. Efter att ha genomgått hjärntvätt, som också innebär tortyr, överlämnar han sig dock till Partiets ideologi och i slutet av romanen har hans hat för Storebror vänts till kärlek. För att förstå Winstons omvändelse analyserar jag romanen utifrån de tre retoriska övertalningsmedlen, ethos, logos och pathos och påvisar när och hur dessa används mot Winston. Mot denna retoriska bakgrund visar analysen att Partiets användning av dessa medel kan förklara varför hjärntvätten lyckas. Resultatet visar också att dessa medel spelar en viktig roll över en längre period i Partiets indoktrinering av Winston. Dessutom visar närvaron av retorik att hjärntvättens utfall inte endast är avhängigt Partiets tortyr. Winston är således inte enbart genom tortyr tvingad till att repetera Partiets ideologi, han övertygas också att tro omfatta denna och att älska Storebror genom Partiets strategiska användning av ethos, logos och pathos.

The subject of this thesis is the influence of George Orwell's experience as a war-time BBC radio broadcaster on the author as he created the world of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR. In 1985 W. J. West published the transcripts of Orwell's wartime broadcasts. West suggested in his introductory preface that Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR was based directly on his BBC experience and problems encountered with the Ministry of Information at that time. This thesis argues that, though Orwell probably drew on his BBC experience for the psychological content of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, Winston's treatment at the hands of Big Brother is not based on anything the author endured during his tenure at the BBC. To this end Orwell's personal and political reasons for both joining and leaving the BBC are discussed. The connection between reality and fiction in Orwell's works, both documentary and fictional, is examined, and the literary nature of all of Orwell's writing taken into consideration in an exploration of the creative dynamic shaping Orwell's expression.