My purpose in writing this collection of lyric essays is to examine my evolution during one decade, from age 19 to 29. Essential questions have guided me: What stimulated change? What formed my decisions? What predisposed me to my relationship with my partner? Why did I want to have a child? What kind of relationship do I have with my son? How did my relationship with my partner evolve? Why did we decide to leave Miami? Hopefully, I have given the reader a glimpse into my movement from self-centeredness to motherhood, from aloof adolescent to committed partner, from timid daughter to self-aware individual. The nature of my inquiry led me to confessional conclusions that clarified my reactive behavior or lack of initiative, which my initial memories of the same events often disguised. These confessions are sometimes as satisfying as the more celebratory moments themselves, because they challenge older notions of self and invite the possibility of change. Specific authors who have provided models of substance and style include, but are not limited to Annie Dillard, Maxine Hong Kingston, Sharon Olds, Michael Ondaatje, and Richard Rodriguez. I use lyrical techniques to translate my experiences into crafted prose. I incorporate recurring lines to create links between essays that stand alone, thereby forming a sequence. Some experiences are so personal and specific to me that using an adopted form, such as a repurposed fairy tale, a cento, and the inverted pyramid, has allowed me to create a measure of distance from the subject, which I found necessary for rendering it clearly. I allude to specific songs to help me establish exposition and lend tone and texture to my scenes. I chose to use the second person and direct my words to a specific audience, such as my mother, my partner, or my son, because at times it feels more authentic to let the reader listen to the way I speak to that person than to tell about the relationship. I also chose to capture the voices of certain people speaking directly to me in order to establish the most authentic speaker. My effort to answer essential questions sometimes conjured scenes from the distant past. I use line breaks to let the reader fill in the gaps or make the leap to explore connections across time. Juxtaposition and prolepsis link these tableaus so the reader can see my life and uncover the answers along with me.

A expressão compor música-como-teatro sintetiza e agrupa minhas contribuições no campo das relações entre composição musical e teatralidade, organizadas em três eixos de prática e autoanálise: 1- a situação de performance musical como espaço cênico; 2- a seleção e organização de materiais como jogo cênico e 3- estrutura e forma como encenação. A noção de compor música-como-teatro é delimitada em diálogo com: afirmativas e obras de compositores como Luciano Berio, Péter Eötvös, Gilberto Mendes, Mauricio Kagel e Georges Aperghis; as categorias teatro musical, teatro instrumental e Teatro Composto, abordadas na bibliografia sobre música de concerto pós-1960; as categorias teatralidade e dramaturgia, como discutidas em escritos de teóricos que abordam as artes cênicas. Em síntese, compositores se movem em direção ao teatro, eles compõem com materiais gestuais e visuais, gerando partituras/roteiros para performances cênico-musicais. A prática de compor música-como-teatro pressupõe a intenção expressiva de incorporar a dimensão estética de teatralidade da performance musical ao âmbito das escolhas composicionais. Avança ao adotar uma aproximação entre composição e dramaturgia: compor consiste em organizar um roteiro de ações com e sem implicação sonora concatenadas musicalmente ‒ ‒ e enquadradas em dispositivos de construção e deslizamento de sentidos narrativos. O portfólio apresenta partituras e registros audiovisuais de três peças: O Espelho (2015-2017), As Gerações dos Mortais Assemelham-se às Folhas das Árvores (2015-2017) e I saw them together ‒ I heard them together (2017). / The expression composing music-as-theater synthesizes and groups my contributions in the field of relations between musical composition and theatricality, organized into three axes of practice and self-analysis: 1- the situation of musical performance as scenic space; 2- the selection and organization of materials as scenic play; and 3- structure and form as staging. The notion of composing music-as-theater is delimited in dialogue with: stances and works of composers like Luciano Berio, Péter Eötvös, Gilberto Mendes, Mauricio Kagel and Georges Aperghis; the categories musical theater, instrumental theater and Composite Theater, addressed in the bibliography on post-1960 concert music; the categories theatricality and dramaturgy, as discussed in the writings of theorists dealing with performing arts. In synthesis, composers move towards theater, they compose with gestual and visual materials, generating scores / scripts for scenic-musical performances. The practice of composing music-as-theater presupposes the expressive intention of incorporating the aesthetic dimension of theatricality of musical performance into the scope of compositional choices. It advances by adopting an approximation between composition and dramaturgy: composing consists in organizing a script of actions with and ‒ without sound implication ‒ musically concatenated and framed in devices of construction and sliding of narrative meanings. The portfolio features scores and audiovisual recordings of three pieces: O Espelho (2015-2017), As Gerações dos Mortais Assemelham-se às Folhas das Árvores (2015-2017) e I saw them together ‒ I heard them together (2017).

Temat för arbetet är musikskapande och har som syfte att undersöka min individuella kreativitet och dess kännetecken. Men syftet består också i att avgöra användbarheten av detta. Det rör sig om en psykologisk självstudie med ett fenomenologiskt angreppssätt. I mitt fall har detta inneburit att jag, efter att ha arrangerat en i mitt tycke kreativ upplevelse, beskrev denna händelse för att sedan analysera texten på fenomenologiskt vis. P.g.a. en komplikation som uppstod, då jag både var försöksperson och analytiker, resulterade undersökningen i, förutom den strukturella beskrivningen, innehållande min kreativitets individuella kännetecken, en kombinerad modell för självanalys. Användbarheten av undersökningen är kunskap d.v.s. förslag till kreativitetsfrämjande åtgärder och vad att vidare undersöka psykologiskt sett. För den största upptäckten i denna undersökning är att kunskap inte är en slutgiltig konstruktion utan visar på nya undersökningsmöjligheter i sin egen bristfällighet. / The subject of this work concerns the creation of music and aims to explore my individual creativity and its characteristics. However, the aim is also to determine the usefulness of this. This is a psychological self-study with a phenomenological approach. In my case, this meant that I, after having arranged an, in my opinion, creative experience, described this incident and then analyzed the text in a phenomenological way. Due to a complication that occurred, because I was both the subject and the analyst, this investigation came to result in, apart from the structural description, containing my creativity´s individual characteristics, a combined model for self-analysis. The usefulness of this work is knowledge i.e. suggestions on how to promote creativity and what to further investigate psychologically. Because the biggest discovery in this work is that knowledge’s not a definitive construction but shows us what can be further investigated through its own deficiency.

On peut identifier une longue pratique autobiographique en Afrique, si l’on remonte aux Confessions de St Augustin, et l’écriture de soi s'est de surcroît développée dans les langues africaines, aux époques précoloniales puis coloniales. C’est toutefois à l’initiative d’anthropologues et d’éducateurs africanistes que les premières autobiographies africaines (souvent rédigées par des instituteurs ou des élèves) ont été collectées, tandis que parallèlement émergeait une écriture autobiographique dans le roman africain francophone. Avec le combat anticolonial, apparaît une forme nouvelle : l’écriture de mémoires par de grands acteurs politiques africains, qui accentue la dimension réflexive des écritures africaines de soi. A l’ère postcoloniale, l’autobiographie tend à devenir de plus en plus intellectuelle, oscillant entre l’essai autobiographique et l’auto-analyse. A partir d’un corpus majoritairement francophone et anglophone, composé d’auteurs aussi divers que Wole Soyinka, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Joseph Emmanuel Nana Appiah, William E. B. Du Bois, Léopold-Sédar Senghor, Lamine Gueye, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Valentin Yves Mudimbe, Achille Mbembe, Célestin Monga, Barack Obama, Paulin Hountondji ou Rasna Warah, notre thèse retrace les mutations des écritures africaines de soi, de l’ère coloniale à l’époque postcoloniale, en insistant au passage sur les formes de dialogue qui s’établissent entre ceux-ci et les penseurs africanistes français, pour lesquels l’autobiographie fut bien plus qu’un récit de vie. Dans ces perspectives d’histoire et de sociologie littéraire, nous empruntons à Jérôme Meizoz sa notion de posture pour étudier les positionnements esthétiques, politiques et littéraires des écrivains et penseurs africains dans les champs littéraires africains et occidentaux. Nous mettons également en relief diverses modalités de l’auto-réflexivité en confrontant les écritures africaines de soi avec certaines autobiographies intellectuelles de penseurs et écrivains afro-américains. Cette mise en regard permet une réflexion sur les "postures postcoloniales" de nos auteurs, et débouche sur une nouvelle problématique : la visée postraciale ou le dépassement des projets et des interprétations racialistes de l’histoire et de l’identité qui ont caractérisé nombreuses idéologies africaines comme le panafricanisme et la négritude. En nous appuyant pour finir sur l’idée de « postblackness » désormais en vogue aux États-Unis, nous tâchons de montrer que le postracial reste malgré tout davantage un horizon qu’une réalité des écritures africaines de soi, du milieu du XXe siècle au seuil du XXIe siècle. / We can identify a long autobiographical practice in Africa, if we go back to the Confessions of St. Augustine, and selfwriting has moreover developed in African languages, in pre-colonial and colonial times. At the initiative of anthropologists and Africanists, the first African autobiographies (often written by teachers or students) were collected, while autobiographical writing simultaneously emerged in the French African novel. With the anti-colonial struggle, memoirs were written by leading African politicians, which emphasized the reflexive dimension of African selfwritings. In the postcolonial era, autobiography tends to become more intellectual, oscillating between autobiographical and self-analytic projects. Through a predominantly french-and english speaking corpus, consisting of authors as diverse as Wole Soyinka, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Joseph Emmanuel Nana Appiah, William E. B. Du Bois, Léopold-Sédar Senghor, Lamine Gueye, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Valentin Yves Mudimbe, Achille Mbembe, Célestin Monga, Barack Obama, Paulin Hountondji or Rasna Warah, our dissertation traces back the mutations of African selfwriting, from the colonial times to the post-colonial era, emphasizing the dialogues established between African authors and French Africanist thinkers, for whom autobiography was much more than a life story. In these literary historical and sociological perspectives, we borrow from Jerome Meizoz his notion of “posture” to study the esthetical, political and literary positions, of various writers and thinkers in African and Western literary fields. We also highlight how self-reflexivity occurs by confronting African self writings to some intellectual autobiographies produced by African-American thinkers and writers. This comparison allows a reflection on the "postcolonial posture" of our authors, and leads to a new problem : the post-racial project that runs through the racialist interpretations of history and identity that characterized many African ideologies such as Pan-Africanism and negritude. Ultimately relying on the idea of "postblackness" now in vogue in the United States, we strive to show that the postracial remains nevertheless a horizon more than a reality of African writings itself, the mid-twentieth century to the twenty-first century.