Much socialist realism art from Soviet-era Russia has been misunderstood by scholars. It has been considered "synthetic art," which ordinary citizens were forced to admire under the Soviet regime. It also has been interpreted as peasant kitsch art because of its seemingly unacademic and unchallenging theoretical language utilized in order to meet the expectations of Soviet communism. This ideology conditioned artists to make art accessible and nationalistic to serve the perceived needs of the Russian proletariat. Nikolai Rakov (1908-1990), a Soviet-era composer, is also all too often received as a second-class socialist realistic composer. There are, however, other approaches to understanding art created in Soviet Union. Within music scholarship, alternative perspectives on Soviet art remain largely unexplored. It is in that spirit that I turn to Rakov, whose works carry his artistic idea of irresistible beauty, elegance, irony and charm. They evoke colorful images and feelings that draw the audience into Rakov's own compositional world despite his reputation of technical simplicity and uninventive language at a glance. In this dissertation, I therefore turn my attention to the aesthetic side of Rakov's music in order to reevaluate his works. In order to achieve this, I develop and utilize a hermeneutical approach grounded in Claude Lévi-Strauss's The Savage Mind to examine and gauge Rakov's musical aesthetics. I closely evaluate two characteristics of Rakov's music through Lévi-Strauss' ideology of bricolage: 1) miniature structure and 2) contingent chords. This dissertation examines three of Rakov's piano works: Variations in B minor, Concert Etudes, and Four Preludes.

In this dissertation, I investigate connections between French philosophy and the theory of architecture from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s. In the mid-1960s, many architects became acutely aware of the crisis of modern architecture embodied in the failings of social housing, the routinized corporate modernism of the postwar period, and the commodification of design. They questioned the principles of the Modern Movement and emphasized the “arbitrary” nature of the relationship between form and function while turning to French structuralism, semiology, and post-structuralism for potential answers. My period of study spans from the the period of political uprisings of the 1960s to the advent of digital design in the early 1990s.To date, little in-depth research has been done on the close relation between French philosophy and architecture in this period and its role in foreshadowing postmodern developments. My dissertation addresses this gap by presenting case studies of the theoretical work of six different architects: Aldo Rossi, Alan Colquhoun, Mario Gandelsonas and Diana Agrest, Bernard Tschumi, and Peter Eisenman. These case studies share a common thread: a preoccupation with structuralist and poststructuralist concerns with language. However, concepts such as “structure,” “event,” and “meaning” often have different meanings for each of these architects. Thus, my project could be described as a history and criticism of architectural theory—one that focuses specifically on the dissonances and contradictions present within the theoretical writings of these architects, while examining the polemics and discussions between them. I consider their built work only to the extent that it helps to elucidate or challenge theoretical concepts. Thus, in my case study on Aldo Rossi’s writings, I interrogate the analogy between the structuralist concern for articulating discrete and finite linguistic units and the latter’s notion of “type” and urban morphology. In the chapter on Alan Colquhoun, I discuss the influence that the work of Roland Barthes, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Ferdinand de Saussure had on his reflections about “meaning” and “convention” in architecture. In the case study on the work of Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, I examine the extent to which their understanding of “theory” and of “ideology” is indebted to the work of Louis Althusser and trace the influence of Roland Barthes, whose seminar on S/Z they attended in Paris before moving to New York in 1971. Likewise, I analyze the role that thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes, and the Tel Quel circle in the late 1970s, and Jacques Derrida in the early 1980s had on Bernard Tschumi’s writings on the “polysemy of meaning” and on the “event.” Finally, I examine Peter Eisenman’s collaboration with Jacques Derrida in the 1980s questioning Eisenman’s eclectic appropriation of Derrida’s philosophical concepts. Besides elucidating this significant period of architecture in which many of the fundamental principles of modern architecture were overturned, in the conclusion of this study, I discuss briefly the “post-critical turn” in the architectural scholarship of the past two decades with the hope of challenging its basic assumptions. My hope is to contribute, through its critical reevaluation, to theory’s renewal.

Le mémoire observe, décrit et critique une structure constitutive de l'acte de lecture, étudiée dans la perspective structuraliste. Cette structure fondamentale s'avère un cadre théorique épistémologique qui explique la polysémie et justifie la possibilité d'une lecture plurielle. La structure est étudiée en trois temps. D'abord, elle est repérée dans les assises théoriques du structuralisme. Les cinq éléments qui la constituent sont observés: l'utilisation de la psychanalyse, l'utilisation de la linguistique, la recherche de l'Autre, l'utilisation du principe d'immanence et le principe objectivant. Cette partie est complétée par un parallèle entre le structuralisme et les principaux auteurs postmodemes et par l'étude succincte de la pensée de Freud et Saussure comme précurseurs de la lecture plurielle. Ensuite, on observe les cinq éléments qui composent la structure étudiée dans l'oeuvre de cinq auteurs structuraliste: le psychanalyste Jacques Lacan, l’anthropologue Claude Lévi-Strauss, le philosophe Jacques Derrida, le critique littéraire et sémiologue Roland Barthes et la psychanalyste et linguiste Julia Kristeva. Une section dégage quelques conséquences du structuralisme pour la théologie et l'exégèse. Enfin, une conclusion vient réaffirmer de manière concise la présence des cinq éléments chez les auteurs étudiés, dégage les conséquences, propose une ouverture sur l'exégèse et le théologique et présente des critiques du structuralisme.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:59:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sandra Maria Luvizutto Goncalves.pdf: 2384106 bytes, checksum: 775541195573dedce8167614b7ef287a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-03-17 / The objective of this paper is to develop a comparison study between cultural and artistic experiences narrated by the poet Mário Raul de Moraes Andrade in O turista aprendiz (2002) and Tristes trópicos (1996) by the French anthropologist and writer Claude Lévi-Strauss. The impressions captured by them while visiting the Amazon region are our study and demonstration objects, sustained by the concepts of alterity, based on the exotic eye and the encounter with the Other . The central objective is in the reading and analysis of the travel reports, which confirmed the experience lived by the writers, showing that both of them trespassed the physical geography of visited places and, literarily, reconfigured it by means of artistic and poetic subjectivity in order to be able to unveil the new mythical matrixes of the Brazilian Amazon. The themes are distributed as follows: chapter 1 presents the exotic and the complexity in the distinction between reality and fiction in the travel reports, in light of practical alterity. Chapter 2 approaches the differences and contrasts between two foreigners and the Other , facing the reality observed. Chapter 3 reveals the encounter with the Other , the unknown, which resulted in a fictional transgeography . The theoretical parameters of support were based on the work by: Antonio Candido (1976), François Dosse (1993), Txyetan Todorov (1993), Julia Kristeva (1994), Telê Ancona Lopez (1996), Mikhail Bakhtin (2003), Emmanuel Lévinas (2005), among other authors. We prioritized the comparatist method of direct observation of the object on a fictional travel report, thus opening an equity relation in receiving the Other in its anonymity and, consequently, creating a rupture with the absolute thinking of science. / A presente dissertação tem o objetivo geral de desenvolver um estudo comparatista entre as experiências culturais e artísticas narradas nas obras O turista aprendiz (2002), do escritor e poeta Mário Raul de Moraes Andrade, e Tristes trópicos (1996), do antropólogo e escritor francês Claude Lévi-Strauss. As impressões registradas por eles, na visita à região amazônica, são nossos objetos de demonstração e estudo, sustentados pelos conceitos de alteridade, a partir do olhar exótico e do encontro com o Outro. O objetivo central localiza-se na leitura e análise dos relatos de viagem, confirmadores das experiências vividas pelos escritores, para mostrar que ambos transgrediram a geografia física dos lugares visitados e, literariamente, reconfiguraram-na por meio da subjetividade artística e poética, de modo a poder revelar as novas matrizes míticas da Amazônia brasileira. A temática está assim distribuída: o capítulo I apresenta a questão do exótico e da complexidade na distinção entre realidade e ficção nos relatos de viagem, à luz da prática da alteridade. O capítulo II trata das diferenças e contrastes entre o olhar dos dois estrangeiros e o do Outro, diante da realidade observada. O capítulo III revela-nos o encontro com o Outro, com o desconhecido, o que resultou numa transgeografia ficcional . Os parâmetros teóricos de suporte foram: Antonio Candido (1976), François Dosse (1993), Tzvetan Todorov (1993), Julia Kristeva (1994), Telê Ancona Lopez (1996), Mikhail Bakhtin (2003), Emmanuel Lévinas (2005), dentre outros. Priorizamos o método comparatista da observação direta do objeto em relato ficcional de viagem, abrindo, assim, uma relação de equidade ao receber o Outro no seu anonimato e, consequentemente, rompendo com o pensamento absoluto da ciência.